Press Enter is principally a social commentary bound together by a simple science fiction premise: it weaves together the main characters' horrible experiences of the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Victor Apfel is a Korean War veteran who was a prisoner of war and was tortured by the North Koreans. Embittered and lonely, he recalls that he and his fellow prisoners were pariahs when they returned home because of the suspicion that they had betrayed their country by revealing military secrets to their captors. He notes that the prisoners of war from Vietnam were treated like heroes.

Lisa Foo suffered through the war in Vietnam, the miseries of the occupation of the South by North Vietnam, and later, when trying to flee to Thailand, she endured the horrors of Cambodia when the communist regime slaughtered millions of its own people. The close relationship of Apfel...