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About
Nothing at the Superior Thinking and Advanced Research Academy is as it seems - and Amanda Forsythe, its newest, brightest student, is about to discover why.
Amanda Forsythe, an independent-minded eleven-year-old with a stratospheric intellect, enters her school's science fair with a project on interstellar travel. Despite its brilliance, the project loses and Amanda is humiliated - that is, until she is approached by two scientists from the STAR Academy. The Academy is an elite boarding school with a simple but ambitious mandate: to cultivate the greatest scientists of tomorrow. They offer Amanda a full scholarship.
After taking up residence at the remote, fortress-like Academy, Amanda settles into an exciting life of new friends and supportive teachers, and though everything seems too good to be true, Amanda makes a disturbing discovery. Against almost impossible odds, Amanda must find a way to escape the school and alert the world to what is really going on behinds its walls. Edward Kay is an award-winning Toronto-based writer with an eclectic background in live-action and animated television comedy and journalism. He was a writer and producer on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes for four seasons. He was also producer and head writer of The Itch, a darkly humorous Canadian cult TV classic, as well as a contributing writer to Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans. He is the co-creator of the award-winning kids' animated comedy series Olliver's Adventures. Chapter 1
Amanda Forsythe watched with a mixture of nervousness and excitement as the judges of the Downview Public School science fair examined her display. She had spent every evening of the past month putting together her exhibit. It had been exhausting, but worth it, she hoped. She knew that photonsail space travel was a difficult concept to convey to anyone who didn't have a sound knowledge of interstellar flight and quantum physics. Still, she believed that her explanation was simple enough that even the judges— Mr. Murkly, the principal, and Mrs. Wheedlbum, her grade-six science teacher— could understand. And this was the moment of truth. Staff, pupils and parents packed the school gym, within which was an array of displays from the senior students, all competing to win the coveted annual science fair trophy. Amanda tried to read the expressions on the faces of Principal Murkly and Mrs. Wheedlbum— every furrowed brow, every squint, every head scratch— wondering if they were favourably impressed.
Finally, Principal Murkly spoke: "Laser-powered interstellar travel. How . . . creative."
He looked at Amanda's diagram showing chains of planetary-based laser stations transmitting power beams out to a spacecraft equipped with photon sails. Principal Murkly cocked his head like a dog that was confused at hearing a human voice coming from someplace unexpected, like a refrigerator or a wastebasket.
"I'd be nervous travelling in a spaceship that people were firing laser beams at!" exclaimed Mrs. Wheedlbum.
"Yes," added Principal Murkly. "You'd want to make sure that whoever was shooting the laser had good aim! Otherwise, kablooey!"
Amanda decided that she'd better help them out. "Actually, they're not firing lasers at it, but to it, as a power source. NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts has done work on this already. So has the Russian Space Agency. With the research being undertaken, it's possible that within two or three decades, photon-powered interstellar travel will—"
"Strange, I don't remember reading about it in our new science textbooks," interrupted Mrs. Wheedlbum, as though she hadn't heard Amanda speaking at all.
"Well," said Amanda politely, "that's because our school textbooks deal with fairly basic science. Photon-sail interstellar travel is really cutting-edge."
Amanda Forsythe, an independent-minded eleven-year-old with a stratospheric intellect, enters her school's science fair with a project on interstellar travel. Despite its brilliance, the project loses and Amanda is humiliated - that is, until she is approached by two scientists from the STAR Academy. The Academy is an elite boarding school with a simple but ambitious mandate: to cultivate the greatest scientists of tomorrow. They offer Amanda a full scholarship.
After taking up residence at the remote, fortress-like Academy, Amanda settles into an exciting life of new friends and supportive teachers, and though everything seems too good to be true, Amanda makes a disturbing discovery. Against almost impossible odds, Amanda must find a way to escape the school and alert the world to what is really going on behinds its walls. Edward Kay is an award-winning Toronto-based writer with an eclectic background in live-action and animated television comedy and journalism. He was a writer and producer on CBC's This Hour Has 22 Minutes for four seasons. He was also producer and head writer of The Itch, a darkly humorous Canadian cult TV classic, as well as a contributing writer to Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans. He is the co-creator of the award-winning kids' animated comedy series Olliver's Adventures. Chapter 1
Amanda Forsythe watched with a mixture of nervousness and excitement as the judges of the Downview Public School science fair examined her display. She had spent every evening of the past month putting together her exhibit. It had been exhausting, but worth it, she hoped. She knew that photonsail space travel was a difficult concept to convey to anyone who didn't have a sound knowledge of interstellar flight and quantum physics. Still, she believed that her explanation was simple enough that even the judges— Mr. Murkly, the principal, and Mrs. Wheedlbum, her grade-six science teacher— could understand. And this was the moment of truth. Staff, pupils and parents packed the school gym, within which was an array of displays from the senior students, all competing to win the coveted annual science fair trophy. Amanda tried to read the expressions on the faces of Principal Murkly and Mrs. Wheedlbum— every furrowed brow, every squint, every head scratch— wondering if they were favourably impressed.
Finally, Principal Murkly spoke: "Laser-powered interstellar travel. How . . . creative."
He looked at Amanda's diagram showing chains of planetary-based laser stations transmitting power beams out to a spacecraft equipped with photon sails. Principal Murkly cocked his head like a dog that was confused at hearing a human voice coming from someplace unexpected, like a refrigerator or a wastebasket.
"I'd be nervous travelling in a spaceship that people were firing laser beams at!" exclaimed Mrs. Wheedlbum.
"Yes," added Principal Murkly. "You'd want to make sure that whoever was shooting the laser had good aim! Otherwise, kablooey!"
Amanda decided that she'd better help them out. "Actually, they're not firing lasers at it, but to it, as a power source. NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts has done work on this already. So has the Russian Space Agency. With the research being undertaken, it's possible that within two or three decades, photon-powered interstellar travel will—"
"Strange, I don't remember reading about it in our new science textbooks," interrupted Mrs. Wheedlbum, as though she hadn't heard Amanda speaking at all.
"Well," said Amanda politely, "that's because our school textbooks deal with fairly basic science. Photon-sail interstellar travel is really cutting-edge."
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- SeriesStar Academy #1