


Burn Your Books
Welcome internet traveler. I will be stockpiling neatly organized bits into a collective known as a blog along this portion of your journey. Do not fear for your personal safety, as I will take great […]

Is Science Killing Science Fiction?
Gregory Benford shared this on facebook, asking if this notion was true: Strahan, Jonathan, “Introduction,” Edge of Infinity, Solaris, 2012. This is just a short introduction to Strahan’s latest book of short stories, but he […]
Who Let the Dog Out?
Author J. M. Barrie is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, but I’m extremely fond of his comic play The Admirable Crichton – especially when he has Ernest Woolley whine, “I’m not young enough to […]

A Kepler’s Dozen
NASA’s Kepler mission has been watching a swath of the Milky Way watching for the signs of stars being eclipsed by planets in orbit around them. This takes patience and favorable geometry, but Kepler has […]

The First Poem Written in Space
The real scandal is that it took anyone this long to write a poem in space. The solution is easy.

Fiction and the Happy Brain
STORY HORDER As a child, I was a story horder. I couldn’t get enough of them. I was very fortunate to have parents who read to me, and looking back, they were saints in this […]

The Speed of Science
Science deals with a lot of high speed phenomena, like the speed of sound and the speed of light, which can make the topic seem fast and exciting. We also see science news on tv […]

Scientists and Stereotypes
Older male (check), glasses (check), white lab coat (check). A scientist! Even without the funny hat or breaker full of red liquid, everyone recognizes the stereotype. Stereotypes can be based on a nugget of truth […]

Classic Science Fiction Science: Outland
The science fiction movie Outland has been described as a reimaging of the western classic High Noon set in space: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2XfvN8XSc&version=3&hl=en_US] The setting is Io, which is the closest large moon of Jupiter, despite […]
Who Cares About the Science in Science Fiction?
I do! Let me introduce myself. I’m an astronomer, a professor at the University of Wyoming, and a science fiction writer. I’ve been blogging for a number of years at www.mikebrotherton.com, primarily about the intersection […]
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