Editing Farnham's Freehold

{{Short description|1964 SF novel by Robert A. Heinlein}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{infobox book | 
 | name          = Farnham's Freehold
 | title_orig    = 
 | translator    = 
 | image         = Ffhc.jpg
 | image_size    = 200px
 | caption       = First edition cover
 | author        = [[Robert A. Heinlein]]
 | illustrator   = 
 | cover_artist  = [[Irv Docktor]]
 | country       = United States
 | language      = [[English language|English]]
 | series        = 
 | genre         = [[Science fiction]]
 | publisher     = [[G. P. Putnam's Sons|G. P. Putnam]] (US)
 | release_date  = [[1964 in literature|1964]]
 | media_type    = Print ([[Hardcover]] & [[Paperback]])
 | pages         = 
 | isbn          = 
 | preceded_by   = 
 | followed_by   = 
}}

'''''Farnham's Freehold''''' is a [[science fiction]] novel by American writer [[Robert A. Heinlein]]. A serialized version, edited by [[Frederik Pohl]], appeared in ''[[Worlds of If]]'' magazine (July, August, and October 1964). The complete version was published in novel form by [[G. P. Putnam's Sons|G. P. Putnam]] later in 1964.

''Farnham's Freehold'' is a [[Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic science fiction|post-apocalyptic]] tale. The setup for the story is a direct hit by a [[nuclear weapon]], catapulting a [[nuclear shelter]] containing Farnham, his wife, son, daughter, daughter's friend, and employee (Joseph) into the future. While writing the story, Heinlein drew on his experience of building a fallout shelter under his home in [[Colorado Springs, Colorado]] in the 1960s.

==Plot==
Hugh Farnham, a white middle-aged man, holds a bridge club party for his alcoholic wife Grace, law-graduate son Duke, college-student daughter Karen, and Karen's friend Barbara. During the [[Contract bridge|bridge game]], Duke berates Hugh for frightening Grace by preparing for a possible [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] nuclear attack. When the attack actually occurs the group, along with Joe, the family's black servant, retreat to the fallout shelter beneath the house.

After several distant nuclear explosions rock the shelter, Hugh and Barbara become sexually intimate, after which the largest explosion of all hits the shelter. With only minor injuries, but with their bottled oxygen running low, the group decides to ensure that they will be able to leave the shelter when necessary. After exiting through an emergency tunnel, they find themselves in a completely undamaged, semi-tropical region apparently uninhabited by humans or other sentient creatures. Several of the group speculate that the final explosion somehow forced them into an [[Multiverse|alternate dimension]].

The group struggles to stay alive by reverting to the ways of the [[American pioneer]]s, with Hugh as the leader—despite friction between Hugh and Duke. Karen announces that she is pregnant and had returned home the night of the attack to tell her parents. Barbara also announces that she is pregnant, but without mentioning that her pregnancy resulted from her sexual encounter with Hugh during the attack. Karen eventually dies during her labor, due to complications, along with her infant daughter the next day.

Grace, whose sanity has been challenged by all these events, demands that Barbara be forced from the group or she will leave. Duke convinces Hugh that he will go with Grace to ensure her safety, but before they can leave, a large aircraft appears overhead. The group is taken captive by blacks, but is spared execution when Joe intervenes by conversation with their captors' leader in [[French language|French]].

The group finds that it has not been transported to another world, but instead is in the [[Future history|distant future]] of their own world. A decadent but technologically advanced black culture keeps either uneducated or [[castration|castrated]] white people as slaves. [[Sexual slavery]] and [[human cannibalism|cannibalism]] are widespread and generally accepted. Adolescent girls are sexually exploited as "bedwarmers" by their owners. Other children are bred on ranches for consumption and slaughtered during puberty (when their flesh is considered particularly tasty) or sometimes earlier.<ref>Chapters 13, 18, 20, 22.</ref>

Each of the characters adapts to the sudden change in black/white roles in different ways. In the end, Hugh and Barbara reject the new era of slavery; they attempt to escape, but are captured. Rather than execute them, Ponse, "Lord Protector" of the house to which they have been enslaved, asks them to volunteer for a [[Time travel|time-travel]] experiment that will send them back to their own time.

They return just prior to the original nuclear attack, and flee in Barbara's car. As they drive they realize that while Barbara had driven a car with an [[automatic transmission]], this car—the same car in every other respect—has a [[manual transmission]], and Farnham deduces that the time-travel experiment worked but sent them into an [[Parallel universes in fiction|alternate universe]].

They gather supplies and flee into the hills, surviving the attack, and live out the rest of their lives.

==Reception==
When the novel was published in 1964, ''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' stated that the "characters have souls of wood pulp" and that "The satire on fall-out shelters, race and sex lacks inspiration."<ref>[https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-a-heinlein/farnhams-freehold/ FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD, by Robert A. Heinlein], at [[Kirkus Reviews]]; originally published June 15, 1964; published online September 25, 2011; retrieved May 12, 2021.</ref>

The ''[[SF Site]]'' described ''Farnham's Freehold'' as "a difficult book", and stated that "At best, [it] is an uncomfortable book with some good points mixed in with the bad, like an elderly relative [who] can give good advice and in the next breath go off on some racist or sexist rant. At worst, ''Farnham's Freehold'' is an anti-minority, anti-woman survivalist rant. It is oftentimes frustrating. It is sometimes shocking. It is never boring."<ref>[http://www.sfsite.com/08a/ff349.htm Farnham's Freehold; Robert A. Heinlein; Narrated by Tom Weinter, unabridged: a review], by Dale Darlage, at the [[SF Site]]; published 2011; retrieved May 12, 2021</ref> The critical work ''The Heritage of Heinlein'' describes ''Farnham's Freehold'' as not "an altogether successful novel" and that the book's sexism "may be a crucial flaw."<ref>''The Heritage of Heinlein: A Critical Reading of the Fiction'' by Thomas D. Clareson and Joe Sanders (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy Book 42), McFarland, 2014, page 155.</ref>

[[Charles Stross]] has rhetorically asked whether "''anyone'' [has] a kind word to say for ... ''Farnham's Freehold''{{-"}}, and then described it as the result of "a [[white privilege|privileged white male]] from California, a notoriously exclusionary state, trying to understand American racism in the pre–[[Martin Luther King Jr.|Martin Luther King]] era. And getting it wrong for [[facepalm]] values of wrong, so wrong he wasn't even on the right map ... but at least he wasn't ignoring it."<ref>[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/crib-sheet-saturns-children.html "Crib Sheet: Saturn's Children"], from ''Charlie's Diary'', by [[Charles Stross]]; published July 13, 2013; retrieved May 12, 2021.</ref>

''[[The New Republic]]'', while conceding Heinlein's desire to "show the evils of ethnic oppression", states that in the process Heinlein "resurrected some of the most horrific racial stereotypes imaginable," ultimately producing "an anti-racist novel only a [[Ku Klux Klan|Klansman]] could love."<ref>[https://newrepublic.com/article/118048/william-pattersons-robert-heinlein-biography-hagiography "A Famous Science Fiction Writer's Descent into Libertarian Madness"], by Jeet Heer, ''[[The New Republic]]''; published June 8, 2014; retrieved May 12, 2021.</ref>

==Freeholders==
The name "freeholders" was adopted by some [[survivalist]]s in the 1980s in reference to the novel.<ref>{{cite news|title=Freeholders Plan to Survive when Economic Chaos Strikes |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/35914170/farnhams_freehold/ |newspaper=The Pantagraph |date=February 22, 1981 |page=31 |via = [[Newspapers.com]] |access-date = September 13, 2019}} {{Open access}}</ref>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*{{ISFDB title|id=6130|title=Farnham's Freehold}}
*{{OL work|id=15411759W|cname=''Farnham's Freehold''}}
* ''Farnham's Freehold'' [https://archive.org/stream/1964-07_IF#page/n5/mode/2up parts one], [https://archive.org/stream/1964-08_IF#page/n71/mode/2up two], and [https://archive.org/stream/1964-10_IF#page/n65/mode/2up three] on the [[Internet Archive]]

{{Heinlein (Novel)|state=collapsed}}

[[Category:American post-apocalyptic novels]]
[[Category:1964 American novels]]
[[Category:Novels by Robert A. Heinlein]]
[[Category:Novels about time travel]]
[[Category:1964 science fiction novels]]
[[Category:Novels first published in serial form]]
[[Category:Works originally published in If (magazine)]]
[[Category:G. P. Putnam's Sons books]]
[[Category:Novels about racism]]
[[Category:Race-related controversies in literature]]