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In the world of Philsatlan, a world with some similarities to ours, a race of other-dimensional beings starts a war in the hopes of erasing all creatures from existence except their own kind, then using the resulting energy to create new universes in which they're worshiped as gods. With the Alpha Conference approaching, these "transcendentals" contact Brutus Spartman the Younger and coax him into assassinating a man named Ezra Kalkin. Much like the murder of JFK in our world, they intend Kalkin's murder to initiate a sequence of events that will lead to the end of the world—and all worlds.
This book is more streamlined than some of Blair's others, with a mostly linear story that builds to a climax on the night of the scheduled assassination and draws much of its power from suspense over the mystery of Kalkin's fate. However, as in those other books, Blair engages in some enjoyably cerebral digressions on the nature of time, reality, and religion. There's a thought experiment involving an alternative world that may remind Borges fans of the classic short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," while discussion of an imaginary nation known as the "United States" that fought and won two world wars evokes Philip K. Dick.
Long-time readers of Blair may spot allusions to characters and events from his wider mythos—Adel Hister, the National Socialists of Greater Prussia, the Skull-Collecting Society—but they're woven into the narrative in such a way that they feel like a musical refrain. It's fair to say that no one else today is writing books like this. Blair expands on the works of the great authors of twentieth-century science fiction, adding ambition and invention that are entirely his own.