Farnham's Freehold

Well, Heinlein was never one for complex characters, the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, the annoying ones are annoying and so on. And, of course, we get some very awkward social situations, especially for the reader, if not for the characters themselves. Heinlein is never shy to wear his opinions and stances on his sleeve, so in this particular book we get a somewhat heavy handed lecture about fun topics like racism, incest, nuclear war, slavery and such.

The book starts on the brink of a nuclear holocaust which somehow transports our heroes to a weirdy non nuclear bombed place. The first half of the book focuses on the problems of a very limited group of survivors, basically the Farnham family led by its patriarch. There is an bait-and-switch at the halfway point, when in turns out that the survivors are actually two millenia in the future, and the world they know has changed, a lot.

Not Heinlein's best work, and while when he's good he's great, when he's not that good, he's still very readable, fun, and always, always thought provoking.