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.

My Review:

I picked this up on the Fourth of July, because it looked like it would be the perfect read for this mixed-feelings semiquincentennial birthday of the United States AND because that cover was so intriguing I couldn’t resist.

And it was perfect for this particular weekend. Not because of its SFnal premise – which has been done before – but for what it says about the U.S. at this particular point in time. And that it says it with dry wit and dark humor and more than a bit of satirical poking at our beliefs in American exceptionalism and the current state of affairs in these (not so) United States.

The premise is both utterly SF and completely bonkers. (And a whole lot closer to being plausible than Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil). Between the now everyday occurrence of IVF and artificial insemination, and the not too far distant possibilities of human cloning, the idea of recreating the “Fab Four” of the American Revolution – Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it was when Levin’s book was published in 1976. (Ironically, now, the year of the US bicentennial.)

However, human cloning isn’t nearly as simple as cloning a plant or even a mouse. Which is where this book gets interesting. Because it’s not about the tech. It’s about the people. And people are not just collections of cells, they’re collections of memory and experience. Things that are a LOT harder to replicate.

Because time marches on.

So the idea of a group of über wealthy men hiding their desire to clone themselves and live forever behind a project to clone the “Founding Fathers” of the country in order to recreate a political system they believe will favor “their kind of people” and that they are certain they will be able to control isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. In fact, it’s that possibility that makes the story work – particularly as the plan falls apart.

That plan hinges on four men who were leaders – and who are raised to BE leaders. Except in complete isolation from the 21st century world in the hopes of re-creating the men they used to be in a world that is not the one that created their originals.

They’re not supposed to eat from the “Tree of Knowledge” of where the world is now until they’re ready to be led by their noses to lead everyone else. But as Robert Burns famously penned in 1785, a quote with which Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Adams would have been all too familiar, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.”

All because Benjamin Franklin discovered the wonders of the smartphone ahead of his time. Of course it was Franklin. Who else would it have been?

Escape Rating A-: I absolutely DID pick this book up for the cover. The story is a LOT deeper and more thought provoking that that cover implies, but that cover, and the opening scene, were more than intriguing enough to pull the reader in. Once I was in, I was hooked.

The idea behind the story is both very SFnal AND completely rooted in today at the same time. It’s doing what SF does best – taking a look at present conditions while providing just enough of a “fig leaf” to let the reader step outside the real world while looking at, well, the real world. There are messages if you look for them, but if a reader doesn’t want to look, the story is more than enough to carry them past those points. (Even if they shouldn’t let themselves be carried past – IMHO.)

The cloning part of this story has been done before in one fashion or another. Levin’s The Boys from Brazil cloned Hitler. Multiple times. Problems ensued. Jurassic Park is about the de-extinction of dinosaurs through cloning. But the concept has also been treated more thoughtfully, and more on point for this story, in both The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler, about an attempt at de-extinctioning the woolly mammoth, and more recently and much closer to the issues of Foundling Fathers, in Cameron Reed’s Hugo-nominated novelette, The Girl That My Mother is Leaving Me For.

Because this story isn’t about the process of cloning or even the process of raising and educating those “foundling fathers”. It’s about the way the scheme falls apart and what happens in the aftermath.

Just because the boys have the same genetics as their progenitors, that does not mean they’re going to turn out the same as their originals, because it’s impossible to fully recreate the experiences that made them who they were. Even the isolation that keeps them from learning the “truth” of the 21st century is a factor. They may not know the present but as they reach adulthood they know they do not possess the liberty they have been taught to cherish.

(This is the part of the story that most aligns with Cameron Reed’s story, in that it is possible to recreate some of the conditions that made the original person so singular, but the world and its changes mean that it can’t REALLY be done.)

When the scheme to “recreate” these giants of American history collapses and is exposed, they see the world as it really is – and that it is NOT the world they were prepared for. And the way that works out, both for the Antediluvian Society (yes, really) that funded the project and for the young men themselves is all about the way that the world currently operates, both for them and for us.

Looking back at the past will not move us forward, both because the past is another country and because the past is gone. It’s what we do in the present to make the future that matters. No matter how much some might wish to return to a past that they believe is more glorious – or more favorable – or more controllable – or more in keeping with their own antediluvian prejudices.

Foundling Fathers turned out to be a surprising and perfect read for this Independence Day. The characters of those “Founding Fathers” managed to portray these towering figures as young men who are less than larger than life yet still reflect the characteristics we remember them for – even as their personalities were extended into a world the originals never imagined. The story is both witty and biting – and it bites in exactly the places and people it should in this fascinating and fantastic story.