This old novel (copyrighted 1964) is an unusual sort of sci-fi. It
not only deals with time travel on earth but also deals a blow to the
issue of racism, where one race puts itself above all others.
It
starts with 20th century USA, in the home of Hugh Farnham. There are
six adults, five whites (Hugh, his wife, son, daughter and her female
friend) and one black servant Joe, a college student. Just as world War
III takes off, they move into Hugh’s bomb shelter underground. One final
atomic bomb hits the vicinity of the home, displacing them in time by
about two thousand years.
They crawl out of the shelter not to meet destruction but what looks
like virgin semi-tropical land. For months they survive on the land,
gardening and hunting and fishing. When the two young ladies announce
they are pregnant, with conception presumably before the bomb attack, it
is mostly received as good news, as it would “broaden” the gene pool of
the human race. Or so they think. They are assuming they are the only
humans alive.
Shortly after the tragic loss of one of the ladies (Hugh’s daughter)
during prolonged labor, followed by the unhealthy baby the next day, the
story takes a new turn. Our survivors are visited by other people,
arriving in what looks like a spaceship. It turns out the Farnham clan
had been trespassing on these people’s land. The Farnhams are taken
prisoners without a fight, as these new people have superior technology
that would have made any effort to fight back tantamount to suicide.
In this new world, black people reign supreme and pure whites are
genetically-controlled slaves. Blacks are the “Chosen” and so
formerly-lowly Joe is automatically given preferential treatment and
accepted as one of them, while Hugh and the rest of his family are
enslaved. Hugh is made a special servant, to translate the books he’d
stocked in the bomb shelter into the new language of the people, a
language that seems to him to have roots in African and Asian languages
of his time. He tries in the process to piece together what had happened
to the world he used to know.
And just as black readers might start enjoying the sudden elevation
of their race, we are given yet another jolt. The rulers are cannibals!
They consider whites as low as animals, and get them bred and fattened
for meat euphemistically called “pork,” along with pigs! This discovery
by Hugh lead him to plan for escape with his new family of three (his
daughter’s friend and their twin boys) to the mountains where the
”savages” live free of slavery. (His wife and son have gone “native,”
being treated like pets in the master’s house and would have nothing to
do with him.)
Hugh’s plan is short-lived; they are caught before they could even
leave the premises. They are taken back to a period of captivity, at the
end of which they are given some difficult options to choose from. None
of the options suit them, so then rather than have them killed, the
lord of the mansion sends them back to their own time, back to 20th
Century USA on the night of the bombing. Or so it seems...
In the final moments, Hugh has to contemplate the issue of racism,
later with his new wife. Hugh has earlier recalled a place called
Pernambuco where the rich plantation owners were French-educated blacks
and the servants and field hands mostly white. And hear this:
‘But
Hugh knew that the situation was still more confused. Many Roman
citizens had been “black as the ace of spades” and many slaves of the
Romans had been as blond as Hitler wanted to be—so any “white man” of
European ancestry was certain to have a dash of Negro blood. Sometimes
more than a dash. That southern Senator, ... the one who had built his
career on “white supremacy” ... had had many transfusions—and his blood
type was such that the chances were two hundred to one that its owner
had not just a touch of the tar brush but practically the whole tar
barrel.’ (page 297)
Their eventual conclusion: Racism and abuse of power has nothing to do with color. Anyone can do it.
