About this title: A Colorado Springs family exits their bomb shelter after a nuclear war, to find themselves 2,000 years into the future, in a very different society from the one they left.
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Description: Good. Spine has some creases. Covers show wear at the edges and corners. Good Grade B reading copy. Binding is Mass Market Paperback. Pages tanning. Used books may have price stickers. Most orders ship on the next business day. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Baen Books
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780671722067ISBN:0671722069
Description: Fair. No Jacket. Fair. No Jacket Fair. No DJ Issued Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Cover has a bit of wear to the corners. Binding is coming loose at the bottom. Pages are clean with no marks or creases. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. 352 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. 0425019810 GOOD LOOKING mass market paperback book! ! april 1971, BERKELEY EDITION---third printing. Some creasing of the spine & signs of wear from reading. Front cover has creased, bottom corner. SMOKE FREE HOME! Do not settle for worn, torn, throwaways. Pay a few pennies more for a nice copy of a good book! read more
Description: Good. 0425035689 Mass market paperback, previously read used book in good condition, varying degrees of shelf wear, some spine creases, m..._ read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ace
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780441228348ISBN:0441228348
Description: Good. Used-Good. May have wear, creases, small tears, reader's crease, name, store stamps or tanning. Text clean, binding tight. Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Signet, NY
Date Published: 1965
Description: Good. Edge nicks, price sticker top left front cover. What Hugh Farnham hadn't expected was that when the apocalypse came, a thermonuclear blast would tear apart the fabric of time and hurl his bomb shelter into a world with no sign of other human beings. read more
"sexist racist, otherwise, if you can try to overlook that, and the fact that the daughter is a mental case, this is more like a Heinlein than most of the others of this type that he wrote later in life."
"Too much sexual content.
Too much female private parts.
Too much unnecessary concentration on genitalia.
Too much sex, sex, sex,,, ,,, ,,, ,,, ,,,
I tossed this book into the garbage can."
"Plot summary: The book starts in cold war era Colorado, at a bridge game being played at the home of Hugh Farnham, with his wife, son, daughter, daughter's friend and the family's servant. Emergency horns blast a warning about nuclear attack - everyone heads into Farnham's home-made bomb shelter. They feel the earth give a tremendous shake, but it seems WW III is quickly over. They realize their shelter's damaged and their supplies won't preserve them through a nuclear winter, so after 2 weeks they have to open the hatch. Instead of radiation and signs of destruction, they see lush hills and animal life. At first, they think they've been catapulted to another world, but they eventually realize they haven't travelled anywhere, they're in the same spot on Earth, but two millennia in the future.
They think there's no one else left on earth so the obvious question becomes how to continue the species. There are only two childbearing-age women, and only two members of the group are unrelated. Frank discussions of incest ensue and Hugh impregnates his daughter, though she & the baby die in childbirth. All the while, the group becomes adapt to being self sufficient. Hugh fathers two twins by Barbara (we come to find out that they did the deed on the night they piled into the shelter, Eww).
One day they're spotted by a helicopter-type craft, which easily captures them and carts them off to the area that used to be France. They find themselves in a massive stone compound that houses hundreds of people, most of whom are slaves that serve the Lord Protector or a few freedmen he leaves in charge. Black people control this sparsely-populated 'new world,' white people are part of the servant class. Not knowing what to make of them, the ruling administrators plan to integrate them by making servant Joe part of the ruling class and they'll 'farm' the white Americans, using some as studs and castrating others.
Hugh gets to visit the palace court, separately Barbara strikes it up with the Lord, but the ruler doesn't know that they have a relationship. Though Hugh had been a fair and loving boss, he's now got to be subservient to Joe, who's getting used to being in charge. Talk about role reversal! Joe doesn't hold it over Hugh, but he doesn't pledge to help Hugh either.
Hugh tries to stage a jailbreak with Barbara and the twins. They are caught, but are offered a chance to live...but they must use a time machine that the Lord Protector is developing for his own acquisitive purposes. To prove it works, he gives them a clock to leave in the foundation of a bank building that survived down to the present. They take the deal and are vaulted back 2,000 years to the same place they were last time, but they've got precisely one more hour to seek shelter from the bomb. They don't carry out the Lord's wishes, but instead stock up on supplies and head deep into a mine shaft, hoping to ride out Armageddon and built anew.
Comments: I didn't care for this book. Is it because it takes on controversial topics? Okay, partly I admit, but also because its ONLY value is its shock value, it's not even good for kids who want to read 'grown-up stuff.'. None of the characters in this book is even remotely likeable. Farnham is the Marlboro man, almost too virile to be believed. The 50-something Hugh and the sorority sister Barbara have several conversations that were syrupy enough to make me uncomfortable. The characters don't really like each other and are only held together by a sense of survival. It's as if, to get all the controversial topics he could imagine packed into one book, he had to place awkward jolts into the plot-line. As a matter of fact, the cannibalism, torture and alcohol & drug abuse aren't even core to the plot. It's less a book than a succession of 4-5 short stories that don't hang together very well.
On the plus side, I have to give Heinlein credit for making a future society that's utterly foreign to ours. It has aspects that resemble Plato's Republic. It also captures the 1960s sense of dread that the cold-war brought."
"I wish I could give this 3 and a half stars, but as much as I liked it, I can't quite give it 4.
When a nuclear war occurs, Hugh Farnham and his family are somehow catapulted 150 years into the future (about 2100) where the old civilizations of the northern hemisphere have been destroyed and the remaining white people are slaves to the black people. The concept interesting, though I imagine not nearly as edgy as it was back in the 60's when the book was published.
There's a lot to enjoy here. The first part of the book involves the family trying to survive in the wilderness which is something that's always interested me. There are all the usual lessons about how power corrupts, about how skin color doesn't matter, how the elite always think they know what's best for everyone else. It also explores some classic utopian ideas. For example, many of the slaves enjoy their slavery because of a drug called Happiness. They are not free, but what is wrong with this as long as they are happy? Also, the book is heavy with dialogue, much of which is pretty cheesy, but I like cheesy.
With all the great things I've said, you'd think I'd give it 4 or 5 stars, but the characters are just a little dry for my taste and there is not enough exposition and visual description, but that is just a personal preference."
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