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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl

Talisman  
  Device that causes beings nearby to experience truth and peace; works only in the hands of rare adepts.  

There are conflicts at many levels in this story; between people, between groups here on earth and between other civilizations. The Talisman is a sacred object; only a very special person can make it work.

The Talisman could only be operated by certain types of beings with certain types of minds and something else besides ... The Talisman was placed in the custody of the most capable, or the most efficient, or the most devoted (whichever it might be) of the galactic sensitives, who carried it from star to star in a sort of eternal progression.
Technovelgy from Way Station, by Clifford Simak.
Published by Doubleday in 1963
Additional resources -

Simak does a remarkable job in putting into words what is needed in a contentious world. This great story won the Hugo award for best novel; it loses absolutely nothing in the years since it was published.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Way Station
  More Ideas and Technology by Clifford Simak
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  Tech news articles related to works by Clifford Simak

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