When a mysterious alien spacecraft approaches the Earth and demands to speak with the President of the United States, the destroys a large Pacific island to demonstrate its strength and its seriousness, you'd expect the President to talk. Problem is, in the late twenty-first century, there is no President - not even a US. China rules the Americas, and to most people "US" and " USSR" are just quaint abrreviattions in historical dictionaries. But 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.
