Interviews With The Fantastic
InterGalactic Interview With Jack McDevitt
by Jamie Todd Rubin
Jack McDevitt is a Philadelphia native. He has been, among other things, a naval officer, an
English teacher, a customs officer, a taxi driver, and a management trainer for the US Customs
Service.
He started writing novels in 1985 when Terry Carr invited him to participate in the celebrated
Ace Specials series. His contribution was The Hercules Text, which won the Philip K. Dick
Special Award. McDevitt has produced seventeen additional novels since then, ten of which
have qualified for the final Nebula ballot. Seeker won the award in 2007. In 2004, Omega
received the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel.
His most recent books are Firebird and Echo, both from Ace, and Going Interstellar, a Baen
anthology on which he served, with NASA manager Les Johnson, as co-editor. The Cassandra
Project, a collaboration with Mike Resnick, will be out in November. McDevitt claims it will
reveal the truth behind the Watergate break-in.
His other interests include chess, classical history, the sciences, and baseball.
He is married to the former Maureen McAdams, and resides in Brunswick, Georgia, where,
assisted by the requisite German Shepherd and four cats, he keeps a weather eye on hurricanes.
