Book Review: Brotherton's Star Dragon

Welcome to the first of, hopefully, many book reviews. I am generally reading a book at any given time and generally prefer books to movies. I mean, really, as great as the Lord of the Rings movies were, they simply can't compete with the depth of the actual books. Anyway, I mostly read Science Fiction and Christian Non-fiction. I hope to review each book I read as I complete it.

Star Dragon is one of the many books I have purchased from our favorite local used bookstore, the Dusty Bookshelf. The book itself caught my eye from the artwork on the cover by Stephan Martiniere. It depicts a somewhat ephimeral spaceship near the accretion disk of SS Cygni, a "Dwarf Nova Cataclysmic Binary System".

The book itself presents a very interesting universe about six centuries in the future. In this future, earth has colonized several local star systems and the galaxy has been discovered to be teeming with life. Everything from balloon creatures in Jupiter's atmosphere, to leviathans living under the sees of Centauri, to creatures discovered living in the deeps of space.

The earth itself has grown to a technological level that allows humans to mold diamond to form all kinds of hardened tools and armored hulls. In order to make interstellar travel possible, humans have developed technology able to initiate and collapse blackhole/whitehole pairs in order to pull a hull hanging in the middle along at nearly lightspeed. Finally, the earth has developed very detailed biotechnology allowing humans to grow almost anything they can imagine. Extinct animals have been brought back to life. Biological robots called "mobiles" can be grown to handle monotonous or dangerous tasks. Most interestingly, humans have developed a complex series of "bodmods" that allow humans to change their own appearance, skin color, add new features, improve sight and hearing, improve memory and access computer databases mentally, etc. For example, one of the characters starts in the story with purple skin and ear wings (which he uses in a freefall environment to help him maneuver). We see children who have toys as biological attachments, such as tethered frisbees. One character actually grows himself into a metal giant at one point.

The general plot is that the crew of the Karamojo have been sent by one of the great biotech corporations to look into a new discovery made by a probe sent in the twenty-second century to SS Cygni. The author has assumed that SS Cygni is about 250 lightyears away, so the crew takes on a long term roundtrip that will take them about 3 years in total to make, but will result in about 500 years passing on earth in the meantime. The reason for the trip is that a unique form of life was discovered in the accretion disk of SS Cygni, the star dragon. Their goal is to capture a star dragon and bring it back for study.

The reason for all the effort for this thing is that the dragons live in the ultrahot plasma of the accretion disk and this suggest a very unusual ecosystem. Also, it smacks of a higher intelligence having created these creatures, which would be something that humans have yet to encounter—an intelligence equivalent or better to their own in the universe.

The book itself is mostly bound up in the mechanics of the relationships between the five crew members and the ship's brain, which has been imprinted with the human personality of Earnest Hemingway. Most of the book is preoccupied with relationships and the internal feelings of the characters. It gets to be a bit more like soap opera rather than space opera during a few points.

Spoiler: (Skip this paragraph if you want to read the book.) One major objection I have with the book, is Brotherton's failure to take his writing seriously near the end. The star ship the crew travel upon is a marvel and is internally filled with its own complete eco-system. This eco-system is taxed by what transpires in SS Cygni, but is recovering when a final catastrophy disables the ship. Oddly, the multikilometer long ship has reclaimed all of it's biological mobiles in order to conserve spare biomass. It doesn't grow even a single spare (which appears to be possible granted the actions of one of the crew). This would have been obviously prudent given the dangerous actions they were considering. In any case, the situation is such that one crew member must die in order to save the ship. Well, this character climbs out, performs the repair to save the crew. Then, this character doesn't die. It would have, in my opinion, been the ultimate injustice to an immortal on the cusp of success and made the book much more satisfactory. The book is still a relatively decent piece of literature, but this one spot could have made it much better.

I've also noticed a new vein of thought in recent science fiction that breaks from the mold present in most older science fiction. Science fiction has traditionally been a combination of dreaming and stretching out towards the future that technology has to offer and a warning that technology is a menace to humanity. The newer mold tends towards the former but general ignores the latter. Star Dragon is definitely an example of this new vein.

In this universe, humans have caused the extinction of many animals that are still around in the present. Such animals as lions, elephants, whales, etc. However, it's okay because humans are able to unlock the powers of creation and able to create the original animals again. Of course, they can even create them better now, give them human intelligence if they like, whatever. In this future, life is real cheap. Even human life is treated pretty cheaply by the author. Humans are the benevolent dictators of all life they encounter. Now, in a way, it may be that Brotherton is merely trying to present a world that is bold in this way to demonstrate the danger with subtlety, but it's not clear.

Another common vein is the destruction of most modern religions. This is a common factor in all science fiction, old or new. Older science fiction usually tried to avoid the topic altogether. New science fiction either spiritualizes through science or alters modern religions to fit the changes that have happened in the universe. Brotherton's universe essentially eliminates Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism as all of these fail when humanity has essentially made itself physically "immortal." He assumes that Buddhism and Judaism would survive because Buddhism jives with this universe and Judaism is just too stubborn to die.

As with many science fiction authors, Brotherton lives in a delusion of secular humanism: men can better themselves. This philosophy was badly beaten down by the French Revolution and our two World Wars, but this false optimism still lives on in the hearts of many. This is a fatal failure to understand depravity: humankind is doomed to destroy itself, if left up to its own devices. In the world of Star Dragon, people can satisfy themselves in every way possible, yet this won't satisfy any human. Self-satisfaction leads to a diminishing return. You must reach for higher and higher heights of stimulation. Ultimately, you'll either kill yourself pursuing such stimulus or you will fall into apathy, despair, and die of hopelessness. Humans are built with a yearning for purpose. Stripping humanity of religion and expecting it to survive at all is a pretty vain hope.

All in all, I'd give this book a rating of 6 of 10. The book was entertaining and was unique. However, Brotherton's story lacks believability in its consistency near the end. Brotherton has also failed to capture the truth of human depravity. That strike may seem unfair to those who don't understand depravity, but it is the most important principle of Christianity and I will not relinquish it.