Hal Bragg is a man without a world, an astronaut who returns from a space mission to find the world changed beyond recognition. Although only 10 biological years have passed for him, 127 years have elapsed on earth. Harrowed by the unthinkable things he has experienced and witnessed during the his expedition, he reels, baffled and overwhelmed, through what is essentially an alien land. He finds cities shaped into psychedelic proportions by technology he cannot even imagine, social customs and conveniences so incomprehensible that he stumbles from humorous misadventure to terrifying encounter; sophisticated robots running everything; human beings denatured by a medical procedure, administered in early childhood, that effectively neutralizes most of their aggressive impulses.