Introduction to Ships in the Night

So let me tell you a little about my friend Jack McDevitt, and about the wonderful stories that lay waiting for you in the pages up ahead.

Jack submitted the first story he ever wrote to Twilight Zone Magazine—and sold it. That immediately put him about two hundred rejection slips behind most of his peers.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that you could sell a story a month and qualify for food stamps, so he began writing novels as well. His first effort, The Hercules Text, sold to the most prestigious line of science fiction books in history, the Ace Specials, and won him the Locus Award for Best First Novel.

Are you getting the notion that we’re talking about a very talented fellow here? Well, strangely enough, not all American editors shared that notion, more fools they, and he had a devil of a time selling “Ships in the Night,” the title story of this collection, to any US magazine for the standard $1,500 or so that a novella brings. So his wife Maureen entered it in the UPC contest in Barcelona, where it won the $10,000 first prize. (Jack and I belong to a very small fraternity: we’re the only two US writers ever to win that particular contest.) Of course, once word of the prize got out the novella sold here very quickly, as does most of his work.

Jack has been nominated for the Nebula Award six times—four times with novels, and twice with stories that you’ll encounter in this collection. He is what we in the trade call a Writer’s Writer: he’s always readable, he never misses a deadline, he’s continually looking to expand his considerable skills, he helps newcomers, and after a quarter century in the science fiction field he’s still improving (and as I pointed out, he was pretty damned good to begin with).

He’s also a genuinely modest man. I’ve already praised his writing more in the ten minutes I’ve been working on this introduction than I’ve heard him do in all the time I’ve known him.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this collection. All of Jack’s fans have. His short story production slowed down when he had to make a living with his novels, but the quality never diminished, and now he finally has enough outstanding stories to form the book you hold in your hands.

Let me tell you a little about them.

Leading off is “Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City,” an absolute charmer that’s no longer than it needs to be (another McDevitt trademark). His fellow writers agreed that it was just the right length, and nominated it for a Nebula.

“The Far Shore” is a far future story, and a hard science story, but what it mostly is is a story about old-time radio (another passion I share with Jack.)

The story behind “Good Intentions,” a Nebula finalist, is almost as interesting as the story itself. Jack and Analog editor Stanley Schmidt created a science fiction role-play scenario at an Asimov seminar. Then, when the seminar was over, Jack and Stan decided to take it one step farther and not only write the story but add the supposition: what if the seminar had been manipulated? Who would have done so, and for what purpose?

Sooner or later everyone tries a time travel story, and sooner or later the characters discover that time travel is never quite as smooth and easy as they had anticipated. “Time’s Arrow” is Jack’s addition to the canon.

The “choice” story has come a long way since John Carter of Mars, confronted by two doors, invariably chose the wrong one. Add a century of maturity and sophistication, and the result is “Dead in the Water.”

I loved the movie The Road Warrior, but it had some pretty silly aspects. Would you like to know what really happens in Australia’s post-apocalyptic Outback? Read “Windrider” and wonder no longer.

The only thing I’ll tell you about “Deus Tex” is that Jack selected it for my forthcoming anthology, This is My Funniest.

Jack tells me that “Report From the Rear” was suggested by an experience of H. L. Mencken. I have no problem with that, and neither will you once you read the story.

Time to pause for a moment and point out that while Jack’s science is always accurate, the little thumbnail sketches I’ve given should demonstrate that like all truly fine science fiction writers, his stories are about people, not science.

Science fiction writers have always loved to have their characters explore deserted alien artifacts and discover their secrets. The most famous is probably Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama, and I think the late James White did it even better with All Judgment Fled. Jack’s “Oculus” ranks among the better and more intriguing efforts.

Science fiction writers also love end-of-the-human-race stories, or approach-of-the-end stories, a tradition that stretches from Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (and even earlier) through Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun tetralogy. And with “Last Contact”—a great title (says the author of Second Contact who recently helped vote a retro-Hugo for Murray Leinster’s “First Contact”)—Jack takes his place among the pantheon of writers who have handled it with exceptional skill.

The Christmas story is an annual challenge for science fiction writers. Most of the magazines love to run a science fictional Christmas story in their December issues—but there are just so many science fictional Christmas stories to be told. Sure enough, Jack found a new and memorable one with “Midnight Clear.”

Everybody knows that the very best kind of Analog story is strong on science, and even stronger on posing a serious problem and then solving it in a unique but totally fair way. And while Jack specializes in stories about people, he renews his problem-solving credentials with “Blinker.”

Always expanding his horizons, Jack took a shot at one of the most popular sub-categories of science fiction, the alternate history story, with “The Tomb”—and still managed to make it a compassionate, human story.

Finally there’s his UPC winner, “Ships in the Night,” in which a noncorporeal alien visits a hardware store owner in North Dakota (although it’s much more complex and multi-layered than that.) There’s a bit of Clifford D. Simak’s mood and charm here, but it’s clearly a McDevitt story—probably the one upon which his reputation would rest if he hadn’t already solidified that reputation with a flow of outstanding novels.

Reader, if you haven’t encountered these stories before, I envy you—and when you’re through with them, it’ll be your turn to envy me, because I just bought Jack’s latest novella, “The Big Downtown,” for an anthology I’m editing titled Down These Dark Spaceways. That means I got to read it half a year ahead of everybody else.

Talk about Hog Heaven.