[Sca-cooks] Heinlein was Cannibalism , ritualistic or otherwise

[julian wilson]

Pat <mordonna22 at yahoo.com> wrote:SNIP

Marcha Daffin wrote:
Has anyone read "Farnham's Freehold"? Talk about cannibalism.... Bertha

Yes, Bertha, I read the novel with great enjoyment when it was first published in the UK - in fact I may even have a UK-First Edition copy somewhere in store.
 And [I'm not being 'racist' here, either, so please don't rush to accuse me of  that, anyone] - I have vivid memories of the British Press making much of the "putative" Mau-Mau atrocities against the European settlers and Military. 
 
 So, in that context, for those of us then-young Sci Fi readers, - the 'Farnham's Freehold' storyline of "Native Africans & their descendants" 'getting some of their own back' in such an  'alternate-future history', - and also re-enacting the Nazi "sub-human" ideas [also quite fresh in the memories of most of my generation] to justify it; - wasn't too much of a stretch of the imagination. 
 
Furthermore, I don't know what was published in the US newspapers about the Mau-Mau terror campaign [in what was Kenya,Uganda, & Tanganyka]; - but I heard - [from having an adopted older brother who was out there as Chief Prisons' Officer who used to share his experiences with us when "home-on-leave"] - that the reports in the British Press were heavily Government-censored, omitting the goriest details of the murders of Europeans; - which were said to include cannibalism by the Mau-Mau extremists, - and  the inevitable, rage-fuelled 'backlash' actions of the European vigilante settlers trying to hunt down the Mau-Mau terrorists.
 
In retrospect, I'm sure there were atrocities committed by both sides, - but - from what I recall, - no-one [even the Communists in their wildest accusations while attempting to destabilise the Afreican Colonies], - ever charged the European military, and citizens' militia with committing cannibalism.
[Gods, writing about this now, having taken that look back down the decades, - makes me realise just how old I really am!  Baaaad idea].
 




Yours in service, 
Julian Wilson,
[aka. Messire Matthew Baker/Matthieu Besquer, Governor & Castellan of Jersey, 1486-1497: - "Si vis pacem, para bellum"]
late-medieval Re-enactor; & Historian and Master Artisan to  
"The Companie of the Duke's Leopards",
[the only medieval living-history Group
in "olde" Jersey]
Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com