Standard Candles is a compilation of short stories

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by American science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt

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....

. The sixteen stories in the anthology were originally published in various magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s from 1982 to 1996. The introduction

Foreword

A foreword is a piece of writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells...

 is provided by Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield

Charles Sheffield , was an English-born mathematician, physicist and science fiction author. He had been a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society....

.

Like many of the author's works, the title story is set at an astronomical

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 observatory

Observatory

An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed...

 and refers to a star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

's absolute brightness, connecting that phenomenon with the relationship between two individuals in the story. No matter where one stands, the light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

 radiates at the same level of intensity. ("Standard Candles", "Ellie", and "Cryptic")

Other stories in the collection deal with chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 ("Black to Move" and "The Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 Rifle"), time travel

Time travel

Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...

 with unintended consequence

Unintended consequence

In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the outcomes intended by a purposeful action. The concept has long existed but was named and popularised in the 20th century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton...

s ("Cruising Through Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy

The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah/Pentateuch...

" and "Time Travelers Never Die"), and the beginnings of interplanetary exploration

Space exploration

Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....

 ("Translations from the Colosian", "Promises to Keep", and "To Hell with the Stars", the last an exposition of what may happen if humanity chooses to not enter space

Space

Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum...

).

The stories are arranged:

• "Standard Candles"
• "Tidal Effects"
• "Translations from the Colosian"
• "Black to Move"
• "The Fort Moxie Branch"
• "Promises to Keep"
• "Gus"
• "To Hell with the Stars"
• "Ellie"
• "The Jersey Rifle"
• "Cruising Through Deuteronomy"
• "Tyger"
• "Auld Lang Boom"
• "Dutchman"
• "Cryptic"
• "Time Travelers Never Die"