Farnham's Freehold (original 1964; edition 1994)

My reactions to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.

This is Heinlein’s revision and expansion of his earlier published novel. I haven’t read the earlier version so I don’t know how this compares, but I liked some aspects, disliked others, and found other bits of the novel to be time capsules from the earlier 1960s.

The certain bits I didn’t like were the instant sexual attraction of Barbara Wells for Hugh Farnham and also the incestuous desire Karen Farnham feels for Hugh. Yes, he’s older than Duke, his son, and described as “not handsome” but possessing lots of “strong masculine charm” – namely because he’s a typically smart, hard-nosed, self-reliant Heinlein character and father figure. Barbara loves the way he plays bridge too. Bridge, somewhat understandably given its popularity at the time this novel was written, is important to the plot and character development of the story. The bridge talk got to be a bit much at times. (It would probably be better if I actually understood the game.) Barbara and Hugh love the way the other plays bridge, and Ponse in the future loves the game and makes money reintroducing card games to his society. As to the incest, given that these are six people, three men and three women -- four from the same family – incest becomes an issue when the group seeks to repopulate their world. (The story seems set somewhere in or near the Rockies, maybe Colorado.)

However, I did like much of the book. Surprisingly, given that Heinlein was one of the very first survivalist writers, not as much as I expected of the book is taken up with the nitty-gritty details of surviving an atomic war though Heinlein does have a section where he plays the intellectual game – a game he helped popularize I believe – of deciding what books should be taken in the shelter. Heinlein also gets to work with a barely scientific rationale in the time travel sub-genre he liked. Specifically, nuclear blasts hurl the characters and their shelter 2,000 years into the future where they encounter, after a brief (about a month) foray on their own, an empire ruled by blacks. (Caucasians nuked themselves and Hindu and African survivors of WWIII formed an empire.) In the end, the empire sends Barbara and Hugh Farnham back in time to the beginning of the war. I did like the familial tensions in this book between the Farnhams. Grace Farnham is lazy, self-indulgent, and an alcoholic who increasingly fails to come to grips with the reality of their situation. Hugh Farnham, interestingly, doesn’t judge her too harshly in this respect though he does condemn keeping the servants and sluts and studs of His Charity’s empire doped up on the drug Happiness. I think he makes the distinction between a voluntarily chosen addiction and one fostered by a government to pharmacologically quell rebellion. When daughter Karen dies in childbirth – along with her baby (and I liked that plot turn since Heinlein emphasized the hope of her baby so much it was a genuine surprise) – Grace blames Hugh for not calling a doctor. Duke Farnham tends to side with his mother though he’s more practical. At novel’s end, Hugh says he was never allowed to raise his son as he saw fit, that Grace weakened him. This psychological emasculation is mirrored by his actual physical emasculation when Ponse, after Grace’s whining about her son joining her in the harem, has Duke “tempered” (castrated). I don’t know if this is a Civic generation manifestation of the idea that too strong a maternal influence weakens a man.

However, most of the book is thematically consumed with the typical Heinlein preoccupation with freedom, power, and genetic influences on behavior. It is also, not so typical for Heinlein but somewhat characteristic of the time it was written, concerned with race. Joe, a black, is one of the most interesting features of this novel. Duke and Grace treat him badly, condescend to him. At one point, Duke even accuses him of the old cliché of wanting to sleep with the white women survivors. Heinlein also alludes to other racist notions of blacks as lazy or contented with their lot of being cared for in exchange for being second-class citizens. Yet Heinlein also points out, through the oft-cited cliché of blacks being better singers, that even proponents of racial equality sometimes preach racial superiority. Yet Joe is smart, competent, loyal (and a good bridge player), and a “gentleman”. He even saves Dr. Livingston, a cat, by bringing it into the shelter. (Cats are important to Heinlein.) Yet, he becomes corrupted when he encounters an Empire governed by his race, where whites are slaves. He wants to have Hugh and Grace as his servants (he worked as a servant to the Farnhams) to pay them back for their ill-treatment. He frankly acknowledges to Hugh that he likes a world where he is the master – right before he calls Hugh “boy”. However, he remains kindly disposed toward Barbara and was going to marry Karen before her death. (She became pregnant before the war and by an unnamed college student..

In keeping with this theory of corrupting power is the lord Ponse whose lands the group is found on. Ponse’s society is a racial caste system where whites are regarded as less than human, where slavery is fostered by drug addiction and eugenics (slaves are bred for docility though the masters allow some illicit breeding – studs have to be below a certain height – and an underground where wilder breeding stock is allowed, to escape, for potential capture later, so bloodlines can have some vitality bred back in), where even cannibalism of whites is practiced. Ponse seems cultured, treats the group well, promotes Joe to an aide position, gives Hugh a job providing historical information and translations, is kindly disposed toward Barbara and her twins by Hugh. Yet, Ponse comes to seem as the worst type of leader, a leader of good intentions who rationalizes every action as being for his subjects’ good, who is less cruel than he could be but always reminds his victims of his mercy and what he could do to them. Hugh Farnham prefers a “straight-out son of a bitch”. He cites Ponse as an example of power corrupting, and points out that he was corrupted by power too when he threatened to kill son Duke when he defied him when the group was in the wilderness.

An interesting read and not nearly as “controversial” or “fascist” book as I’ve been led to believe. ( )

After their fallout shelter sustains a direct hit during a nuclear war, a family is propelled forward to a far future when Africans keep white people as slaves.

I thought when I read this that it was a particularly silly book, and it struck me as quite racist.

Read because of my interest in apocalyptic and dystopian fiction (1990s). ( )

I am a huge Heinlein fan and this is one of my favorites. ( )

I found it impossible to like this book, of course, despising the protagonist is never a recipe for an enjoyable read. That is not to say that the book is valueless, it is up there with the best of them for stretching the mind of the reader, but most do so in an enjoyable fashion, not so in this case. ( )

An American family survives a nuclear attack. Hugh Farnham was prepared.