The novel is set in an unspecified "near-future" (one of the main characters has childhood memories of the Exxon Valdez disaster) in which a radical left-wing environmentalist movement has joined forces with the religious right through a shared distaste for modern technology.

The resulting bipartisan conspiracy has gained control of the US government and imposed draconian luddite laws which, in attempts to curb global warming, have ironically brought about the greatest environmental catastrophe in recorded history: an ice age which may eventually escalate into a Snowball Earth.

As a radical totalitarian environmentalist party now controls the US government, the scientific explanation is denounced as "propaganda from life-hating technophiles", and blame for the ice age is instead solely placed on the society surviving in orbit.

This rabid distaste for technology has resulted in the collapse of the economy, and lack of education and a complicit media has left the majority of the population credulous and easily manipulated.

However, they have a major advantage over their foes in the government – their relationship with the space station provides them with superior navigational abilities; following the fall of scientific society, the United States Air Force (USAF) no longer enjoys access to satellite reconnaissance.

Though the Angels are unable to walk due to their overexposure to weightlessness and must be dragged along on sleds, the microwave power transmission beam reserved for Winnipeg is diverted to warm the travellers as they return south to their van.

At the con, the fans brainstorm a daring plan - before the Greens had come to power, one of the Board of Trustees for the Metropolitan Museum of Boston by the name of Ron Cole supposedly refurbished a Titan II rocket.

However, Cole is able to put them on another path – a privately constructed single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft at Edwards Air Force Base, disguised by the simple and effective method of its designer, Gary Hudson, declaring it non-functional.