Showing results by author "Jason Sheehan" in All Categories

Brought to the flying city of Highgate when he was only five years old, orphan Milo Quick has never known another home. Now almost 13, Milo survives one daredevil grift at a time, relying only on his wit, speed, and best friends Jules and Dagda. A massive armada has surrounded Highgate’s crumbling armaments. Because behind locked doors - in opulent parlors and pneumatic forests and a master toymaker’s workshop - the once-great flying city protects a powerful secret, hidden away for centuries.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer - con man, carpetbagger, survivor - has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die.

The pilots of Flyboy, Inc., landed on the alien planet of Iaxo with a mission: In one year, quash an insurrection; exploit the ancient enmities of an indigenous, tribal society; and kill the hell out of one group of natives to facilitate negotiations with the surviving group — all over 110 million acres of mixed terrain.