Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt (born April 14, 1935) is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. Most of his books concern either galactic relic hunters Alex Benedict and Chase Kolpath or superluminal space pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins. McDevitt has received numerous nominations for Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell awards. Seeker won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

McDevitt's first story published was "The Emerson Effect" in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981.

Biography McDevitt attended La Salle University, where a short story of his won the annual Freshman Short Story Contest and was published in the school's literary magazine, Four Quarters. As McDevitt explained in an interview:

McDevitt received a master's degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971.

Themes McDevitt has several story series, including one with the protagonist Alex Benedict. Another is his Academy series, including the novel The Engines of God (1994), which introduces the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive. The main character of The Engines of God, pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in seven more books, Deepsix (2001), Chindi (2002), Omega (2003), Odyssey (2006), Cauldron (2007), StarHawk (2013), and The Long Sunset (2018). The mystery concerning the destructive "Omega Clouds" (introduced in The Engines of God) is unresolved until Omega.

McDevitt's novels frequently raise questions which he does not attempt to answer. He prefers to leave ambiguities to puzzle and intrigue his readers: "Some things are best left to the reader's very able imagination."