Assignment Nor'Dyren

Assignment Nor'Dyren is a 1973 science fiction novel by American writer Sydney J. Van Scyoc. It deals with an imagined world, Nor'Dyren, where an alien human-like species has a more structured social system than is the case for human society. When humans come to Nor'Dyren, they discover that there are three specialized types of Nor'Dyrenese.

This three-way division of labor does not seem to be working. Nobody on Nor'Dyren knows how to repair broken machines. Nobody ever creates anything new. Archeological investigation reveals that the world Nor'Dyren has been in decline for 200 years from its cultural and technological apex.