To Sail Beyond the Sunset

The last of the Grandmaster’s novels and the last of his novels that I read. I think I’ve got some collections and short stories left but I’ve now read all of his novels.

He got weird towards the end, not gonna lie, and that’s why I stayed away from his later books for years and years and only recently rediscovered some hidden gems in his later work.

So, let’s get it out in the open:

Incest.

Dude, what are we doing? Are you really OK with incest? Is this hyperbole, like a radio shock jock, are you making sure we’re awake to deliver some septuagenarian wisdom for all us kids?

Here’s my theory, but what do I know? I think he was testing the limits, poking around for the boundaries and origins of mores.

Mores? Mores, you say? He seems to be openly advocating for incest and cannibalism, and it’s been going on for a few books now! I think it’s fair to say he has stomped all over mores of most of the world and was probably throwing elbows in the paint in lots of customs world wide.

It was hip and cool back in the 50s when he was slipping in some subtle social commentary. Then in the 60s, HEY! Our man Bob was in the forefront of free love and let’s explore some alternative designs for a family structure. Marriage? Sure, but marriage can mean between man and woman, man and man, two ladies, a lady and two guys, etc. How about a line marriage? What does that even mean? A family that votes in new husbands and wives as the old ones die out, a revolving seat of matriarchy and patriarchy into perpetuity.

And then in the 70s, what is gender? Why cannot we have sex changes and hey maybe even go back and forth. And incest.

I think he was asking why we have these rules. Is incest bad? Biologically that can lead to genetic problems and he addresses that and then leaves it right there. If there’s no risk of childbirth with possible genetic side effects, then he seems to be saying its OK.

He may also have been making a statement about individualism and exploring the absolute maximum of what that means, where a person makes their own rules, while accepting some scientific absolutes. Heinlein is good enough to also question the morality of real human emotions that lie beneath these systems of etiquette.

Kurt Vonnegut did this to humorous effect, most frequently through the use of his recurring character Kilgore Trout. He might set up a planet where people always have sex with family members - it would be rude to refuse - but they never ever have babies from these unions. Visitors to this planet would find that their rules about incest were found to be very strange to the Vonnegut planet folks, who could not even imagine insulting a family member with such a prohibition.

Kurt Vonnegut might be saying, Lyn! Whoa! Leave me out of this.

Anyway, we spend some time with Maureen and her wild time travel adventures. We see many recurring Heinlein characters and Heinlein does his thing.

Recommended for fans.

Terrible.

"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.

This is my 3rd Heinlein book... After 'stranger in a strange land' and 'the number of the beast'. My vague recollection is that 'Stranger' was a very original story that dealt with deep human condition conundrums and explorations. My impression of 'Beast' was that it was a pulp sci fi adventure story that was extremely easy and sort of fun to read but not deep at all. It's how I'd imagine a screen play for a Buck Rogers episode during the 40's would have been like.

I'm regretting picking this one up next. It's annoying me. I really want to like it and finish it but it's just so hard to keep reading more of the same. It's not even the incest, weird yes but to each their own I suppose (I'm not talking about real life, just fiction!). It feels like the author is trying to find a way to make the absurd idea palatable and even enviable. Like with every chapter he's trying to wear you down to agree that it's really the other 99.9% of society who just doesn't 'get' what it means to be truly sexually free and have no feelings of jealousy or possessiveness.

Which brings me to a side-note. Given the time when he wrote this RH was obviously a true free thinker. I might squirm at where he went with some of that but I admire true originals who dispense with any sort of pretense of what is 'proper'.

To get back to my half review: So I'm about halfway through the book and I keep expecting the next chapter to get out of the mode of establishing characters in order to get along with the story. Nope, just more of the same. Maureen starts out in a very interesting situation, naked in a hotel room of the future next to a dead guy, with no memory of what happened except that cat is there. I'm hooked! What's next?

So we start flashing back to the beginning of Maureen's life in late 1800's Missouri. Cool that a sci-fi book goes back to Mark Twain time and place and establishes Maureen's dad as a kick ass original character. It's clear RH has done his research on what life was like and he paints a really nice picture of some original characters in a believable and interesting, but un-sci fi life. I'm liking the conversations between Maureen and her dad and all the societal commentary.

And then a quick flash back to the present situation...like 2 paragraphs of her in future-jail talking to her cat just to pick another point to flash back to...

And we are back in the 1800's continuing on with Maureen's increasingly free sexcapades and how she met the guy she marries and how they have an obviously superior-than-any-of-you-prudes-reading-this swinging life. It's fun, it really is. The characters are well developed. I like Maureen, I like her dad, I like her husband (limy, briny,? or something).

Then back to the actual story for about two paragraphs of her cat helping her maybe escape or something but back to the swinging life for another 40 pages.... then back to the future for a page, then back to the 1910's swinging life (like 14 kids and counting by now...)....

So this book is like 4% story and 96% character development. Yes I get it that when all these books are about the same characters and increasingly bizarre connections through space and time that it's fun for fans to be able to spend some time in normal every-day life with these characters in order to better understand the odd ways they are apparently going to handle these 'naked in the future' situations. I get it. And I do like the characters.

But could someone tell my if this book goes ANYWHERE besides behind just a cheap way to establish how all these apparently fun and amazing people who have great and interesting adventures in OTHER books came to be? This makes me think of one of those 'clip show' episodes of a tv show where there's a tiny little story just to introduce flashbacks that tell a much more interesting story. But it's the opposite. It's 1 part interesting story to segue into 20 parts 'Maureen was the hottest wife ever if you are into that sort of thing'.

I just feel cheated by wanting an actual sci fi story with a mystery and twists and stuff. This should have been called something like 'appendix to the origin of a couple of heinlein's most beloved characters, explicit'.

Why the 3 stars and not 2 or 1? It's actually not a bad read, but what is being read becomes increasingly obvious that it's not a story, just an unabridged diary of Maureen. But I'm going to stop now because it was fun to hear about how someone else could think incest via time travel and selective breeding is a cool idea...for about 2 chapters. But after about 30 chapters of that I'm bored and have completely forgot why I ever cared about how Maureen woke up naked in the hotel room of the future with that dead guy and the cat with magical powers. Can someone please just tell me where that goes? I can't read ONE more paragraph of how 'Briney' is cool with Maureen banging whatever milkman/son from the future/dad/preacher etc shows up next as long as he gets to hear about the nasty details.

The fourth volume of Heinlein's attempt to weave every fictional world into one mega-verse is the life story of Maureen Johnson Smith Long. A frankly dull and boring life story for about 80% as RAH trots out his socio-political beliefs -- some of which I agree with, some I don't. Finally, in the last chapters, things start to get interesting, then Maureen's father is rescued, The End.

Frankly, I think it was only barely worth reading, especially because I was hoping to find out more about the fate of Mannie, Mycroft, et al at the end of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And did, in about a dozen paragraphs and a couple of throwaway references, leaving it more of an incidental, off-screen event than anything actually told.

So I went into it hoping for something that wasn't even there, which left me feeling very let down. The story is even less interesting than I Will Fear No Evil, and if I hadn't been looking for more information about Mannie and company, I doubt I'd have even finished it.

To Sail beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein (1988)

Pretty terrible. All the sexcesses of Stranger in a Strange Land with little of the substance. Not much science in this fiction, and no way or desire to keep the sprawling cast of characters straight. Main character Maureen starts out precociously horny and stays that way. She's a product of male wish fulfilment (dreamed up when Heinlen was 80 and obviously a dirty old man) who lusts after her father, beds her cousin, has about a hundred kids for money, and enjoys an open marriage until her "true love" leaves her for their daughter-in-law. She bears no grudge about that, simply negotiating a smart divorce settlement and moving on to the next of many, many men. She's a one-dimensional character I couldn't have given less of a damn about in a silly, disjointed, thin time travel narrative. Oh, and there's a cat, but that couldn't save it. I've enjoyed some of Heinlen's work, but this must be the nadir of his career. I hope!

To Sail Beyond the Sunset is the definitive book outlining the Heinlein universe. It features Maureen Johnson as the narrator, whose unusual upbringing and her involvement in the Howard Family Foundation allowed her to experience a very fantastical life free from conventional moral constraints.

It sums up the evolution of Heinlein's epistemological standing, the science fiction Heinlein has envisioned exists in all of our minds. However, some readers may find the detailed sexual exploits disturbing (I was certainly shocked by the use of the c-word).