"Black Sheep Astray" and the North Africa series have been called a "notable exception" to the indirect treatment of racial issues in 1960s science fiction magazines.
Promised a pension and safe passage if he submits, Crawford leaves Africa to retire to Switzerland with his wife Isobel and three sons Tom, Cliff, and Abraham.
Realizing that Abd-el-Kader will revoke his progressive programs, Crawford decides to contact his closest associates and return to North Africa in disguise.
"[3] A gentleman ranker is a person of privilege who, despite his education, serves as an enlisted man, usually because he has disgraced himself or transgressed his society's mores,[4] and so is considered a "black sheep".
The need for a continuous and "endless" social revolution against the status quo is a recurrent theme in Reynolds' work (see, for instance, the short story "Utopian").