A Talent for War

A Talent for War is a science fiction and mystery novel by Jack McDevitt,[1] the story of a search by Alex Benedict, the protagonist, to discover the nature of a mysterious project Alex's uncle had been working on at the time of his death. This investigation leads deep into the history of a war between human civilization and a neighboring alien civilization and challenges the foundation mythos of the current human government. The story is set in our universe approximately 9,600 years in the future (approximately 11,600 C.E.). As is made clearer in McDevitt's later Alex Benedict novel Seeker,[2] during the course of recorded history, human civilization has spread through a substantial part of the Orion Arm of our galaxy. The novel is concerned with two time periods - the present of the principal viewpoint character, Alex Benedict, and a period approximately 200 years before his time, which is viewed through back-story. In the millennia since Neil Armstrong, McDevitt tells us, humanity discovered the ruins of one alien technological civilization, and encountered one that at the time of the story is alive and thriving, the Ashiyyur. The sphere of Ashiyyur worlds is described by the author as abutting the worlds of human civilization along the Perimeter - first contact was made at least several hundred years before the time in which the back-story is set. McDevitt conceives the Ashiyyur as being at approximately the same technological level as humans, and in fact humanoid - bi-laterally symmetrical, bipedal, larger than average for human, of two genders, descended from predators, and interested in the same kind of real estate as humans. Most significantly for the story, they are also incapable of audible speech without mechanical aids, and are nicknamed "Mutes" by humans as a result. The Ashiyyur are telepathic[3] and have evolved a society based on that form of communication.