This Immortal

Author: Roger Zelazny

This novel was first published in 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation still fresh on people's minds. 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 distant future. Their exploration of this world and their potential lives here are complicated by pregnancies not only of Farnham's daughter, but also Barbara; as well as the fact that they've landed in a world where racial dominance roles have been inverted; with slavery thrown into the mix for good measure. Hugh and Barbara refuse to adapt to being slaves and volunteer for a time-machine experiment that should send them back in time. They return just shortly before the nuclear attack, but find that the world they're in is subtly differentÃ¢so maybe it's not the same universe they started out from. They survive the war and build a life with each other. Why it's on the list: Heinlein here deviates from the linear time-travel-in-the-same-universe narrative of #1; acknowledging that alternate time streams may make it impossible to tell what's really going on. And how would we be able to tell? He 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. A different take on a theme also touched on in #12.