Status Updates From Deeper than the Darkness

There is a focus on race, with the Polynesian-Caucasian heritage protagonist being subject to prejudice in a globally Oriental culture, wherein an historical "Riot War" has eradicated the population of America and Europe. Alongside the alien's infection of humanity with a plague of community-dissolving agoraphobia, as everyone hides in private "Slots", this points the reader toward a very relevant implied moral.

In the distant future a plague of madness debilitates Earth and environs, the first wave of an alien attack. A disgraced commandant who has survived the sickness travels to a distant colony planet in order to secure its strategic position close to an interstellar "flinger". However, he undergoes a trippy religious conversion and ends switching sides. This is hard US sci-fi with a touch of UK New Wave. Fascinating!

This book has aged very well. The science must have been very cutting-edge back in 1969 when it was first published.

I think this is Benford's first novel. It's really good.