Cryptic: The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

A wondrous collection of stories from a master storyteller. These shorter tales give the reader a taste of what reading McDevitt in the longer form will be like: stories that invoke a sense of wonder, and are sometimes wistfully and achingly evocative of people and things lost to time or yet to be discovered. McDevitt's narrative characters are often almost completely unremarkable - if not for the company they keep and the events they witness. When they do get involved, it feels like we are right there with them, and we feel the emotional, philosophical and, yes, spiritual gut punches that the characters themselves feel.