To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1988) - Plot & Excerpts
This was the last book Heinlein wrote, and while it is by no means up with his real classics, such as "Time Enough for Love" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" it's a fitting enough finale for the great man. The work is essentially the autobiography of Maureen Long, mother (and wife, and lover - yes, it's that kind of book) of Lazarus Long, the oldest man in the galaxy. A conclusion to his "World of Myth" series (essentially a kind of exercise in literary cross fertilisation, where Heinlein's various alternate timelines are meshed into one, along with elements of his favourite fiction by other authors) the novel takes us from Maureen's childhood, where she deals with a sexual fixation on her father, her budding sexual lusts in general, and her discovery of the Howard Foundation, up into her old age. We learn about her adolescence, marriage, and subsequent life.The story comes across as a strange mix indeed. Much of what Maureen experiences is right out of the pages of mainstream fiction (adolescent sex, loving in rural poverty, losing loved ones to wars,) while another set of occurrences are the kind that are unique to science fiction (a lover from hundreds of years in the future, dealing with the fact that she might well live twice as long as other humans) and still another stream is simply... as happens in most of Heinlein, particularly his later works... Maureen acting as a mouthpiece for her creator's ultra-rightist, extreme capitalist and conservative views. The ills in her own timeline and every other she experiences, we are told, are because good old-fashioned American grit and greed have been replaced by namby-pamby liberal ideas about social security and progressive thinking. To those reading Heinlein for the first time, there might be a suspicion he is using satire here... after all, Maureen's permissive views on sexual freedom, religion and incest are certainly not those endorsed by conservative middle-America... but those of us who know the man are used to this strange mix of the progressive and archaic to be found in his work, and have no doubt he means it all quite seriously. Tacked onto the autobiography (and interspersed as a framework) are a kind of adventure story dealing with Maureen's work on the Time Corps (a group of warriors who deal with setting to rights "mistakes" in history,) her imprisonment by a gang of state-sponsored religious police, her rescue by a cat who can travel through dimensional walls, her falling in with a group of terminally ill assassins who adopt soubriquets from famous real or fictitious psychopaths such as Dracula or The Old Man of the Mountains, her rescue a split second before the car crash that, in the original version of history, proves fatal to her, and her eventual reuniting wity just about every other major character in the Heinlein canon in a kind of incestuous group marriage. And they all - as Maureen herself finishes the work - live happily ever after. If you have followed the man's stuff through his many decades of writing, from his earlier hardcore pulp stories, through the classic works of his middle period and the somewhat weird novels that marked the end of his life, then this is certainly one you need to read for completeness. At the close of this reading, I found myself truly in two minds. It's by no means a bad read, though it'll never become a true classic. Those of us (like me) who do not really feel Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion belong in the same universe as Jubal Hernshaw and the Space Family Stone will read it once and close it with a sigh both of relief and admiration. But even those that enjoy it will probably never reread it... not a thing you could say about "Time Enough For Love!"
"To Sail Beyond the Sunset The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson (Being the Memoirs of a Somewhat Irregular Lady)"Robert A. Heinlein was one of my first discoveries in science fiction once I moved beyond Tom Swift, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, along with Isaac Asimov, Keith Laumer and others. I still like "Glory Road", "Starship Troopers", "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress", "Sixth Column", "Citizen of the Galaxy" and some of his short fiction. In one of his books (which one I've forgotten) he presented an alternate society how everything would work better under it. At the end of the book, he pointed out some of the problems with the society.That was an eye-opening, mind-bending experience when I was 12 or 13. I was a passive observer, a passenger, in my reading up to that point. That taught me to keep my left up while I was reading. I still enjoy the ride but I don't buy it all because someone wrote it.Heinlein and I parted company with "The Number of the Beast", a nonsense book, poorly written - I wondered if he'd sketched out the ideas for it and let someone else write it, like James Patterson does now. He never won me back after that."To Sail.." is a continuation of RAH's Lazarus Long/Future History stories and the lead character is Long's mother. She wakes up in bed with a dead man and a cat, with no idea of how she got there. That's a pretty good hook for a story. So, RAH, tell me about it.Nope. The next 7 chapters are the joys of Maureen Johnson's sex life threaded around daily living in Missouri beginning in the 19th century. At page 122, I lost interest and started skimming and skipping, hoping to discover the plot. I failed.RAH has three basic characters, the Wise Old Man, the Naive Young Man (usually the protagonist and narrator), and the Hot Chick. I can deal with that, I don't read RAH for characterization. MJ is, of course, the Hot Chick (with some WOM through in).RAH has really gone to FantasyLand for this character. Hugh Hefner and Ian Fleming, whose detractors view them as prototypical chauvinist pigs, were never this extreme. Is MJ hot to trot? Always. Every tired or busy? Never. Second thoughts about where, when, position? None. Adultery? Why not, we'll both do it. Swapping? Sure. Group sex? Of course. Incest? It's good clean family fun. Sexual diseases? Only happens to other people. I'm not extrapolating, it's in the book.Really, RAH? Science fiction is a wonderful avenue to challenge accepted wisdom on society and mores. This book is the extended fantasy of a 15 year old boy who isn't getting any. It should probably have been explored thoroughly with a competent therapist, not printed as a book.The book checks RAH's standard repertoire: glorification of the military, libertarianism, liberals as the cause of the fall of civilization, evils of religion, education (usually hard sciences), cats, and firearms training.I used to think Heinlein was insightful. I liked his aphorisms, thinking they were the conclusions of the Wise Old Man. I recently found a statement that certainty is an emotion, not a logical conclusion. RAH has certainty by the bucketload.One and a half stars, rounded to two. Not recommended.
What do You think about To Sail Beyond The Sunset (1988)?
I'd read only two other novels in the World as Myth series before finding this final installment, and the other two were so long ago that the plotlines and characters' names were vague memories at best. I think what the best Goodreads reviewers recommend regarding how reading the other titles in the series will enhance your reading of this one is probably true, but I saw those reviews too late. My take is that it does work as a standalone. The minor exception to that is when it comes to keeping the names straight in the occasional passages dealing with Maureen's increasingly long family tree; for those interested in such details, they're all there, but I found myself treating those like the Bible's similar "X begat Y who begat Z who begat YZ" sections and continued on.Unlike my previous experience reading Heinlein novels, this time I found myself way too often being distracted from the story because I was thinking more about the author himself. Knowing from the outset that it was his last book had a lot to do with that, I'm sure. And knowing that he was approaching 80 while working on this one and writing from the viewpoint not only of a salacious woman but one with a serious father (and son and cousin and grandson and, in general, sex) fetish also no doubt contributed to the unwanted story-breaking contemplation about the creator of certain scenes. That's not a fault with the book, of course, but it was my experience with it pretty much throughout.Except for what I'd call a pretty extreme focus on incest, the level of general soft-porn bawdiness here seems about on par with that in, say, "Friday," "I Will Fear No Evil," and "Stranger In a Strange Land." That singular exception may be enough to throw off many readers, and judging by some of the reviews I've scanned here, it has. Aside from that, though, this book seems an important one in Heinlein's oeuvre. For me, the ending was a bit too abrupt, but it's a book I'm glad I read.
—Ronnie
Arminzerella's recommendation. Pretty good so far, albeit a tad confusing.About halfway through now. This book should be subtitled "A Time Traveler's Guide to Eugenics Through Multidimensional Incest."I guess it shouldn't be a surprise after reading Starship Troopers that any of Heinlein's other works should be head-bludgeoning social commentary thinly guised as science fiction.I'm tempted to say this is proto-Mary-Sue-by-proxy... or maybe not by proxy, I don't know enough about Heinlein to be sure. Still, it's entertaining, if you can get past the multi-generational parallel-reality incestuous orgies every few pages.Or, depending on what gets you off, maybe that's the entertaining part. I can remember a time not long ago when this book would have elicited a monthlong erection from me... guess I've mellowed some.So, yeah. Finished. Interesting in parts, but... nothing really happened. Nobody was ever in serious jeopardy. I never would have thought that the memoirs of a time traveling red-headed nympho would be so... dull. I mean, stuff happens AROUND her all the time, but very little of anything interesting happens TO her. The parts that ARE interesting are brief vignettes, mostly flashbacks. The part where she has to fight some of her kids who have gotten out of line (altho what "out of line" means for a completely amoral family is questionable on its own) might have been interesting, if, say, those kids had turned out to be the ones working against the Time Corps to change reality. Hell, maybe they did, in one of the six or seven other books set in this multiverse; but I'm not terribly inclined to follow up.Sorry =\
—Dave
So, after reading Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found and The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery, I meant to re-read Robert A Heinlein's book about the elderly multi-billionaire who has his brain transplanted into a new body... but as I mis-remembered the title, I ended up with the audiobook version of this novel, instead. * I have mixed feelings about Heinlein's last several books - the World As Myth series, some call it. I was first introduced to his juvies, so these novels, with their focus on (and enjoyment of) various non-standard permutations of sexual relations, make me think of RAH as a dirty old man. However, I do enjoy the stories themselves quite a bit, and Heinlein seemed to be having fun with them. Mama Maureen Johnson Smith Long is the heroine of this particular novel - which ranges from the late 1800's in Kansas City to the 3000's on various timelines & planets. She's a fun character - smart, competent, opinionated and horny as all get out; her seduction of a time traveler not only gives her and her associates (The Howard Family) a heads-up on future history, but a chance to escape her own fate (run over by a truck in her 90's). However, she gets herself a bit out of her depth, time traveling to an alternate timeline where everything is either mandatory or forbidden and ending up in bed with a dead judge; she tells her life story while incarcerated for said "crime". I especially enjoyed Bernadette Dunn's reading of this novel; she has the appropriate "woman of a certain age" voice that matches Mama Maureen well; and she's able to portray the other characters in the novel reasonably well, too. I'd definitely recommend the audiobook version of this novel to anyone who appreciates Heinlein's later work. * Yes, I've since realized I meant to revisit I Will Fear No Evil - it's next on the list :^D
—Tracey
