38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heinlein sails beyond the sunset, March 24, 2004
This review is from: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (Mass Market Paperback)
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.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A little skewed, August 26, 2005
This review is from: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (Mass Market Paperback)
I started reading Heinlen when I was eight, and didn't know that some of the books he wrote were written for kids while others for adults until AFTER I had read both Time Enough for Love and Friday at the age of eleven. Due to this, a large chunk of my social and political views were molded in a slightly different cast as my peers as Heinlen is,as my father put it, "the only man who could ever start a cult I would join" (which would have proably horrified him). Having said that, take my review with a grain of salt.
This is proabably my LEAST favorite Future History series of books, if only because it seemed to have the least point. The rampant incest, free love, pokes at organized religion, and general snubbing of societal rules bothers me not even a little. However, unlike most of Heinlen's books, I didn't finish this one feeling like I had figured out a little more about the world I live in, or the world I want to live in. There are aspects of Mama Maureen I take to heart in my own life, but unlike TEFL which I quote at my friends ad naueseum and attempt to work into the way I live my day to day life, I finished To Sail Beyond the Sunset feeling oddly empty. While I greatly enjoy the later Heinlen's, I don't enjoy when there is an Us/Them mentalitly to them. The thing I like most about TEFL, I Will Fear No Evil, and Friday is that I can get wrapped up in the story without worrying about who wins and who loses. To Sail Beyond the Sunset attempts the same feeling without being quite as succesful.
Having said that, I would kill to have Ira Johnson in my life, be one of Mama Maureen's children, and I'm still a hoping deep down inside to get to go travelng with Dora and Laz and Lor, and of course Lazarus. I live by the Eleventh Commandment and try to emulate Maureen's definition of a lady at every chance, and parts of this book have stuck with me between readings as with every Heinlen novel I've ever read (and as of last week I have read every piece of fiction he ever put into a book). I've read this book easly twenty-five times, I'm just saying it is ABSOLUTELY NOT the first or even fifth Heinlen to read, if you didn't like TEFL stop now, and be prepared to put the pre-imprinted notions of society to the side while reading this one, and expect to be a little uncomfortable if you can't.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The last, and worst, of Heinlein's novels., October 8, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (Mass Market Paperback)
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.
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