Hi readers. Here’s another one of those old early-days RAH tomes to give you some smiles, some anachronisms to feel smug about, and a couple of truly interesting things to think about.
The first part of the book is all the usual suspects, family with a bomb shelter before the bombs fall, etc. If you haven’t read a thousand others, might as well get it done with this one, I reckons.
But then the bombs hit, one of them dead-center. Spang blows Farnham and his family into sometime a longish while in the future, same spot. Then the fun starts.
The big powers destroyed themselves and most of the other non-ethnic places full of advanced white people. So when Farnham and his white family come up for air it isn’t long before they’re discovered by the meek who inherited the earth. Africans, mainly, in this area. A sort of do-it-yourself African empire sitting atop the ruins of the US.
Sure, some white people survived. Most have been adopted as slaves in a manner similar to the way the Ottomans treated captured Europeans during an earlier time. Bred the good ones for physical and mental traits, castrated the others and put them to work. Kept a lot of females for breeding stock, too.
So once they’re captured, Farnham and his family are forced to adapt themselves to a lifestyle most white people have spent a lot more generations becoming unaccustomed to than was good for them. Farnham’s wife lucks into being the paramour of one of the black rulers, and being a 20th Century mom, wants her son with her. But him being a male, her being part of the harem, he’s got to be castrated first. Which gives her pause, but only momentarily.
And so on.
Lots of laughs in this book. A truly fun read.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 