TODD HOSEA
AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR & USAF VETERAN
BEHIND THE REAPER - LOCATIONS
GROOM LAKE, NEVADA
Few places on Earth are surrounded by as much mystery as Groom Lake, Nevada. Better known as Area 51, this remote installation in the Nevada desert has been associated with secret aircraft, cutting-edge technology, UFOs, and government conspiracies for decades. It also plays an important role in The Reaper Series.
In Steal the Reaper, Groom Lake becomes home to some of America's most closely guarded secrets—and eventually to a few secrets that aren't from America at all.
THE REAL AREA 51
Groom Lake is a dry lakebed located within the vast military ranges of southern Nevada. Its isolation and restricted airspace made it an ideal location for testing aircraft the United States didn't want anyone else to know existed. And unlike many of the stories surrounding Area 51, that part isn't a conspiracy theory.
Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA and U.S. Air Force used Groom Lake to test some of America's most advanced reconnaissance aircraft. The legendary U-2 spy plane was tested there, with its first official test flight taking place in August 1955. The CIA's even faster A-12 OXCART—the predecessor to the SR-71 Blackbird—followed in the 1960s.
The installation accumulated several names over the years, including Watertown, Paradise Ranch, the Ranch, Dreamland, Groom Lake, and, of course, Area 51. The CIA now openly acknowledges the site's historical role in developing and testing highly classified aircraft.
That history made Groom Lake a natural choice when I needed a home for the government's most sensitive technology in The Reaper Series.
ENTER AREA S4
Then there's Area S4. If Area 51 occupies the shadowy intersection between documented history and legend, S4 ventures much farther into the latter.
The name became famous through Bob Lazar, who claimed in 1989 that he had worked at a secret installation near Papoose Lake, south of Groom Lake. According to Lazar, the facility was used to study and reverse-engineer extraterrestrial spacecraft. His claims helped cement Area 51's connection with UFOs in popular culture, but no publicly available government documentation has verified the S4 facility he described or his claims of working on extraterrestrial technology there. For a science-fiction writer, however, a supposedly secret facility hidden near one of the most secretive military installations in America is almost impossible to resist.
In The Reaper Series, Area S4 is very real. Hidden beneath the Nevada desert, S4 becomes the center of America's efforts to understand technology that is literally not of this world. It is where Dr. Rose Landry conducts her research and where Colonel Marlana Nunez oversees an operation whose existence must remain hidden from nearly everyone outside its walls. As the series unfolds, Groom Lake and S4 become increasingly important to Ava Tan, Neil Garrett, Kypa, and the growing relationship between Earth and Aiwa.
The setting also gave me an opportunity to blend fact with fiction. Groom Lake's genuine history of secret aircraft development provides the foundation. The legends surrounding Area 51 and S4 provide the mystery. The Reaper Series takes things from there. After all, if the United States really did encounter technology from another world, where else would they put it?