Rating: 
Summary: Its Heinlein; It's gotta be good!
Review: If you're not used to Heinlein's writing style, then this may not be the best book for you. However, if you've read his books before, add this to your list!
This book really drives home the concept of opression to the unoppressed (myself included!) It has the appropriate action and thought that all of Heinlein's books have, and leaves you with the permanently embedded thoughts that keep you from looking at life in the same way again.
The characters, while at first seeming unrealistic, turn into the fleshed out doppelgangers of today's typical archtypes. The drunk, the stupid, the immature, and the truely rare, intelligent man.
Over all, definately a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking, unsettling but GOOD!
Review: Just finished Farnham's last week and I have to say that it makes one stop and think. I can't say I enjoyed the book, at least not in the sense that I enjoyed _Sail Beyond The Sunset, _Time Enough For Love_, etc. Those novels have characters who are realist and downright likeable. Farnham could be a mean old cuss who was often hard to like. And Duke and Joe and (awww...what was Duke's Mother's name, Gail?) were all disappointments. Still, it takes a book like this to help someone like me ( white, middle class, college boy) to understand on a gut level why people who have been oppressed can have so much anger. They had a great line in there about how most bleeding hearts say they want everyone to be equal but what they mean is almost but not quite equal to me. That's a hard reality to accept and I think that much of my frustration in reading the book was caused by the unflattering and disgusting similarities I saw between myself and the characters at their worst ( especially Ponse)
A good read but the Heinlien book I would recomend for first time readers.
Rating: 
Summary: The ultimate best use of this book is to level furniture
Review: What a great writer and what an awful book. It defies belief that this book was ever reprinted let alone let into the light of print when first printed. The author's obvious hangups are witlessly displayed for all you would be shrinks to have a field day (picnic and lunch included).
If that table in the corner needs a book under one leg to make it level, THIS IS THE PERFECT BOOK FOR THE JOB
Rating:
Summary: Post Holocaust - Interesting Take
Review: As one of the first Heinlein books I read (many years ago), this book grabbed me and held tight. Heinlein presents a post-holocaust world in which society has completely evolved and English isn't even a spoken language. Perhaps, in light of the lessening of global tensions in the last decade, this book isn't as topical as it used to be; however, Heinlein still gives the reader a lot to think about
Rating: 
Summary: BEHOLD...THE FUTURE...
Review: This is an entirely plot driven book with one dimensional characters that are, for the most part, unlikable. The core characters are twentieth century citizens who find their lives forever changed by a nuclear holocaust. The plot itself is a relatively simple one.
The main protagonist, Hugh Farnham, is a farsighted, twentieth century guy who builds a bomb shelter and stocks it with the necessities of life so as to be prepared in the event that nuclear war erupts. When it does, he, his wife, Grace, son, Duke, and daughter, Karen, as well as her friend, Barbara Wells, and Joseph, Hugh's employee, find themselves saved from destruction but hurled by the nuclear blast into a world two thousand years into the future.
The future, however, into which the characters are hurled, is a future in which the world is ruled by dark skinned people. All light skinned people are slaves to their dark skinned masters. Since the Farnhams and Barbara Wells are white, they do not fare too well in this new world order. The only one who comes out on top is Joseph, who happens to be black. He also happens to be the only reasonably likable character in the book.
While the future is an interesting one, the novelty of it is undone by the fact that the main characters are so unlikable. Hugh Farnham is nothing more than an insensitive bully and egotist married to a lush, whimsically named Grace. Barbara Wells is a woman who thinks nothing of abusing the hospitality of her hostess, Grace, by sleeping with her husband, Hugh, shortly after meeting him.
As luck would have it, Barbara's friend, Karen, also think that it is perfectly fine that her friend should be sleeping with her father, who just happens to be her mother's husband. Though, why Barbara would want to, however, is beyond me. Once in the future, however, Karen, for whatever sick reason, also seems interested in copulating with her father. Meanwhile, her brother, Duke, is nothing more than his drunken mother's enabler, at odds with his father, and a secret racist. The only remotely normal person is Joseph, and even he, too, has his moments.
One simply does not care about most of the characters. In terms of plot, however, the author is on firmer ground. The future that the author has created provides a lot of food for thought, as he covers many issues. Incest, cannibalism, race role reversals, women as sex toys, the neutering of males, as well as using some humans as breeders, are all interesting, though somewhat controversial, concepts. While touched upon, however, these issues are never fully explored or realized. Consequently, the plot, which is, at times, quite interesting, finds itself undone by the unlikability factor of its characters.
Rating:
Summary: Two books in one
Review: First half: A family plus a few extras go into a bomb shelter and are saved from armeggedon. But when they emerge from the shelter they find themselves in a strange land with no other people. Not sure where they are, they begin to form a civilization and set upon the road to the propegation of the species.
Second Half (and just when I was getting into the first half): some "Chosen Ones" of a futuristic civilization show up and make them all slaves, with the exception of the black man, because he is a "Chosen One" too. (based on his skin color) Now the story is about a man trying to rescue his family from opressors.
I liked the first half, and the second was ok, but they don't work that well together. For me, this is sort of typical of Heinlein. For a comparison, check out "Stranger in a Strange Land." Starts out one story and changes completely. Of course Heinlein also uses the book as a platform to preach his societal ideals, which could be called his trademark. And, for good measure he throws in some cannabalism. (This is another good comparison to "Stranger in a Strange Land", in which Heinlein basically endorses cannabalism.) For me, its 3 stars, not his best but not a bad read either.
Rating:
Summary: It grows on you
Review: This book was really hard me to get through I don't know about the rest of you. This book is a fine illistation of how well some of Heinlein's idea have transfered over into the 21st century (moon is a harsh mistress).
Others simply have not (Farnham's Freehold). I really didn't like where the book wound up for the vast majority reads like a sort of Turner Diaries in reverse only this time with the black men on top but than suddenly at the end of the book the main charecters are suddenly forgiven all of their transgresions and its back to square one. In the end the book really doesn't make any kind of sense and too otp it all off the book is almost drianed of the author's usual good humor and wit. Therefore it was really no fun for me too read.
Overall-The author wrote this book for two reasons Either he was trying to make a vast social statment to white people about the shoe being on the other foot someday and that us white poeple had to change our ways.
Or he just really hated black people I honestly don't know. I do know that nothing in this book inspires me to read it over and over agian ike I have done for practically all of Heinlein's other works that I have read.
Rating:
Summary: Controversial but entertaining exploration of ideas.
Review: Clearly one of the most controversial novels by Robert A. Heinlein (author of Starship Troopers, Space Cadet, Stranger In A Strange Land, The Puppet Masters, etc.), pushing the envelope of political correctness a quarter of a century before that phrase was coined.
A typical American family is plunged into the future in a nuclear attack - bomb shelter and all. Survivalism is just the beginning of this engrossing novel; the strange society they discover in the future challenges the reader's sense of decency and tolerance.
A short version of this novel, as cut and revised by Frederik Pohl, appeared in Worlds of If Magazine, 1964. It's easy to see why Pohl censored it; this is the full text. But to call Heinlein racist absurdly ignores his whole body of work - some 30 other novels. This novel explores ideas - including cannibalism; but no one has called the author a cannibal.
Rating: 
Summary: heinleins racism
Review: I am a longtime reader of Heinlein, this time he went off the deep end. Why did he waste a whole novel to show that he was an anti-black racist? Was he a member of the Klan?
Rating:
Summary: Ick
Review: I'm giving this one three stars just because there are some interesting speculations in it about the future of a postapocalyptic world (and because I share the lead character's highly positive view of the United States, as Heinlein clearly does as well). But this one ranks near the bottom of my own list of Heinlein's novels.
For one thing, he wrote this one smack in the middle of his Nuclear Rant Period, and he's very heavily into Soapbox Mode here. This was a time in Heinlein's life when he got (let's put it gently) deeply annoyed at anyone who suggested that massive nuclear buildup wasn't the way to handle the alleged Soviet threat, or that maybe surviving a nuclear holocaust might not be such a terrific thing. (Indeed, he built a bomb shelter at his Colorado Springs home -- _before_ Colorado Springs was anywhere near a likely nuclear target; NORAD didn't exist yet.) His surly attitude (not to mention his tub-thumping sermons about the Benefits of Military Service) informs this entire novel.
For another -- and it's probably a consequence of the first problem -- _not one_ of the characters in this book is even remotely likeable. Joseph, the 'houseboy', is as close as we come to a decent human being, and even _he_ turns out to be sinister and menacing before we're through. It's hard to take sides between Hugh Farnham and his son Duke; the dad's a jerk and the son's a whiny wuss. Hugh's wife Grace is no prize either, and their daughter Karen -- apparently intended to be sweet and innocent -- just comes across as spoiled. And Barbara never gels as a character at all.
For a third thing, even the stuff some readers _like_ about late-period Heinlein isn't well done here. For example, some readers have commented on Heinlein's apparent approval of incest. That shouldn't be news; _all_ of Heinlein's works stand in part for the proposition that moral standards are relative to time and place, and there's quite a bit of (authorially approved) incest in his later works. Nevertheless, _here_ it just doesn't work: in the context of _this_ family (hardly one of Heinlein's freewheeling horny-redheaded-genius open marriages), Karen's remarks to Hugh on the subject just sound out-of-place and weird.
This one belongs next to _Expanded Universe_ on the shelf of books that could well have turned me off to Heinlein if I'd started with them. It's not without merit -- again, there's some interesting social commentary and speculative future history, and I can't fault the patriotic intent -- but for my tastes the merits are far outweighed by the flaws.
|
