"Roswell, Texas" makes extensive use of anachronism and anatopism in its story line. Historical personalities including Charles Lindbergh (and his son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., who in real life was abducted and murdered as an infant), Audie Murphy, Malcolm X, Pope John Paul II, Gene Roddenberry, Eliot Ness, Lawrence of Arabia, Charles de Gaulle, Walt Disney and others appear in roles often tangentially related to, but always significantly different from, their "real-world" biographies. Additionally, characters from Smith's other works (notably William "Win" Bear, protagonist of "The Probability Broach" and other novels in Smith's "North American Confederacy" series) appear in key or supporting roles as "alternate history" versions of their own fictional selves.