Race Against Time

My experience of reading this novel (many years ago):

Stage 1: Wow, what a very strange 1950s America. I'll bet something's up!

Stage 2: Cool, teenagers race against vast conspiracy of adults breeding them for nefarious purposes!

Stage 3: How strange. The pinnacle of "white" culture is 1950s America, while the pinnacle of "Asian" culture is ancient China, and the pinnacle of "African" culture is a tribe on the savannah. Not, like, 1950s America vs. 1950s Shanghai and 1950s Nairobi. Hmm. And is it really just white/black/asian here? Is every other race on planet earth close enough to "standard brown" that they don't merit bringing back? And why is there only one of each? If this is worth the resources wouldn't you want to have a spare or show more two on hand in cases of accidents, injury, illness, infertility, death, whatever? What about inbreeding in generation two? Or are they going to build in some redundancies and clone spares for that generation?

Stage 4: Lots of happy interracial love stories between these kids when they meet up. How sweet!

Stage 5: What?

...

No.

...

So the happy ending of the story is that all of the kids agree that restoring racial purity is a goal so worthy that they're going to go back to their fake homes and their fake lives and marry their racial counterpart so they can successfully breed racially pure babies?

That is the most revoltingly racist thing I have ever read in fiction form.

I need to scrub my brain out with bleach.

~~~~~

After reading Race Against Time, I was never able to read another Piers Anthony book.

I don't think I've ever even tagged them on here as 'read.' I can't bring myself to admit that I ever brought my mind in close contact to the products of a mind able to construct such a narrative.

I'm shocked that anyone could give this thing more than a 1-star rating. It's the 21st century, people. Whatever excuses people had for praising this novel's "layered messages" in 1973 don't exist anymore. (The excuses were no good then either, but we like to praise ourselves for making progress on race relations--no?--and this novel is as close to a manual for white supremacy as I have ever had the displeasure of reading.)

If I could give this book negative stars, I would. show less

Early experiment in PC-diversity-training, falls flat because there is no depth in the characters or situation; relies heavily on stereotypes.
Has major continuity problems and significant plot holes.

John Smith lives a very average life in middle america, or so he thinks. Though he has a girlfriend he's never met, and must marry. Then he crosses the boarder and finds everything is not what it appears to be.

An interesting point of view of culture, society, and "keeping up appearances".

One wonders who is controlling who here and why now? At the end, the main characters are doing their thing and are in agreement with the Powers That Be that they should be doing it. What I wonder is, if the technology is that advanced, why these 'monuments' were born then and not before? Or were there more before and they didn't get with the program?