The Last Heroes, originally published in 1985 under the pen name Alex Baldwin, was republished under Griffin's name in 1997. The social concerns of The Last Heroes are largely the concerns of the Second World War: the place of a neutral democracy (the United States) in a world dominated by fascist dictators; the place of individuals in a chaotic society; the tenuous relationships between belligerents (Germany and, eventually, the U.S.), neutrals (occupied France and its Moroccan dependency and, at the beginning of the novel, the U.S.), and their citizens; the dramatic change wrought by war on the social and moral lives of men and women; and the moral issues surrounding the development, by the U.S. and Germany, of atomic weapons. It is this latter issue which forms the headnote to the novel and sets the action in motion.

Griffin shows these concerns affecting individual persons...