Farnham's Freehold

This novel was first published in 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation—a real apocalypse!—still fresh on people's minds. In this case, Hugh Farnham, a middle-aged competent Heinlein survivor type, manages to get his family and a visiting friend, Barbara, into a fallout shelter. After some explosions, one of them uncomfortably close and interrupting a tryst between Farnham and Barbara, they are forced to exit the shelter because of a lack of oxygen and find themselves in what looks like a parallel world of some kind. There follows an exploration of this world, which is complicated by pregnancies not only of Farnham's daughter, but also Barbara. Complicated also by the fact that they've landed in a world where racial dominance and roles have been inverted; with slavery thrown into the mix. Not a parallel world, it seems, but merely a distant future. Why it's at this place on the list: Like in all good post-apocalypse novels, this one focuses on the characters and their responses and personal development when confronted with these circumstances. Heinlein uses the novel to explore the master-slave relationship by the inversion of racial stereotypes, and provides his very own inimitable analysis of human relationships. Ratings: Grimness: 2, Bizarreness: 1, Hope: 4, Fun-factor: 5.