The Harrad Experiment

I read this book as a frshman in college and it really did change my perceptions on life. I found myself getting lost in the philosophy and taking a journey within myself as I journied with the students Stanley, Shiela, Beth, and Harry through their four years at Harrad. I think that this is a book that all young people should read before their beliefs get set in stone.

Actually my mom didn't want me to read this book. I mean, I started it and couldn't stop . You might be wondering why I said my mom didn't want me to read it well I'm 13. I had to sneak around to read it but it was worth it. Thank you so much Robert Rimmer for giving me somthing to read other than the mindless stuff I usually do.

I read this book when I visited my sister at her college, back in 1970; I was 12 at the time. This is funny, in that Rimmer's vision set my "over-intelligent" mind seeking the kind of intimacy, honesty, and sensitivity that he described...and I hadn't even gone to high school!I've re-read the book several times over the years. I find the characters entrancing and their explorations enlightening. I agree that the book feels dated in this cynical world that poises at the brink of a new century, but the essence of the novel--the exploration of the fullness and freedom of human loving--is as fresh as advice that has never been followed.Now staring down the barrel of 40, I still find the joyous exuberance of Harrad to be uplifting, entertaining, educational. Reading the book for perhaps the dozenth time is like visiting old friends who still hold their beautiful vision close to their hearts. Would that I could have shared in that experiment. Would that I had been so fortunate, so strong, as to forge this daring new blueprint for human loving. But I still do my part.I strongly recommend this book to any and all who would explore the greatest realms of human passion. With love like this, we might finally enter that long-fabled human millenium.

I first read The Harrad Experiment in 1973. I was about to leave home for college in a few days, and I wanted something to read on the journey. That notion didn't work; I got the book home and stayed up most of the night reading it. But it did work after all; I read it again on the trip, and many times since. Bob Rimmer's writing (in Harrad, and in his other books which I read later) was a major influence on my feelings about life and love. (Perhaps getting to me at a susceptible age helped.) Harrad taught me that (to steal the words of another writer, Robert Heinlein, whose character Lazarus Long said it better than I can) "the more you love, the more you can love" and (in Rimmer's own words) that "love is laughter, too". Harrad isn't perfect; it is in certain ways a period piece, and Bob Rimmer has the occasional sexist moment (though remarkably few for a book that came out in 1966). But it remains the best fictional introduction to polyamory (a word that didn't even exist when Harrad was written) that I have encountered. The 25th Anniversary Edition has an extra bonus; a short autobiography of Bob Rimmer. All fans of Rimmer's work will want to read it; it's almost worth the cost of a new book, even if you already have a dogeared copy of the old Bantam edition of The Harrad Experiment. There is also an updated bibliography/reading list, so you'll actually have a chance of being able to find the books.

I missed out on reading this watershed book when it was "hip" to do so in the late 1960s. A little too young to appreciate it at that time--it's just sad thinking about the end of the so-called sexual revolution with the onslaught of yuppies, AIDS, and political conservatism starting in the 1980s. But having just finished it, I'll support the previous reviewer--"Harrad" is an excellent, engaging, always entertaining book! Ah, would the world of relations between thinking men and women be as utopian (and as free) as Rimmer describes at mythical Harrad College (an amalgam of HARvard & RADcliffe), located on a mysterious estate in tree-lined Cambridge, Mass. Somewhere, somewhen, we can only hope that a 21st century version of the Harrad Experiment will occur. The premise holds up well after 30 years and could still serve as a model for a bold community of college educated, liberal-minded, free-thinking men and women where a nonmonogamous--perhaps even bisexual--recreational public and private sex and clothing-optional lifestyle is respected as an individual right of freedom ; it should be celebrated as a sign of personal expression and liberation, regardless of age or body type. Unfortunately, the Baby Boomers of the '60s--who could have sustained the Harrad revolution-- have already settled into staid monogamy,babymaking, and church going.