A journalist sets out to report on a minor earthquake in the Australian outback, and finds that the tremor was a result of a small nuclear explosion - part of an extortion threat that has the government fearing nuclear blackmail.
The Bed opens with Jamie, a young man, looking round an old, deserted country house. Through flashback we see Jamie as a boy, scared out of his wits when his older sister and her boyfriend, left alone in the house to babysit Jamie for the evening, play cruel tricks on him.
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
It begins in the days after Sadat's assassination in 1981 by an islamist cell of army officers. The American media had led an outpouring of shock and grief in the United States at the death of the heroic president.