Follow a lover who has an uncanny way with women, though each affair burns out, to be succeeded by another. Follow a musical group named Fire, which threatens to dwindle the entire universe's supply of energy upon each successive performance. Follow the trial of a professional arsonist, paid by unions to torch homes built by scab labor. Follow all this in a novel ostensibly written about the 1970s, though delivering an uncanny resemblance to the paranoia and confusion permeating the current new millennium. Consisting of part science-fiction, part meta-fiction, and part essay, this work threads out a puzzle with the same humor and biting satire that made L. A. Heberlein's story-novel Sixteen Reasons Why I Killed Richard M. Nixon so entertaining. (See page 24 of this catalogue for that work.)