To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Rating:
Summary: Heinlein is the epitome of great writing..
Review: Like most Heinlein books I found this one fantastic.. This is the last Novel that Heinlein wrote before he passed away in 1988.. This book is an account of the early life of Maureen Johnson Growing up in Missouri... Here we learn many things about Maureen and her family that was not known otherwise until this novel came out... On the outside Maureen is a respectful and gracious woman... She has a great husband and children who she adores, very close friends that are like family and a father who is her mentor and role model that also lives in Maureen's home.. Sounds like I am describing the Walton's...But Unlike the Walton's Maureen only appears this way as to not arouse suspicion and gossip among the local denizens... She is a woman displaced in the early 20th century where she puts up a facade for her neighbors as she loves sex too much (which is improper for a young woman of her time) and involves herself with the act of infidelity... So while this book has many taboos, we explore the reasons of their occurrences, such as infidelity... We discover that these taboos originated as Maureen is a long lifer.. She is the mother of Lazarus long ("Time enough for love") who is the oldest person in human history.. Long lifers first originated through an organization called the Howard Foundation.. This is a group of individuals that consisted of offspring/desendants from families that had all ancestors who lived to be 100 years or more getting together with other families who filled the same criteria and producing offspring.. This was an early form of selective breeding as not too many people in the early 20th century lived to be more than 100 years old..Threrfor the members of the Howard foundation had a strong propensity towards being prolific and as such the group was small and required multiple partners who's primary goal was progeny which is the basis for why infidelity was favored... Other than the taboos this book entails, which would cause much upset among many folks it still makes for a great read... It also ties in together some missing gaps from other Heinlein books such as "Time Enough for love" "The Number of the Beast" and "The cat who walks through walls." In these books we know of Maureen but not in much detail as this book entails...If you found Lazarus Long an interesting character than you will no doubt find that the same could be said for Lazaurs Long's mother Maureen...

Rating:
Summary: Incestuous
Review: Look, I used to love Heinlein. I have read much of his work and found it to be interesting, challenging, and rewarding.

But this book was a great, big, self-indulgent dissapointment.

First of all, I find no titilation in incest. When it seems to be endorsed every third page or so, it gets more than a bit repugnant.

The elitist additudes in this book, such as the idea of a secret society that supports marriages between people from long-lived families, troubled me. Of course that organization has very progressive ideas about incest.

Heinlein writes about a woman who's additudes towards sex are a male fantasy (except the incest, most men I know, including me, have no fantasies about). Are we supposed to believe this?

Tedious, but even Heinlein's tedium is better than a lots of writer's best effort.

Oh, did I mention this book features lots and lots of incest?

Rating:
Summary: one of the best books ever
Review: Maureen is a woman's woman. She is smart, funny, and ahe has a great head on her shoulders. Some stuffy people might question Maureen's morals and actions, but I am very impressed by her. Through Maureen, Mr. Heinlein ridicules ridiculous thought and conventional thinking. This book might be difficult to grasp if you haven't read The Number of the Beast, The Cat who walks throught Walls, or any of the books his future-history series. Its a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Just wonderful
Review: Maureen Long is a wonderful character, and this a wonderful story. The outrageous notion of incest, eugenics, the strange topic of spouse swapping, the clash of conforming to gender roles while challenging every single accepted norm in society..... somehow this man made it all fly in this book. How did he do it? The same way he made us love characters like Lazarus and Jubal Harshaw even as we shook our heads at what old poops they were. Heinlein manages to make us feel that these issues are par for the course, we become lost in his world(s) so easily. Be warned, you are about to undergo a Vulcan Mind Meld and you will be forever changed.

Rating:
Summary: First love, last love, forbidden love
Review: My first love in Science Fiction was, and still is Robert Heinlein. He created memorable characters, intriguing future societies and usually stunning plotlines.

I like nearly all his books enough to give each 5 stars. But a few leave me unsatisfied, and "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" is one of them. Not that I didn't buy it, devour it, and re-read it about twenty times. (It IS written by the Master, after all.) But this is, forgive me O Great One, not his best work.

It's been said Heinlein was maundering in his dodder years. Well, he was seriously ill for two or so years before he wrote this novel. But I think RAH on a bad day was sharper than most of us on a good one. No, I think this novel suffers from "wrap-up complex." This is my term for a thing authors do when they want closure on a character or subject, but have EITHER written themselves out or have NOT yet finished. Hence, the "closure" doesn't work. If you want other examples of failed closure, Arthur Conan Doyle comes to mind, trying to kill off Sherlock at the Reichenbach Falls, and I bet you can think of lots of these yourself.

Maureen Johnson, the mother of Woodrow Wilson Johnson a.k.a. Lazarus Long, is the center of this novel that harks back to Maureen's first marriage to Brian ("Time Enough for Love") through the Future History novels ("The Past Through Tomorrow", "Methuselah's Children") up and past the end of "Time Enough." That's great--we want Maureen's story after the shocking yet seductive story of Ted "Bronson" aka Lazarus and his affair with Maureen when he travels back in time in "Time Enough for Love." Maureen is HOT, and I am not just referring to her flame-red hair.

But Heinlein goes way out, with Maureen more than hinting that she had the hots for her own father Ira. There is a lot more free-sex blather at the end of the book that, though I am hardly a prude, did not particularly appeal to me. The whole plot seemed, as wrap-up novels will, contrived and stupid. And excesses of incest are eventually nauseating. It's ok to push the envelope on societal taboo for speculative fiction's purposes, but ultimately, a taboo IS a taboo and thus not something the average reader (like me) want ENORMOUS gobs of in their reading. At that point, it gets sickening and should be relinquished to the slash fiction realm. In my opinion.....

HOWEVER, having ranted about all that, other than the plot flaws and ramblings, it's nice to have Maureen's book, even if flawed, and I am glad Heinlein had time before he left us to pen the story for us. I just wish it had been done with more finesse.

RECOMMENDED WITH THE ABOVE RESERVATIONS

Rating:
Summary: I would like to write a longer review... but one thing....
Review: One thing stands out about how good this book is for me... Upon learning this was his last story, I remembered what the ending was, and I cried. This book was wonderful, and I use many of Heineleins later ideas to guide my life. But this book made me terribly happy, and wonderfully sad that the man is gone, and I will never be able to walk to the store, and see a new book by him again...

Rating:
Summary: The last, and worst, of Heinlein's novels.
Review: Robert Heinlein fans tend to fall into two categories: Those who prefer his earlier fiction, and those who prefer his later work; the division line is GENERALLY around "Stranger in a Strange Land", though a couple works straddle this period since Stranger took an inordinate amount of time to publication.

I, fortunately or unfortunately, fall into the first category. Heinlein suffered a definite decline in writing style as he aged, both in technical prose style (no longer as "lean and mean" as his writing used to be, his books tended to bloat and wander more) and in subject matter (he focused on sex, immortality, and on more and more "tie-ins" between his other stories).

It is a tribute to the power of Heinlein's writing that despite the fact that I often disliked his later work I still found myself drawn into the material and reading it anyway. This was true until _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_.

TSBtS is yet another in the far-too-long saga of Lazarus Long and His Time-Travelling Sex Maniacs. Lazarus and his friends were very interesting characters when we first encountered them (Methuselah's Children) and still had some interesting tidbits to be found when reading about them in _Time Enough For Love_. However, subsequent works (_Number of the Beast_, _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_) changed their essential appeal and turned them into rather quirky _Deus Ex Machina_(Machinae? What's the term for more than one Deus Ex Machina?). The fact that it follows Lazarus' mother for most of her life while alternating with a rather tired mystery plotline simply adds to this sad degeneration. The Heinlein magic finally failed. This proved to be the first, and only, Heinlein book I had to force myself to finish. It escapes being a "1" rated book only by the lingering traces of competence that only death could eradicate from Heinlein's prose. A tragic end to an illustrious and in fact legendary career. If you do read this one, go back and read some of his earlier material to get the taste out of your mouth.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended for the experienced Lazarus Long fan
Review: Robert Heinlein is my favorite author. I may have read every science fiction story he had ever published. My computer is even named Mycroft (ref: Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

So, it was no surprise that I really enjoyed this book. On the other hand, I could see this book would be a strange read if you had not already read most or all of the other "Howard Families" related books.

In this book, Maureen, the main character, is dictating her life's story while held captive under unusual circumstances. There are many loops; personal, familial, historic, temporal and ironic, in her life that entertain, intrigue, and pique the imagination. Almost all of the stories that make up her life are related to other SF works that RAH had published in the 40 years before this book was released, so I loved the way it reminded me of so many stories I had not thought about in years. You may have to re-read several other of RAH's works after this experience.

Maureen is a precocious, lusty, passionate, and determined lady who's life covers the transistion from the horse and buggy era into the modern space age and beyond. She has solid values, but they are not often the sames ones that our society condone.

There is not much of a specific story line in this book, so that may disappoint the SF fan who likes action leading to a goal or conclusion. This book is not like 'Moon is a Harsh Mistress' or 'Starship Troopers'.

This book has lots of sexual activity, sometimes occurring with various partners whom our society suggests are 'wrong'. This could be enough to prevent some folks who prefer conventional sexual mores from enjoying the story, or cause them to disapprove of, or dislike Maureen.

I happen to like her, and would love her as a friend, or more, if she were a real person in my life.

Heinlein's books often present social mores which differ from the Puritanical societal pressures so common in America. He protrays themes of libertarian beliefs, including personal responsibility, parenting responsibility, discipline, freedom of choice, open sexuality, and suggests government systems should be trying to provide a safe environment for each of us to find our full potential. The government is not our parents and should NOT be telling us how to live our lives. Nor, are we entitled to the fruits of someone else's labor, simply because they have more than us, etc. This is a far cry from what the United States has become in the past four decades.

As a huge fan of RAH's work, I would recommend anyone read the other books in this series first to get the best out of this one.
Methuselah's Children
Time Enough for Love
The Number of the Beast
The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
and others.


Rating:
Summary: Heinlein sails beyond the sunset
Review: Robert Heinlein spiked this one into the end zone as he dropped. What an ending to his career.

(The title is a reference to a line in Tennyson's 'Ulysses', having to do with accomplishments in old age, and it's undoubtedly intended to describe what Heinlein himself was up to here. He succeeded.)

A word of warning, though -- if you didn't like _Time Enough for Love_, stay away from this one. Even (if possible) more than its predecessor, this one just oozes s-e-x, including wife-swapping, incest, and other stuff probably not in conformity to the mores of your tribe. In my view, it's all very tastefully and responsibly handled, but then my own opinions on such matters (including my devout antigrundyism) were in large measure informed by massive reading of RAH during my formative years. Just be aware that the usual suspects have dismissed this novel as pornographic trash.

At any rate, this novel was clearly a labor of love for Heinlein. In it, he gets to revisit the world of his childhood (or close to it; he actually has to start a bit earlier than his own birth).

You see, it's the story of one of Heinlein's most compelling heroines: Maureen Johnson Long, of the Howard Families, mother (and co-wife) of Woodrow Wilson Smith (a.k.a. Bill Smith a.k.a. Ernest Gibbons a.k.a. Lafe Hubert a.k.a. Aaron Sheffield a.k.a. Lazarus Long). And she lived just down the road a piece from Heinlein (and Sam Clemens, who makes a nice cameo appearance in her memoirs).

There's a thin shell of story around it, but most of the novel consists of Maureen narrating her life to herself (and us). We learn a lot about her unconventional childhood and her interesting relationship with her father (Lazarus's Gramp, Ira Johnson). We watch her grow up, get married (to fellow Howard Family member Brian Smith), make a home, bear children, and do all sorts of other things.

Of course since the stuff that happened in Heinlein's 'Future History' stories didn't actually come to pass in _our_ world (no rolling roads, for example, and our moon shot was a government affair), Lazarus and his kin must hail from an alternative timeline. And sure enough -- right around the beginning of the Second World War, we start to see events that diverge from our own history. But boy, it turns out Maureen was there behind the scenes for quite a bit of that 'Future History'; she knew Delos Harriman, was sleeping with George Strong, and provided some crucial assistance to what in her world was the first lunar landing.

Great stuff, filled with the wonderful narrative, dialogue, and characterization that Heinlein's longtime readers had learned to expect -- not to mention the Old Man's usual range of soapboxery and iconoclasm, in spades. And it's always good to see Lazarus again.

As I've said elsewhere, I credit Heinlein with three absolutely magisterial SF novels: _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, _Double Star_, and _The Door Into Summer_. This is one of his near-magisterial second-tier novels; it falls just ever so slightly short because I think there's a wee bit too much 'fitting Maureen into the cracks' of his previous novels.

Speaking of which: Be sure to read _Time Enough for Love_, _The Number of the Beast_, and _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_ before you read this one; they form a series. At some point you'll also want to read _Methusaleh's Children_ and Heinlein's 'Future History' stories (collected in _The Past Through Tomorrow_; find a used copy). But though helpful, it's not absolutely necessary to have read them first.

Anyway -- this one's a keeper. I can't tell you how many times I've reread it (along with _TEFL_ and the rest). These are some of the _realest_ characters to be found in SF, or for that matter in any fiction. I won't speak for you, cobber, but my own life is much better for having met these people.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Heinlein Book EVER
Review: Simply his best book, it rates above more popular titles such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers. Less devoted to science-fiction as it is to characters, Heinlein superbly creats the most witty, intelligent, and loveable character you'll ever read about. Die-hard Heinlein fans will appreciate how he ties in all of the characters, but anyone can love this book, it is simply a masterpiece.