Publisher's book page: Outbound (ISFiC Press)
Author's book page: Outbound by Jack McDevitt

McDevitt's work is what the Golden Age Renaissance is all about. It's got deep space settings and perilous situations, but its peopled by three dimensional characters and more monsters from the id, than from the stars...though as he notes, "A monster, one must concede, can still provide a fair amount of good times for everyone." Even when he does throw us a bug-eyed bone though, as in "In The Tower" he sets it within a bigger context. I'm a fan of McDevitt's novels, which are largely about my favorite SF fantasy as well, the survey mission. Unlike golden age explorers, who encounter cunning aliens at every turn, Jack's astronauts live in a Fermi Paradox universe where all we encounter is traces of them, often millennia old traces. Which lends a certain Indiana Jones element to the proceedings on occasion, and who could complain about that?

(Source: ISFiC Press)