Outpost

by Scott Mackay

Overview

Award-winning author Scott Mackay's "fast-paced action adventure" depicts the story of a struggle for liberty against unknown captors—and a fight for survival in an unknown world… (The Washington Post).
Young Felicitas has woken in a prison cell—unable to remember how she got there.
She doesn't know where the prison is—except that it is most definitely not on Earth. And she has no idea why all the other prisoners walk around in a daze. In dreams, she is forced to relive crimes she cannot remember committing.
Felicitas soon notices that the mechanized sentries surveilling the inmates are breaking down. The automated system is collapsing, putting everybody at risk. Along with some others who have awakened out of their daze, Felicitas sees a chance to escape.
Yet the harsh penal world she and her fellow fugitives escape to is as fraught with danger as the now perilously malfunctioning prison. And it turns out there is much more at stake than just a prison break. As those stakes become clear, Felicitas must choose between freedom, imprisonment, the human race, and history itself.
Driven by "an intriguing puzzle scenario and tense prison action," this thrilling novel of sci-fi suspense promises to keep readers guessing and gasping until the final truth is revealed (Kirkus).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625673497
Publisher:	JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Publication date:	01/23/2019
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	754 KB

About the Author

Scott Mackay is the award-winning author of twelve novels and over forty short stories. His short story "Last Inning" won the 1998 Arthur Ellis Award for best short mystery fiction. Another story, "Reasons Unknown," won the Okanagan Award for best Literary Short Fiction. His first Barry Gilbert Mystery, Cold Comfort, was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery novel, and his science-fiction novel The Meek was a finalist for the prestigious Astounding Award for Best SF Novel of 2001. He has been interviewed in print, Web, TV, and radio media. His novels have been published in six languages.

Cold Comfort, was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery novel, and his science-fiction novel The Meek was a finalist for the prestigious Astounding Award for Best SF Novel of 2001. He has been interviewed in print, Web, TV, and radio media. His novels have been published in six languages.

Editorial Reviews

First science-fiction novel from the Canadian author of A Friend in Barcelona (not reviewed). On an unnamed planet with two red suns, a huge ancient prison run by robots is slowly breaking down. The inmates are kept in a sleepwalking, amnesiac state by means of "dreamphones" and drugs. But now, as systems fail, prisoners emerge from the haze; young Felicitas learns that Piero and Rosario, awake and aware, have been investigating the dead robot guards and the prison's automatic defenses for a way to escape. Felicitas still experiences waking dreams in which an alien "uomolupo" named Lungo Muso is trying to tell her something important. Not all the prisoners wake up; some remain "dead," controlled by beetle-like constructs that burrow into their skulls. Soon, the prison's power goes off, the dead report that troops are on the way, and Felicitas, remembering how to read the alien glyphs, discovers she has unique abilities to operate alien equipment; Lungo Muso tells her about the terrifying but crucial "outpost." The prisoners break out, though only Felicitas and Piero survive to join the "popolo" outside. Still to come: more adventures and a showdown with the dead and the aliens. An intriguing puzzle scenario and tense prison action subsiding into glutinously overelaborate, unconvincing explanations: worth trying, but don't expect to escape unscathed.

Kirkus Reviews