The novel was inspired by Pohl's own experiences in a local volunteer fire department and by the early computer time sharing systems, along with advances in medicine, such as transplants, extrapolated to the point where anyone with enough money can command huge resources and essentially live forever.

He can afford the luxuries of 26th century life, such as a Joymaker, a scepter-like portable computer terminal with some extra features like a drug dispenser.

After a heavy night partying, with some distant memory of an argument with somebody, he wakes in his new apartment, and over a 20th-century breakfast, checks in with his Joymaker.

He is informed that he has a message from a woman whose name he doesn't recognize, and that someone called Heinzlichen Jura de Syrtis Major has taken out a hunting license on him.

Since Heinzlichen is from the human colonies on Mars and is adapted to low gravity, this is a major faux pas.

Forrester comes to believe that Adne is attempting to entrap him in fatherhood, presumably for his money, when she leaves a message saying that "we have to choose a name".

The only thing stopping an attack, it is believed, is that the Sirian's home world population has no idea where Earth is.

The captured Sirians live on Earth in a state of virtual house arrest, with their movements restricted and monitored.

He then takes a high-paying job which is an apparent sinecure, watching over some machinery, until he learns that all the previous holders of the post are in cryopreservation after being blasted with radiation.

Under the delusion that he is helping Adne take a trip, Forrester places the Sirian in control of a spacecraft.

They are a 26th-century version of Luddites and are bent on dismantling the world's technological base by subverting central computing systems, believing this will improve human welfare.

If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker.

These allowed multiple users spread over a wide area, connected by good quality telephone or data lines, to simultaneously use one or more large (for the time) computers for a variety of purposes.

In its basic form, the Joymaker is a remote time-sharing terminal which uses radio communications instead of wire lines, and interacts with its user via voice rather than a keyboard and text output.

The story concerns a 20th-century man placed in what came to be called cryopreservation, revived in the 25th century, and coming to terms with life in an era of massive computer power, accessed via the Joymaker.

Only the medical capabilities are missing from devices carried by people in industrialized nations in the early 21st century.