Black Star Rising

From back cover Del Ray paperback April 1986: TAKE US TO YOUR LEADER, IF YOU CAN..." When a mysterious alien spacecraft approaches Earth and demands to speak with the President of the United States, then destroys a large pacific island to demonstrate its strength and underscore its seriousness, you would expect the President to talk. Problem is, in the late twenty-first century, there *is* no President -- not even a United States. In fact, in this world of the future, China rules the Americas; and, to most people, "USA" and "USSR" are just quaint abbreviations in historical dictionaries. Then the aliens prove unreasonable about accepting substitutes... so one Anglo rice-cultivator from the Heavenly Grain Collective Farm -- near Biloxi, Mississippi -- is forced to begin an adventure that will take him from peasant to President, from Pettyman to Spaceman.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.