A Talent for War is a science fiction mystery novel by American writer 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 when the interstellar passenger ship, on which his uncle was a passenger, was lost in space.
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.
It is important to the story that some individuals, like Alex Benedict and most Ashiyyur, react physically badly to the transitions into and out of Armstrong space.
The fiercely independent governments of the human worlds responded to the Ashiyyurian challenge largely by dithering and self-deception about the threat.
A few human worlds, led by Dellaconda, reacted militarily by forming a small military force, based at first mainly on the Dellacondan navy, to wage a guerrilla war known as "the Resistance" against the Ashiyyur.
Alex Benedict receives word from a cousin that his uncle Gabriel was among the passengers on an interstellar that disappeared in Armstrong space.
Alex must return to his uncle's home on Rimway and look in the “Leisha Tanner” file to recover relevant research and notes.
Before disappearing, Gabriel Benedict had hired Ms. Kolpath to investigate the last flight of the Tenandrome, Hugh Scott's Planetary Survey ship, and then meet Gabe at a world near the Veiled Lady star cluster and pilot them to an unspecified destination.
Alex has an inspiration – the location of the missing something is obliquely described in a poem by Walford Candles, to whom Tanner must have confided the secret.
Alex is able to find the university researcher who helped his uncle work with the clues in Candles’ poem and who identifies a location about 1,300 light years into the Veiled Lady as the primary locus of search.
It uses lasers to disable Corsarius' magnetic drives; Chase realizes too late that she has forgotten to raise the ship’s shields.
The huge (if temporary) technological advantage conferred on humanity by the new drive ends the human-Ashiyyur rivalry; the Perimeter stabilizes and more peaceful relations develop between the two civilizations.
Sim was rescued by Leisha Tanner and lived afterward under the assumed identity of Jerome Courtney, spending considerable time as a respected lay brother at a Catholic monastery on an isolated planet.
The following are the principal characters from the story set in the "present" of the novel: Alex Benedict - A reputable and very successful dealer in human antiquities.
Sim lived about 200 years before the novel's "present" time, beginning as a teacher of Ancient History and Government on the planet Dellaconda, a frontier world near the Perimeter (border) with Ashiyyur space.
McDevitt portrays Christopher Sim as an unlikely hero who rose to greatness through an unexpected "talent for war," a charismatic military genius able to anticipate his enemy’s plans and outwit them with his own.
Tarien Sim did not live to see this outcome; he was killed in battle shortly before the Instrument was signed and before the weight of human forces could be effectively mobilized.
Leisha Tanner: Another key figure, through whose perceptions (reflected in her private papers and the journals of her friend Walford Candles) McDevitt tells the major part of the back-story.
Portrayed by the author as a larger-than-life Falstaffian figure, Machesney declared support for the Resistance early in the war and joined them with much of his scientific team.
Walford Candles: A professor of classical literature, a war poet, a contemporary of Christopher Sim and a friend of Leisha Tanner.
They also paint a vivid picture of life on the home front during the time of the Resistance, with non-combatants waiting in hope and despair as the fortunes of the Dellacondans rise and, eventually, fall.
The SF Site's Steven H Silver wrote, "While A Talent for War is not McDevitt's best novel, it shows signs of the writer he is still becoming.
Even where the characters flag, the ideas remain at the forefront and manage to place A Talent for War above a standard space opera or science fictional mystery.
"[4] Reviewer Russ Allbery praised the novel's "unique perspective" on the theme of first contact with aliens, its "quaint feel that's both comfortable and oddly prosaic," and its "satisfying, tense conclusion": This isn't a book to grab and hold the reader; the prose is unadorned, Alex is a straightforward and logical (if self-centered) first-person narrator, and the characterization of most of the cast frankly leaves something to be desired.
There are dead ends, witnesses with suspect motives, lies and exaggerations, papers and memoirs that are frustratingly elliptical or written by people only ancillary to the investigation, and even a wonderfully-portrayed crackpot historical society.
[5]Science fiction scholar John Clute, comparing McDevitt's second novel with his first, The Hercules Text, wrote, "A Talent for War (1988 [sic]), set in a galactic venue eons hence, similarly sets a religious frame around the central quest plot, in which a young man must thread his way through the unsettled hinterlands dividing human and alien space in his search for the secret that may retroactively destroy the reputation of a human who has been a hero in the recent wars.
In both novels, [McDevitt] wrestles valiantly with the task he has set himself: that of imposing an essentially contemplative structure upon conventions designed for violent action.
[7] Portions of Chapters 9 and 22–24 were published as a novelette in the February 1987 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine under the title "Dutchman”.
Portions of Chapter 15 were published in a different form as a novelette in the March 1988 issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine under the title “Sunrise”.
In September 2000, Meisha Merlin published, in hardcover and trade paperback formats, an omnibus edition with The Hercules Text, an earlier McDevitt novel, under the title Hello Out There.