To Sail Beyond the Sunset (Mass Market Paperback)

by Robert A. Heinlein (Author) "I woke up in bed with a man and a cat..." (more)
Key Phrases: sunpower screens, personal time line, own time line, Kansas City, Betty Lou, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The millions of fans of Lazarus Long--probably Heinlein's most beloved character--will flock to this new tale, which continues adventures of the characters of The Cat Who Walked Through Walls. From the author of Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Ace (June 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441748600
• ISBN-13: 978-0441748600
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 3.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #67,175 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars First love, last love, forbidden love, January 18, 2003

By	Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heinlein sails beyond the sunset, March 24, 2004

By	John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little skewed, August 26, 2005

By	C. Jackson (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.