Author Archives: Ernest Lilley

FKA USA: A Novel by Reed King

Some stories you hope will never come true. Some stories you wish would never end. FKA USA is both.

FKA USA
by Reed King

FKA USA is a wild postapocalyptic road trip across a fractured USA that channels a mashup of The Wizard of Oz and Candide with commentary from Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide on the side. In some ways, this is a future familiar to us from the cyberpunk of the 80s, but with the futures foretold in those stories getting closer every day, Reed King has taken a fresh look at now and then and come up with an unforgettable tale. I only wish we could send it back in time to blow their minds.

Truckee Wallace is a nobody working in a factory in a corporate city-state, pressing a button all day long and in debt to the company store. Thing is, he’s okay with that. He’s 16, got a job, two and a half friends, one being an android (they only count for 48.5%), and maybe he’ll even get to kiss a girl someday. He doesn’t count on being a hero, and that messes everything up for him when he finds himself running towards the man on the catwalk who looks very much like he’s going to toss a goat into a vat of chemicals that will result in a very big bang.

Well, at least he tried. Continue reading →

 Velocity Weapon (The Protectorate Book 1) Megan E. O’Keefe Orbit little, brown June 11, 2019 Yes

Speed kills. Especially when it’s designed as a weapon.

Velocity Weapon (The Protectorate Book 1) by Megan E. O’Keefe – Orbit / little, brown June 11, 2019

What if you woke up two hundred and thirty years from now aboard a starship belonging to your enemy and missing oh say, half your leg, everyone you ever knew, and oh yes…your planet. Ask Sandra Greeve, formerly gunship captain in a war between her world Ada Prime and one closer to they system sun Icaria. Sure, you’d despair, but where there’s life there’s hope, and besides, she’s got a plucky AI to help her out. Things could be worse.

And they will be. Continue reading →

MOSF Escape Velocity 2019 – Dominique Tipper GoH

Escape Velocity 2019 featured Dominique Tipper of the Expanse as GoH and a large scale replica of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

MOSF Escape Velocity 2019
Escape Velocity 2019, May 24 – 26
Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center
201 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, MD 20745

While Amazing Stories editor Steve Davidson was holding down a booth at Balticon, the Capital Region’s largest sci-fi convention, I was an hour away at the Museum of Science Fiction’s annual convention: Escape Velocity 2019.

Escape Velocity is a different sort of con than anything else in sci-fi. Visually it looks like a media con, with lots of large-scale movie props and cosplayers, but behind the closed panel doors, there’s a serious attempt to create a fusion of pop-sci-fi culture, accessible science, resources for educators, and even a few policy wonks talking about the future of space conflict.

Escape Velocity’s theme is “From Imagination to Reality” and nothing better fulfilled that promise than the massive ST-TMP Enterprise replica commissioned and donated to the museum by Kurt Kuhn and built by master modeler Dan Grumeretz. Seriously, nothing quite prepares you for the stunning presence this detail-perfect model crates, especially when it goes through the entire startup sequence on the hour. Strong men wept. I kid you not.

Continue reading →