Heinlein of his time...

If you read my other reviews, you know that I am a Heinlein fan. This is an excellent recording of a novel unique to the Heinlein cannon. Tom Weiner delivers a wonderful performance using a number of unique and engaging voices. When the story lags, the excellent narration carries things along nicely.

About half the book is the story of a family that survives a nuclear holocaust, and lives a survivalist life. The second half deals with their lives when they encounter a future culture. To go any further will spoil the plot.

But Heinlein always uses his novels to comment on culture, and this one addresses slavery and the slave mentality, marriage and fidelity, and prejudice and bigotry. Remember that this book was written in the early 1960s. What seems silly and obvious now would have been cutting edge and liberal then. The book has been criticized for its language and misogyny. No swearing - but lots of racial insensitivity.

This should not be your first Heinlein novel (Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or Starship Troopers are better choices). But if you are curious about the evolution of this sci-fi master, or if you want to hear a fair story with lots of social commentary from RAH, then this is for you!

32 people found this helpful

I enjoyed it despite a pro-nuke eugenics slant

40 plus years ago as a teenager I spent many afternoons and evenings locked away in my bedroom reading Robert A Heinlein, and I still enjoy his stories and his social libertarianism (advocacy for unashamed nudism, polygamy, etc).

This is an enjoyable story and in spite of several ways this book is philosophically alien to me (described briefly below) Heinlein is too good a craftsman to let his polemics bog down the plot.

Some call this book racist because it posits a future where the northern hemisphere was wiped out by nuclear war and despotic Africans have become the master race and whites are slaves. There are definite racist elements from cultural context of 1950s America that makes a modern reader cringe (use of the n word on several occasions for example), but my sense is that by reversing races in the slave/master relationship Heinlein is being anti-racist more than racist.

This story appears to spring from Heinlein's own experience of building a bomb shelter during the cold war and imagining post-holocaust scenarios. As such the pro-nuclear polemics beat you over the head with notions that an all-out nuclear war is survivable, including the premise of this story that if you get a direct hit it sends you 2000 years into the future.

Heinlein admits he "has been worried about America for a long time" and this part of his story is a troubling subtext - that you can save the best part of America by killing off 95% of the people. Taking this a bit further, it also troubles me the way Heinlein embraces eugenics - "eliminating the bottom third would be good for the gene pool", and asking his daughter if her unborn child "comes from good stock." These notions are so reminiscent of Nazi philosophies that they are genuinely troubling elements.

9 people found this helpful

Flawed in ever way.

I would rather listen to trump tweets on a loop than attempt to finish this garbage. wooden characters, preposterous love sex scene at the beginning reads like the authors leg over fantasy as does the rest of what I could bare to listen too. Its nothing more than some sad middle aged mans idea of the ultimate power trip.

2 people found this helpful

Heinlein takes some getting used to.

Heinlein's books are somewhat dated - they contain sexism and other potentially offensive viewpoints, but the story itself is interesting sci-fi and the narration is well done.

2 people found this helpful

Classic, inteligently written SciFi

I grew up reading Heinlein in the 70’s, was surprised to find one of his books that I hadn't read and thoroughly enjoyed him in the 21st century. Ignore any comments about racial language, its just not relevant to a book written in the 60's.

4 people found this helpful

Good Book

Any additional comments?

This is my 1st book by Robert Heinlein. And I have to say I did enjoy the book, I really did, but a couple things were less than perfect IMO.

#1 I got lost at the beginning of the book on which characters were talking, not sure if that's just me or if it was the narration. Other than that part, the narration was great.

#2 The ending was good, but I found myself looking for Farnham’s Freehold part 2. I wanted to know more. Its not a cliff hanger, but i do feel I have some loose ends that need tied.

Going into the book, I only knew it was about a guy surviving a nuclear Holocaust (which is the reason I got it). I enjoyed listening about how things would be in that situation, with the "Life Boat Rules" and all of a sudden having to reinvent EVERYTHING.

It is true this book has some racial insensitivity in it, but that's not what this book is about. The author isn't trying to see how many times he can throw out derogatory terms (if I recall correctly there only seemed to be 1 character that liked to use such words). The second half of the book isn't really about the "life of a slave" (work, work, try to escape, caught, whipped) type thing. Nor is it about "the shoe is on the other foot and lets see how you like it". It is much more political than that.

All in all
This book is a good listen and Its a good 10 hours of entertainment for 15 bucks.

4 people found this helpful

Avoid!

All the charm of a low budget pornographic film, but lower quality writing. Fifty Shades or Gray read by Gilbert Gottfried is a better treatise on racism than this prepper fantasy and about as redeeming of a listen. it would be a better use of your time to listen to a ten hour loop of the guy in the Snickers commercial say, "Great googly moogly."

1 person found this helpful

Strange

I've listened twice, only to escape from boredom. I had a hard time with the main character. his mannerisms and sense of right/wrong are from a long past era.

1 person found this helpful

DADDY, YOU CAN HAVE ME

IF YOU WANT ME
Within the first two hours and chapters, Hugh manages to get three women naked and commit adultery while his wife is drugged on the other side of the curtain. The daughter knows about the adultery and approves, making friends with the woman. She also admits that she would love to sleep with her dad. Three men and three women survive an atomic blast. They live by their selves for months. All the women are interested in the old man Hugh, they have no interest in the two younger men.

HE MADE FAST TIME TO THE SLUT'S QUARTERS
Sluts and Studs are a major part of the second half of this book. There is a science fiction story in this book and I was able to listen to the whole thing, as I wanted to know what was going to happen. Parts of the story bothered me, such as why these survivors never explored to see if anyone else survived. I also knew right away what happened to them, but they came up with two other ideas and never thought of the real one, that you has the reader will suspect right away. We are led to believe that Hugh is okay to commit adultery because his wife is fat and a drunk. We are led to believe it is okay for Hugh to threaten to shoot his own son, cause he is a stupid spoiled mamma's boy. Hugh is pictured as the perfect he-man. His wife and son are not his fault. When you read this you will realize that his wife and son are the way they are, because of Hugh. There was a very tense time, when Hugh's daughter has a baby. This chapter was well written.

My library is now empty of Heinlein books. I will continue to read Heinlein, but it will only be his earlier books and I will check out the reviews, to make sure they are not in the pro incest category. I hope reviewers will be truthful and call a spade a spade. I hope those who are truthful will not be banned to the back pages, by dreamy eyed Heinlein fans that think his #### don't stink.

21 people found this helpful

Not Heinlein's best work...

Normally I like Heinlein, even though I would not call him a hardcore SciFi author. Normally he brings a lot of cultural nuance to his stories that make him unique, which I like. However, in this case, the "cultural references" amount to preachy neoconservatism which results in characters that are more caricature than anything else. The women in the story are either drunks, airheads or sex objects. The "hero" appears to be cut from the same cloth as the cigar-chomping army general of the Incredible Hulk, and the son is portrayed as a weak, worthless spoiled rich kid. The only interesting character was the "butler" which in this case Heinlein chose to make a stereotypical black servant complete with a snappy repertoire of "Yes boss!" Really? I could not even get through the third chapter of this sorry excuse of a story. Unfortunately the narrator just reinforces the already ridiculous stereotypes.

2 people found this helpful