In the future, fossil fuels won't exist anymore. But Big Oil refuses to die. They create a giant planet made of crude oil, frozen solid in the cold vacuum of space. It's a world of heavy industry, high gravity, and endless night. Petroleum people (industrial life-forms, sculpted out of solid crude) walk its airless surface and work around the clock for Chevron, Shell, and Texaco. Sci-fi bookworm Horton Sphere is accidentally thrust into this bizarre future. But it's up to him to solve the paradox of this dark star, or be marooned there for eternity.