After nuclear war, a survivor of the monster-populated ruins of Oakland California joins the crew of a clipper ship sailing the waters of the Pacific; a typhoon shipwrecks him on a tropical island whose inhabitants share a bizarre secret. An unlikely team investigating the deaths of the crew of an interstellar spaceship near Pluto are confronted with a life-or-death conundrum stranger than anything they could have imagined. On a distant planet the ultimate civil punishment is to be genetically deformed into an abhorrent beast and forced to live in the forbidden compound called Purgatory as slaves of the State. When authorities arrest and condemn the woman he loves, a man determines to find and save her, even if he must descend into Purgatory itself. In these and other gripping science fiction tales John Walters explores possible futures on Earth and other worlds.