A science-fair mishap, a secret janitor, and a shapeshifting starship named Whiskers — Go-Fast UFO follows thirteen-year-old Ryan and his friends on a race through time, from the end of the Ice Age to a hidden Martian beacon, with only five Earth minutes to save civilization at every stop.
The Real “Go Fast” Video the Title Comes From
The title is a nod to a real, well-documented case. In January 2015, Navy pilots flying off the USS Theodore Roosevelt recorded infrared footage of a small object skimming low over the ocean, moving fast enough that the crew can be heard reacting in real time on the audio. The video leaked publicly in 2017 and was officially confirmed as genuine by the Department of Defense in 2020 — part of the same batch of footage that helped kick off the modern era of serious, on-the-record UAP discussion.
The honest twist: later analysis by the Pentagon and NASA suggests the object wasn’t actually moving as fast as it looks. The apparent speed is most likely a parallax illusion — the jet’s own camera sweeping past a much more distant, much slower-moving object (something more like 20 to 40 mph) creates the visual impression of extreme speed, similar to how a nearby road sign seems to fly past a car window while the horizon stays still. It’s one of the more interesting real cases specifically because the mystery and the likely explanation are both genuinely fascinating — not a dismissal so much as a lesson in how tricky it is to judge speed and distance from a moving camera.
From a Real Case to a Kids’ Adventure
That real case is the jumping-off point, not the plot — Go-Fast UFO takes the name and the spirit of “something moving impossibly fast that turns out to be more complicated than it looks” and builds an entirely fictional, kid-scale adventure around it. Ryan and his friends end up racing through time in a shapeshifting starship, not investigating Navy footage — it’s a middle-grade adventure book first, with just enough real science and just enough of a nod to an actual unexplained case to make the impossible feel almost real.
Who This Book Is For
Middle-grade readers, roughly ages 9 to 13, who like adventure, humor, and science-adjacent mysteries. Parents looking for a book that treats young readers as smart enough to handle a real unsolved case sitting alongside the fiction, not just talking animals and slapstick. It’s not aimed at readers wanting hard sci-fi accuracy — it’s an adventure story first, with just enough of a real hook to make the impossible feel a little more possible.
What’s In the Book
Book 1 of the Phase Shift Chronicles, written for young readers who want adventure, humor, and a real sense that the science underneath it is at least trying to make sense — not a lecture, a genuinely fun ride with a smart hook underneath it.
Ryan doesn’t do this alone — his crew is Mia, the fearless pilot; Devon, the gadget-whiz; and Elana, who doodles her way through every crisis. Three stops this book: rescuing frozen tribes at the end of the Ice Age from mysterious warmth-beam domes, catching lightning mid-air just outside Colorado Springs to seal a rift threatening modern life, and digging through rust-red Martian deserts for a beacon that’s been waiting to be found since before humans existed. Five Earth minutes, every time, or the mission’s lost.
42 pages. Reading age 10-18. Published August 2025.
Free to read with Kindle Unlimited, or available to buy outright — check current pricing on Amazon.