To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Rating:
Summary: To Bugger Beyond Absurdity
Review: I just took another look at the review of "Time Enough for Love" that I wrote three years ago, and I've got to say that I was too kind. So, "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" will pay the price.

First, though, let me swerve my readers and say a few positive things.

1) You can't not like the spunk and spirit and strength of Maureen Johnson Smith. Heinlein makes it very clear where Lazarus Long inherited his positive character traits.

2) Instead of purporting to biographize a life 24 centuries long and then cynically and blatantly cheating the reader out of all but a handful of reminiscences covering a couple of centuries at most, MJS's life, being "only" about a century in length, is more manageable and thus is successfully and comprehensively sketched to the reader's satisfaction.

3) I was pleasantly surprised that MJS didn't react glibly to the end of her first marriage. Given the skewed values of the Howard Families, even at that early stage of their history, I was expecting Maureen to treat her "Briney" like a returned item at a department store.

Now, the peroration.

In "Time Enough for Love," Lazarus travels back in time and does the nasty with his own mother, though she, of course, isn't made aware of the incest factor beyond "Ted Bronson" being her "remote descendent." But to the degree that you can set aside that taboo, it wasn't distastefully depicted.

But here we get the rest of the story, which is that the love affair was actually a full-blown incestuous orgy that would have made Larry Flynt cringe. And it's clear that this is not an isolated insanity, either. Thank goodness Heinlein wasn't pedofile.

That carnal imagery cuts a broad swath back to "Time Enough" and throughout the rest of "Sunset," whose "climax" not only closes the loop with Maureen confessing her lust for her own father, Ira Johnson, but offers up a coda to the entire Future History saga - "The world as myth" - that is the most self-indulgent plot contrivance I've ever seen in science fiction.

After that finish, I don't know that I could recommend any installment of Heinlein's "Future History" - but I unquestionably urge unsuspecting Heinlein fans to spare their money and the insult to their intelligence that "Sunset" has in store for them.

Rating:
Summary: To Bugger Beyond Absurdity
Review: I just took another look at the review of "Time Enough for Love" that I wrote three years ago, and I've got to say that I was too kind. So, "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" will pay the price.

First, though, let me swerve my readers and say a few positive things.

1) You can't not like the spunk and spirit and strength of Maureen Johnson Smith. Heinlein makes it very clear where Lazarus Long inherited his positive character traits.

2) Instead of purporting to biographize a life 24 centuries long and then cynically and blatantly cheating the reader out of all but a handful of reminiscences covering a couple of centuries at most, MJS's life, being "only" about a century in length, is more manageable and thus is successfully and comprehensively sketched to the reader's satisfaction.

3) I was pleasantly surprised that MJS didn't react glibly to the end of her first marriage. Given the skewed values of the Howard Families, even at that early stage of their history, I was expecting Maureen to treat her "Briney" like a returned item at a department store.

Now, the peroration.

In "Time Enough for Love," Lazarus travels back in time and does the nasty with his own mother, though she, of course, isn't made aware of the incest factor beyond "Ted Bronson" being her "remote descendent." But to the degree that you can set aside that taboo, it wasn't distastefully depicted.

But here we get the rest of the story, which is that the love affair was actually a full-blown incestuous orgy that would have made Larry Flynt cringe. And it's clear that this is not an isolated insanity, either. Thank goodness Heinlein wasn't pedofile.

That carnal imagery cuts a broad swath back to "Time Enough" and throughout the rest of "Sunset," whose "climax" not only closes the loop with Maureen confessing her lust for her own father, Ira Johnson, but offers up a coda to the entire Future History saga - "The world as myth" - that is the most self-indulgent plot contrivance I've ever seen in science fiction.

After that finish, I don't know that I could recommend any installment of Heinlein's "Future History" - but I unquestionably urge unsuspecting Heinlein fans to spare their money and the insult to their intelligence that "Sunset" has in store for them.

Rating:
Summary: Mama Maureen, where are you when we need you?
Review: I love the character of Maureen Johnson Smith, a woman who knew her own mind long before most of those around her - her father the notable exception - knew she had one. Born shortly before 1900, Maureen learned how to live her own life while appearing as prim and proper as a 1910s-1920s housewife should. As I approach 35 I'm dropping more and more of my own "singleness" and reveling in my "bachelorhood". I hope that I can take courage from her attitudes as I face my own challenges in life.

No, I don't agree with everything Maureen does, and yes, the book rambles a bit at the end, but it's okay. It's more than okay! :)

Rating:
Summary: SEX
Review: I think I made the mistake of reading this book as my first Heinlein ever. I noticed early on that he referenced many of his other novels, and sure enough, at the end of the book is an index of which characters appear in which other novels (this will certainly help in picking out the next Heinlein to read).
I don't recommend this book for the naive or modest. Sex is a very integral part of the book. Not just sex, but sex that probably doesn't conform to most people's ideologies or morals.
I enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: SEX
Review: I think I made the mistake of reading this book as my first Heinlein ever. I noticed early on that he referenced many of his other novels, and sure enough, at the end of the book is an index of which characters appear in which other novels (this will certainly help in picking out the next Heinlein to read).
I don't recommend this book for the naive or modest. Sex is a very integral part of the book. Not just sex, but sex that probably doesn't conform to most people's ideologies or morals.
I enjoyed it.

Rating:
Summary: Only for Heinlein fans. Even then, a bad book
Review: I'm a huge Heinlein fan. Read 'em all. Many times.

This book sucks. Badly. Cringeworthy.
You'll be embarrassed to be reading it.
You'll be embarrassed for Heinlein.
You'll be embarrassed for the characters in it.

Owwww. Brain hurts. Must stop thinking about this book.

Rating:
Summary: This is a woman's story!
Review: If you are a female Heinlein-fan who haven't read TSBtS yet, I suggest you run to the nearest book-store to buy it. If you have read it, read it again. This is a woman's odyssey through time, with a main character that is infinitely better than Ulysses. Maureen Johnson Long gives us sage advice, funny tales, and poignant stories on how it is to be a woman in the Twentieth Century.Her history is the history of a free, uninhibited, loving person, who has realized that the more you love, the more you can love. It is amazing that RAH has been accused of senile droodeling in this book, for when you read it, you can see that he is one of the best social commentators in the science fiction-genre.As I said; Read it and love it!!

Rating:
Summary: A truely magnificint wrap up
Review: In R.A.Heinlein's final book, he magages to tell the story of the mother of his most famous charachter with style. Maureen Johnson Smith, who raised children, kept house, lived through some tumultous times both political and personal.

As a homemaker myself, I found her story of her early life rasing children and keeping house to be inspiring, how she could find satisfaction and keep her head up while she, at times, had to serve "fried mush" for supper for her husband and many children when finances were tight. Maureen is the image of the perfect housewife and mother in her early childbearing years according to the standards of that puritanical era, while still able to have her freedom in areas she needs.

Of course, as all later Heinlein books, there is a more than average ammount of copulation going on, and in this work espically, incest takes front seat. While personally the idea of incest is not one I find appealing in the least, I feel that it didn't detract too much from this incredible story.

And of course, as in all Heinlein books, both early and late you'll find political and social commentary in plenty, in this more than many of his works I belive. I'm sure conservatives would find a strange dichotomy between the seemingly endless orgies, incest, and sex of other varieties, and at the same time the stress on family values, sticking around for the kids, and what the horrible consequences can be of broken families for the children. The faults of Democracy are expounded upon, and I have to agree that much of what he wrote is becoming nowadays. The citizens are voting themselves "bread and circuses" and bleeding the nation to death in endless social programs.

Heinlein maganged in this book to both tell the story of a remarkable woman living through harsh and crazy times, and to weave together the loose ends of many of his other stories...but still, I belive that even more could have been written after this book tying up a few loose ends started in this book. Alas, the grand master died too soon.

Rating:
Summary: A truely magnificint wrap up
Review: In R.A.Heinlein's final book, he magages to tell the story of the mother of his most famous charachter with style. Maureen Johnson Smith, who raised children, kept house, lived through some tumultous times both political and personal.

As a homemaker myself, I found her story of her early life rasing children and keeping house to be inspiring, how she could find satisfaction and keep her head up while she, at times, had to serve "fried mush" for supper for her husband and many children when finances were tight. Maureen is the image of the perfect housewife and mother in her early childbearing years according to the standards of that puritanical era, while still able to have her freedom in areas she needs.

Of course, as all later Heinlein books, there is a more than average ammount of copulation going on, and in this work espically, incest takes front seat. While personally the idea of incest is not one I find appealing in the least, I feel that it didn't detract too much from this incredible story.

And of course, as in all Heinlein books, both early and late you'll find political and social commentary in plenty, in this more than many of his works I belive. I'm sure conservatives would find a strange dichotomy between the seemingly endless orgies, incest, and sex of other varieties, and at the same time the stress on family values, sticking around for the kids, and what the horrible consequences can be of broken families for the children. The faults of Democracy are expounded upon, and I have to agree that much of what he wrote is becoming nowadays. The citizens are voting themselves "bread and circuses" and bleeding the nation to death in endless social programs.

Heinlein maganged in this book to both tell the story of a remarkable woman living through harsh and crazy times, and to weave together the loose ends of many of his other stories...but still, I belive that even more could have been written after this book tying up a few loose ends started in this book. Alas, the grand master died too soon.

Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING!!!!!
Review: It's really amazing the plot seems so reallistic that you want to look up the charaters in the phonebook.