“Well, I’ve got a new obsession.
Charles Hinton has a good collection of books on Kindle. Including The Billion Dollar Lottery, War of the Dinosaurs, and Agent Cold Beer On Assignment.
In The Racist Time Traveler, we meet a professor who decides to quit his job, buy a tractor and convert it into a time machine. Why? Because he’s decided that he’d be happier in the south during the pre-war-of-northern-aggression era. Specifically because he doesn’t like black people, and the whole slave owner thing feels like a good gig.
Now, the racism in here is…shamefully for me, sorta funny. Because it feels like the author is not racist and had to kind of imagine what a racist person would say. For example, this sweet burn:
“I’ve been working on this tractor for so long that I didn’t realize so many blacks moved in this neighborhood. But where I’m going, the only moving they’ll be doing is moving cotton.”
DEFINITELY a professor of speech and communication.
So this professor is building his time machine, and a neighbor comes over. The neighbor and the professor take a time jaunt to the future where the neighbor sees winning lottery numbers for three days in the future. Which he then uses to win the lottery.
Now, a CRUCIAL detail that’s missing here, this neighbor is black. And it’s CRUCIAL because this neighbor uses his new wealth and the professor’s time machine to go back in time himself and somehow reverse American history so that white people are slaves and black people are masters. Therefore, when the professor heads back, ready to begin his new plantation life, he discovers his neighbor in the position of power. And the professor is enslaved.
Smashcut back to the present, a newspaper is delivered to the professor’s front door with the headline “The First White Secretary of State.” Which is just a bizarre choice. I would think a higher OR lower office would work better here. President? Great. Governor of Alabama? Also great. Secretary of State? Ehhhhh…
I have a few questions:
Why this racist would give a black man a ride in his time machine is beyond me. I guess he’s maybe a jerk and has no friends, and he just takes who he can get.
When building a time machine, how does this professor elect to start with a tractor? That seems like a strange place to begin. Although maybe it’s genius. Maybe we haven’t cracked time travel yet because no one has gone tractor.
This could go on forever.
The big question, is Charles Hinton a secret genius? Because I was legitimately laughing my ass off. I guess we’ll find out once I read Agent Cold Beer on Assignment.”