Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison is a 192 page standalone novella published by Tachyon Publications.

Genre:

Speculative Fiction, Satire

Description

When a radical think tank clones America’s founding fathers, The Boys from Brazil meets the bicentennial in this ingeniously satirical mashup of U.S. history, cloning, and technocracy gone terribly wrong.

The trouble starts when a curious teenager, Benjamin, finds an iPhone in his privy. The problem is, it’s supposed to be 1750.

Ben takes his discovery to his brothers—Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised in isolation on an island plantation by a firm but kind woman, Mary Libertas. All four of them chafe at Mary’s restrictions upon them—especially Thomas, who has impregnated yet another servant.

Meanwhile, their de facto father figure, Jeff Hancock, complains to the shadowy Antediluvian Society that it is past the time to explain to the boys where they come from and what they must do: Run America the way it used to be run.

In this more-than-slightly-absurdist novella, Philip K. Dick Award–winning author Meg Elison (Find Layla) skewers those looking to an idyllic past to solve the problems they continue to create.

Opening Line

It took Benjamin Franklin twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds to discover there was pornography on the internet.

My Thoughts

This novella is satire that explores what it might look like if a group of billionaires who idealize an imagined paradisiac past for the U.S. cloned some of the nation’s founding fathers so that they might make America great again. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington are between the ages of 15 and 20 when they deduce that the world they live in (on an island full of actors who carry on as if it were the year 1750 in an attempt to mold the young men to be as close as possible to their progenitors) is a fabrication. This story details what ensues.

This book is scathing political commentary. I think the idea behind it is great, and it’s clear the author and I share a lot of views on the subject matter involved, but the experience of reading was nothing stand out for me. But if you’re looking for social critique presented through a smart premise and in an amusing manner rather than a transportive reading experience, then look no further!