'The narrative shifts between two seemingly disparate worlds which are actually humanity’s present and potentially far-distant future, though occasionally these converge, in characters’ dreams for instance.
'In today’s middle-class US, boredom motivates Liberty to write a novel about her partly estranged husband, while it drives him and her high school best friend to play an elaborate prank on the authorities.
'In the city of Megra, so far in our future that even America has been forgotten, brilliant 15-year-old scientist c7s47 – Alex to a few – tries to persuade the powerful research institute he works for to back his revolutionary theory which he claims will facilitate world peace. For humankind is still bent on conquest, despite the consequences.'
Source:
Louise Maral, 'A Cautionary Tale from an Imaginative Mind', University of Sydney News, 6 December 2005. (http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=810). (Sighted: 5/3/2015)
Note on genre:
Habib noted (in the source quoted above) that A Tree Like Rain 'doesn’t have enough science in it to be SF'.