Black Man's Burden & Border, Breed nor Birth are the near-future SF stories set in North Africa. They are considered exceptional for their direct treatment of "politically pertinent" racial issues "virtually untouched in SF" before, during, and after the 1960s. The storyline follows the adventures of Homer Crawford, a charismatic leader of the Reunited Nations African Development Project, Sahara Division team. He is an American black and an ex-Marine with a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan who speaks Arabic, Esperanto, French, Tamabeq, Songhoi, and Swahili. The central themes of these stories are the subversion of a society's status quo in the name of socioeconomic progress and the continual search for a better society.