Novel setting (maybe)

2015. The global recession that gripped the world has ended, leaving a radically changed political landscape. The “Economic Nuclear Winter” upended governments, starved millions, and left the former Western political powerhouses in ruins. The USA, ripped apart by race riots and secession since the assassination of President Obama two years ago, is a country on the brink of bankruptcy, having been hit the hardest by the ’09 crash.

Against this “Second Depression”, Eugene Cernan, the last man ever to have set foot on the moon and the last of the Apollo astronauts, is found dead in his Houston nursing home. His death brings the final curtain down on America’s Space Age, and with him the end of an ideal.

Cernan’s death shocks America. It’s a country with few heroes left, where abortion is illegal, immigration laws are tighter than anywhere in the world, and food is rationed to cope with appalling drought and mismanagement. In these desperate times the moonwalkers had swung back into focus, a representation of the Golden Age of America, and now they are gone.