Barry Commoner (1917–2012) was an American biologist, ecologist, and political activist — founder of the Citizens Party — whose 1980 presidential campaign forms the premise fork of pp-awg: the novel’s alternate history begins with Commoner winning the 1980 election rather than Ronald Reagan. Commoner does not appear as a character in the present-day storyline but is the causal event generating the entire 1980–2080 alternate timeline. His ecological systems thinking and Citizens Party platform are the philosophical seed of the novel’s progressive alternate history.