From the introduction: War... War never changes... But your life certainly has. You've been sent to the Wasteland - an Earth that diverged from ours in the 1940's. The transistor was never invented, and in its place came advances in robotics, genetics, and nuclear energy. The Golden Age of the 1950's never came to an end, resulting in a century-long proliferation of TV dinners and art deco. Oh, and a desperate war over Earth's resources ended in nuclear annihilation on October 23, 2077.