Outbound

by Jack McDevitt, Barry N. Malzberg (Contributor), Michael Shara (Contributor)

A collection of Jack McDevitt stories and novellas, with essays & contributions by other authors.

Ways Of Considering An Absent Introduction • (2006) • essay by Barry N. Malzberg
The Candidate • (2006) • short fiction
Henry James, This One's for You • (2005) • short story
Date with Destiny • (1991) • novelette
Windows • (2004) • short story
Combinations • (1986) • short fiction
Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City • (2001) • short story
The Mission • (2004) • short story
Melville on Iapetus • (1983) • short story
The Far Shore • (1982) • short story
In the Tower • (1987) • novelette
Whistle • (1989) • short story
Valkyrie • (1991) • short story
Act of God • (2004) • short story
Ignition • (2005) • short story
Lighthouse • (2006) • short story with Michael Shara
Collaboration For "Lighthouse", With Michael Shara • (2006) • essay with Michael Shara
The Big Downtown • (2005) • novella
Where Do You Get Those Crazy Ideas? • (1999) • essay
Infinity Beach • essay
Why We Should All Be Reading Science Fiction • essay
Blundering Through • essay
A Golden Dozen: Twelve Stories To Demonstrate to Reluctant Seniors What They're Missing • (2000) • essay
Science Fiction: An Eye on Tomorrow • (2003) • essay
Interview, conducted by Thomas Harbach for PHANTASTISCH 2004 • (2005) • interview of • interview with Thomas Harbach
Celebrating Jack McDevitt • (2003) • essay by Michael Bishop
Bibliography • essay by uncredited

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction

341 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2006

About the author

Jack McDevitt is a former English teacher, naval officer, Philadelphia taxi driver, customs officer and motivational trainer. His work has been on the final ballot for the Nebula Awards for 12 of the past 13 years. His first novel, The Hercules Text, was published in the celebrated Ace Specials series and won the Philip K. Dick Special Award. In 1991, McDevitt won the first $10,000 UPC International Prize for his novella, "Ships in the Night." The Engines of God was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and his novella, "Time Travelers Never Die," was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.

McDevitt lives in Georgia with his wife, Maureen, where he plays chess, reads mysteries and eats lunch regularly with his cronies.

Reviews

[Ƶ§œš¹ · Rating 4 out of 5]

McDevitt's stories are fun and engaging. He's at his best when he gives himself space to really tell a story, which is why the two novellas ("The big downtown" and "In the tower" are the best.

Individual story ratings:
"The Candidate" 2/5
An AI George Washington runs for office. The whole thing seemed kind of implausible.
"Henry James, This One's For You" 2/5
A guy creates an AI that writes really well. An editor thinks this is so horrible that he kills the guy and destroys the computer before anyone finds out a certain book was written by a computer.
"Date with Destiny" 3/5
A guy who looks like a certain dictator of a small Islamic island (rogue?) nation is kidnapped by said dictator for nefarious purposes and he is able to turn it into a sort of peaceful protest that makes the dictator look good and the Americans look bad with no loss of life on either side. It was a nice attempt at having a peaceful solution when a shooting one was more obvious, but the conclusion the character draws seemed spurious.
"Windows" 2/5
Just like in real life, robotic missions are preferred over manned ones This is a museum where only 33 manned missions have occurred and they do robotic ones instead. A 13 year old girl really wants to go. Not much of a story, really.
"Combinations" 2/5
Person tries to make accurate AI portrayals of historical figures. He makes a chess player and actually does a good job.
"Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City" 1/5
An unreliable narrator delivers alcohol to a lab of scientists who have just discovered via SETI an extraterrestrial intelligence Narrator doesn't get it. I don't think this is the right story to tell with an unreliable narrator.
"The Mission" 2/5
A disease on Earth makes people desperate and so this southern town scraps something vital for some astronauts to return from Mars. It was kind of hard to understand what's going on .
"Melville on Iapetus" 4/5
A statue was found on Iapetus that depicts an alien form. A team goes and takes pictures of it. It was actually pretty good writing.
"The Far Shore" 2/5
Character gets marooned on a habitable planet, but is able to keep himself fed and entertained with signals from Earth from two centuries prior, which allows him to follow the events of WWII. The last line was bad.
"In the Tower" 4/5
A sort of tale of discovery about why an artist committed suicide. The pacing was nice and the worldbuilding (including the xeno-archaeology) was really well-done except the very last chapter, cheapened it partly because it was telly and partly because, in telling, makes it sound really silly and pigeonholes the story.
"Whistle" 1/5
An astronomer finds a signal from M-82, but it's just music. Somehow the narrator is able to surmise that whatever is going on in this galaxy, "the sky is on fire." by How does he know that? Just because the galaxy has a greater degree of astronomical activity (tenfold increase in star formation)? Kind of silly.
"Valkyrie" 1/5
In the Vietnam war, a character discovers mystical beings who take soldiers who die heroically. Not scifi, so not my thing. Also not much character development.
"Act of God" 3/5
Some guys create a pocket universe and try to make changes. Since it moves at a faster rate it's hard to do things on small a small scale. They create eleven commandments (the Decalogue plus something about the environment) but they are killed by acts of God (lightning, earthquakes, etc). The suggestion is that maybe we're in a pocket universe.
"Ignition" 2/5
In a future where a theocratic elite governs ideas and where a flood has occurred, some subways are being drilled. They find a statue of Jefferson that challenges the orthodoxy that foments a rebellion that we never see. The story started out okay but it ended kind of weak.
"Lighthouse" and Michael Shara 3/5
Astronomers find a way to detect all brown dwarfs but they find 2000 "chimeras" that have too much deuterium, which means they’re artificial. The idea is that the civilization puts them by black holes so that space faring civilizations can detect and avoid the black holes (the solar wind from the chimera superheats when it approaches the black holes, which radiates x-rays). The detection method for the brown dwarfs is sketchy since it relies on wavelengths and not wavelength patterns (all sorts of redshifting, blueshifting, and wavelength blocking can affect spectra).
"The Big Downtown" 4/5
In a future where there's been some interstellar exploration and xenoarchaology, a private detective is hired to figure out why a guy's fiancée (along with an artist she modeled for) has disappeared. It turns out that that the artist was hired to duplicate an alien painting for an archeologist and another guy so that they could have the real version and the museum could have a fake one.