[1] Nominated for the 1979 John W. Campbell Award,[2] it tells the story of aliens who crash-land on Earth in 1908 and then journey around the planet, trying to jump-start World War I.

[3] The Wanderer sinks into the ocean, and the team reasons that they must find a way to accelerate Earth's technological advances so that they can get back home.

The eventual conclusion at which they arrive is that they must provoke the planet into what Ari claims is an inevitable global conflict, one that will (through weaponry innovations) result in a boom of new science and industry.

"a smoothly humorous sf novel set in an alternate world engendered by the survival of the aliens whose crash-landing caused the Siberian Tunguska explosion of 1908.

The explosion, unexplained even today, felled sixty million trees and produced shockwaves that could be felt four hundred miles away.