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Jack McDevitt is an American science fiction author whose novels frequently deal with attempts to make contact with alien races, and with archaeology or xenoarchaeology. His two main series are the Alex Benedict series and the Priscilla Hutchins series.

McDevitt's first published story was "The Emerson Effect" in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981. Five years later, he published his first novel, The Hercules Text, about the discovery of an intelligently conceived signal whose repercussions threaten human civilization. This novel set the tone for many of McDevitt's following novels, which focused on making first contact. Frequently this theme is mixed with both trepidation before the unknown and a sense of wonder at the universe.

With The Engines of God , McDevitt introduced the idea of a universe that was once teeming with intelligent life, but contains only their abandoned artifacts by the time humans arrive on the scene. Although it was initially written as a standalone novel, the main character of The Engines of God, pilot Priscilla Hutchins, has since appeared in seven more books, Deepsix , Chindi , Omega , Odyssey , Cauldron , StarHawk , and The Long Sunset . The mystery surrounding the destructive "Omega Clouds" is left unexplored 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." The SF Site's Steven H Silver has written about this:



McDevitt has a tendency to give the impression that his novels will go in one direction and then take them in a different direction. Or possibly his background is so well thought out, that throw away lines, or subplots, or minor characters, have enough information behind them to make the reader want to see their story as much as the main plot of the book. While slightly annoying, this is, I've decided, a strength of McDevitt's writing since it shows the depth of his created worlds.

The novel Seeker won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novel, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has been nominated for the Nebula Award sixteen times; Seeker is his only win. Wikipedia  

✵ 14. duben 1935
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Jack McDevitt: 125   citátů 3   lajky

Jack McDevitt: Citáty anglicky

“Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 106)

“Technological civilizations don’t last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 27 (pp. 248-249)

“Mac continued to write scathing commentary on assorted hypocrisies in high places and low, without which hypocrisies, he cheerfully conceded, civilized life would be impossible.”

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Jack McDevitt

Epilogue (p. 506)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001)

“A child’s mind is open to learn, and it is a cruel and heartless thing to fill it with myth disguised as history, to impose upon it a bogus lifelong perspective, and close it up again, leaving it proof against common sense and all argument. Surely, if there is a hell, people who do this are the ones who will get their tickets punched.
A judgment by the God who devised the quantum system should be considerably different from the one the Reverend Koestler envisions. I gave you a sky full of stars, and you never raised your eyes. I gave you a brain, and you never used it.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 113)

“So we have progressed to the point where we can move politicians around faster than light. I'm not sure I see the advantage.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

“He took particular delight in neutralizing those who desperately needed to be neutralized, those overblown, self-important, arrogant half-wits who were always running about dictating behavior, morals, and theology to everyone else. And he never looked back.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 11 (p. 180)

“He’d grown a mustache since Randall had last seen him. It was hard to understand why: He looked devious enough without it.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha The Hercules Text

Zdroj: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 224)

“The problem is that too often the only people who can act don’t want change. Power doesn’t so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 25 (p. 356)

“And because she so desperately wanted it to be true, she knew she could not manage an objective judgment.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha Time Travelers Never Die

Zdroj: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 19 (p. 195)

“Few of the virtues are really useful. Fidelity leads to lost opportunity, truth-telling to injured feelings, charity to additional solicitations. The least productive, and possibly the most overrated, is faith. The faithful deny reason, close their minds to the evidence of their senses, and remain unfailingly optimistic in the face of disaster. They inevitably get just what they deserve.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 27 (p. 375)

“New worlds are always hard on old ideas.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha Ancient Shores

Zdroj: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 33 (p. 367)

“Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 38)

“Truth is slippery, not because it is difficult to grasp, but because we prefer our preconceptions, our beliefs, our myths.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 38 (p. 355)

“Talking with most people usually involves a search for truth. Talking with congressmen is strictly special effects.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 10 (p. 85)

“The beginning of wisdom is to admit to being inept. We’re all a bit slow. We have our moments, but in the end, we have to resort to bumbling through. It is what makes conviction so egregious.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 40 (p. 376)

“Lasker mouthed, “Trust him,” and Max sighed. Trust a lawyer? It flew in the face of his most cherished principles.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha Ancient Shores

Zdroj: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 8 (p. 78)

““I'm not optimistic,” he said. “The issue clearly flies in the face of the First Amendment. People have a right to tell kids whatever they want about religion.”
“Do they have a right to push human sacrifice?”
“Of course not, Mac. But this isn’t human sacrifice. It’s just a church school.”
“I'm not sure the effect isn’t similar.””

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 34 (p. 314)

“MacAllister commented recently that Plato was right, that democracy is mob rule, that the voters can be counted on consistently to find the candidate with the fewest scruples and put him in office.”

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Jack McDevitt

Epilogue (p. 423)
Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006)

“Her experience had taught her that people who insisted on having others recognize their outstanding qualities usually didn’t have any.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 369)

“There’d been studies over the years supporting the proposition that groups composed exclusively of women usually made intelligent decisions, that exclusively male groups did a bit less well, and that mixed groups did most poorly of all, by a substantial margin. It appeared that, when women were present, testosterone got the upper hand and men took greater risks than they might otherwise. Correspondingly, women in the mixed group tended to revert to roles, becoming more passive, and going along with whatever misjudgment the males might perpetrate.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 24 (p. 335)

“It’s all PR,” said Hutchins. “If we ever produced a person who was unrelentingly honest, everybody would want him dead.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 13 (p. 127)

“Never confuse perfection with production. People who don’t make mistakes aren’t doing anything.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha Ancient Shores

Zdroj: Ancient Shores (1996), Chapter 6 (p. 55)

“Prudence, and experience, suggested she expect the worst.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Omega (2003), Chapter 3 (p. 46)

“Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there’s a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don’t like it very much.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 33 (p. 296)

“Don't assume that a species is intelligent because it produces intelligent individuals.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha Infinity Beach

Infinity Beach (2000)

“Organized mayhem,” Nick commented, “seems to be the chief preoccupation of intelligent species everywhere.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Chindi (2002), Chapter 31 (p. 432)

“The idiots always rose to the top and made policy.
It explained a lot of things.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 22 (p. 200)

“Faith has its price. When misfortune strikes the true believer, he assumes he has done something to deserve punishment, but isn’t quite certain what. The realist, recognizing that he lives in a Darwinian universe, is simply grateful to have made it to another sunset.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 10 (p. 165)

“Throughout our long and sorry history it has been men who supposed themselves to be exemplars of integrity who have done all the damage. Every crusade, whether for decent literary standards or to cover women’s bodies or to free the holy land, had been launched, endorsed, and enthusiastically perpetrated by men of character.”

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Jack McDevitt

Zdroj: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 6 (p. 94)

“It had occurred to Rimford, at about the time he approached fifty, that the chief drawback in contemplating the enormous gulfs of time and space that constitute the bricks and mortar of the cosmologist is that one acquires a dismaying perception of the handful of years allotted a human being.”

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Jack McDevitt kniha The Hercules Text

Zdroj: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 37)

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