Hello Out There (The Hercules Text / A Talent for War) [Paperback]

Jack McDevitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2000

Here, together in a single volume, are the two novels that launched Jack McDevitt's reputation as a writer of suspenseful, thoughtful, sense-of-wonder science fiction. Hello, Out There contains The Hercules Text, winner of the 1986 Philip K. Dick Special Award, and A Talent for War. The Hercules Text has been totally rewritten and updated for this edition. Most of us are attracted to the idea that the human race is not alone. Encountering other beings, we believe, will be romantic, exciting, thought-provoking, intriguing. And possibly dangerous. After all, one of our time-honored notions since H.G. Wells is that we may well be perceived by Others as little more than snacks, or subjects for religious conversion, or creatures of such insignificance as to be simply swept aside. No matter, we think cheerfully. We will take the risk. McDevitt suggests the hazards may be far more subtle. In Hello, Out There, contact with alien species forces us to rethink who we are and what we are about. The Hercules Text recounts a clash of wills in which the mere knowledge that someone is out there ignites profound changes in religious, political, and social behavior. In its companion novel, A Talent for War, contact forces us to rethink a cherished mythology, and ask ourselves whether truth might not sometimes demand too high a price. Here are two voyages into the unknown, twin expeditions to demonstrate that when we finally encounter whatever other intelligences Darwin has cast onto the cosmic beach, we may discover that the face looking back at us is our own. The Herules Text (Revised Edition) From the direction of the constellation Hercules, a message has been detected. The continuous beats of a pulsar have become odd, irregular...artificial. It can only be a deliberate transmission. Frantically, a research team struggles to decipher the meaning, while the very fact of reception shakes the foundations of empires around the world, from Wall Street to the Vatican to the White House. And the fate of nations ultimately lies in the hands of a lone frightened bureaucrat. A Talent for War Everyone knew the legend of Christopher Sim. Teacher. Fighter. Leader. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, Sim changed history forever when he forged a ragtag band of misfits into a brilliant fighting force during mankind's darkest hour, broke the back of the only aliens the human race had ever encountered, and sacrificed himself in the effort. But now, two centuries later, Alex Benedict has found a startling bit of information, long buried in an ancient computer file. If it is true, then there is another, darker, side to the tale. For his own sake, for the sake of history, Alex Benedict must follow the track of the legend, where he will confront a truth far stranger than he could have imagined.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...it seems to me that he is the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke." -- Stephen King

"A superlative novel...bridges the gap between literary and commercial SF with rare facility and belongs in every collection." -- Booklist

"An old-fashioned sense of wonder." -- Denver Post

"Magnificent vision." -- Locus --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Jack McDevitt is the author of seven novels and approximately fifty short stories, which have been published in the major science fiction magazines and in several original anthologies. His first novel, The Hercules Text (Ace, 1986) was an Ace Special, and won the Philip K. Dick Special Award and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. It appears here in a substantially different form.

Other novels are A Talent for War (Ace, 1989); The Engines of God (Ace, 1994), an Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist; Ancient Shores (HarperPrism, 1996), a Nebula finalist; Eternity Road (HarperPrism, 1997), winner of the Darrell Award; Moonfall (HarperPrism, 1998), a Nebula finalist; and Infinity Beach, (HarperPrism, 2000).

Several pieces of shorter fiction have been short-listed for the Nebula and the Hugo, and "Ships in the Night" won the $10,000 first prize in the UPC International Novella competition in 1992. A collection of McDevitt's short fiction, Standard Candles, is available from Tachyon Press.

McDevitt has been a Philadelphia taxi driver, a naval officer, an English teacher, a customs officer, and a motivational trainer for federal and state law enforcement officials. He lives in Brunswick, Georgia, with his wife Maureen. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc. (September 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892065231
• ISBN-13: 978-1892065230
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,455,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Changing the Past of our Future, May 1, 2002

By 

WFK "alt historian" (Wolfsberg, Austria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hello Out There (The Hercules Text / A Talent for War) (Paperback)

I've read "The Hercules Text" years ago when the cold war was still around the corner somewhere, and I thought that this was a great novel. Now, more than a decade later, the author re-wrote it in a way that makes me suspect that he liked "Contact" - the movie with Jodie Foster - a lot.

The story itself changed only a little but the surrounding world ... . The original THT had the cold war feeling of paranoia and priorities, politicians playing for global survival with implied threats and unspoken hopes. This new THT is taking place in a world of US hegemony - little threats but no hopes.

In the original the various heroes act within their characters: fanatical, timid, bureaucratic, lovingly ... Harry Carmichael acts against orders but he doesn't go to the President's face to tell him so and offer him a Clintonesque way out ...

The times they are changing, but still it would have been better if Jack McDevitt would have left the original text unchanged. Even the future has a past- and a lot of good scifi novels are products of their age - and one should respect the past and not try to alter or reinterpret it. This way a great novel (5 stars)became just a very good (4 stars) one.

As for the second novel - "A Talent for War" - the title is very hard to understand till one has finished the book and then it doesn't really fit. Overall it is vintage McDevitt: a man searching for clues and the truth, a voyage, danger and adventures. All of it very slowly evolving and sucking the reader in so that he has to finish it. When I closed the last page it was half past one in the morning - but it was worth it.

So my overall judgment: a great book, but if you can get "The Hercules Text" in the original version buy that instead.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid science fiction, October 30, 2002

By 

Eric C. Welch (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Hello Out There (The Hercules Text / A Talent for War) (Paperback)

This is a nifty book. It consists of two novels: Hercules Text and A Talent for War. In an author's note, McDevitt writes that he has updated The Hercules Text from its original edition. It's a fine novel that raises all sorts of interesting issues.

Harry Carmichael is a respected administrator at a site called Skynet that examines space for evidence of other life forms. One day they see evidence that a million light years away, some alien intelligence has manipulated a star's light output in a pattern that can only be described as unnatural. A month later a stream of text from the Hercules nebula is received. Decoded, it consists of some mathematical and geometric symbols, a manual and what appear to be pictures of the beings who sent the message.

The president, worried about what else the message might contain, clamps a lid of secrecy on their facilities, irritating the scientists who work there and who feel that releasing the information can only be beneficial to the scientific community; after all, the humans never been enthusiastic about acting in concert as a species.

The religious community is divided on how to take this incontrovertible evidence that humans are not alone. One priest remarks, "How can we take seriously the agony of a God who repeats His passion? Who dies again and again in endless variations, on countless worlds, across a universe that may itself be infinite?", assuming that God had revealed Herself to the other worlds. And if not, why not? What did this do to human's perception of themselves as the primary focus of God? "If there were any truth at all to the old conviction that the universe had been designed for man, why was so much of its expanse beyond any hope of human perception? Forever.?"

As they learn more about the alien intelligence and begin to obtain information of value to the military, the scientific community begins to lose control of the information, and some of them want to have it destroyed. But they also learn something extraordinary about the intelligence that sent it to them millions of years before.