The bulk of the novel takes place when a European steamship, the SS Apollo, sails to America to try to discover the cause of increased radioactive fallout in England.

In the novel, the Soviet Union dammed the Bering Strait in the 1990s, thus changing global weather patterns by reversing the normally clockwise currents in the Pacific Ocean.

Possibly for the first time ever, nuclear weapons are used for a constructive purpose, and the 'New World Order' that arises from the events of the book contains both the promise of a better future and the understated promise/threat of phantasmagoric horrors to come, though presumably in smaller doses.

For instance, the final President of the United States was the then-current governor Jerry Brown of California, who was a promising face in American politics at the time of the novel.

His small, ironic role represents both the triumph and ultimate failure of West Coast liberalism of the late Cold War era: when faced with a massive ecological crisis that threatens (and indeed ultimately destroys) the nation, Brown's solution is to build a large youth center, a twice-life-size fiberglass replica of the Taj Mahal, and then abandons the country so he can devote himself to self-improvement.