I ended up reading this book because I picked up Methusala's Children a few months back for like 50 cents and because it didn't list any other related works from Heinlein. Little did I know, the main character, Lazarus Long, would turn out to appear in like 30 other works, so I'm on the slow trail to pushing through them.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset is definitely science fiction, but nothing like what I expected (maybe I just haven't read enough Heinlein). More than the first half of the book was more rustic than scientific, more family than technology, etc. etc. Sure, I get it, it sets up the whole line of people for other books (this is where Lazarus is born, and the main character here is his mother).
But man: sex, sex, sex. After successfully bedding nearly every male of a higher level of attractiveness including her son come-back-through-time and pretending to be someone else, Maureen (MC) ends on a mission to save her father, the one person she could never get to have sex with her, i.e. the biggest regret of her life.

On March 7, 2014 I reviewed Robert A. Heinlein's "I Will Fear No Evil" and gave it one star. It was a sex-obsessed orgy with little "science fiction" to offer. Realizing it was published in 1970 during the Sexual Revolution, I thought maybe it was a one off. I was wrong. I started "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" yesterday and the initial premise seemed good -- a woman wakes up in bed with her cat and an unknown dead man, and she doesn't know who she is or where she is. Sounds good, right? Wrong. The next umpteen chapters are flashbacks to nineteenth century Missouri where Maureen, the main character, learns about sex as a pre-pubescent from her father and proceeds to whore herself out to every possible boy and man available. And to make matters worse, the dialogue is simply unbelievable. Witness the exchange between 12 year old Maureen and her pervert father. She says, "...this is why your anatomy book doesn't show the clitoris. Mrs. Grundy wouldn't like it because she doesn't have one." Um, okay.... Then "Father, there is something here that doesn't make sense. Why is 'vagina' a good word while 'cunt' is a bad word? Riddle me that." Seriously, how many 12 year old girls talk about clits and cunts with their father??? And he's egging her on to lose her virginity too! Which she finally does when she's 14, and damn proud of it too. The book reads like a cross between the Penthouse version of Caligula and de Sade's "Juliette," but not as good. There's adultery, swappings, orgies, incest, etc., all over the place. I'm no prude, but Heinlein was a serious perv and he wrote this book in his eighties! Finally, the thing that kills it for me is there's little science fiction. Oh, there's time travel and alternate universes, but those hardly matter to the plot of Maureen getting laid as often as possible. It's a very disappointing book to read and since this is my sixth Heinlein book I've attempted, it's also going to be my last. He was a seriously overrated, perverted sicko writer with little to offer. Definitely not recommended.

I really enjoyed the narrative of Maureen Johnson and the details of her childhood. While the earlier talk about sex (losing her virginity, for one) was enjoyable, the later talk about sex (orgies, incest, etc) felt a bit too much. Nonetheless, her story (especially the part with her stuck in the alternate universe) was a very good read, and a lovely addition to the Long Family/World as Myth books. The alternate realities thing was also a good device for the narration.

One good function this book serves is to show the Howard Foundation in its early stages. Maureen Johnson was second-generation which is very early, and lifespans for them were shorter than the lifespans of those in 'Methuselah's Children', which can be seen as the next story in the Howard Families 'saga' that is a story of its own within the World as Myth/Long Family/alternate universes/Pixel the cat series. (yes, long name for a series, I know!) Overall a must-read for any fan of the saga, just be forewarned of gratuitous sex.

Audiobook reread of the final non-posthumous book by RAH. Given the theme of the Tennyson poem and the last line of the book, that was almost certainly in his mind as he wrote it. It's slightly better than TCWWtW because I prefer Maureen Smith as a viewpoint character. There are a couple of posthumous books remaining, plus one anthology on ILL request, but emotionally, this is the end of my Farewell to Heinlein reread.

Another entry in Heinlein's unfortunate "weird, desperately horny old man" period. To say that he was apparently obsessed with the sex lives and inner sexual narrative of younger woman would seem to be a gross underestimate, and for me it kneecaps the book.

The "but", as is so often the case, is that he was still an excellent writer and the book was surprisingly compelling. The story doesn't really go anywhere all that interesting (at least not as a standalone novel), but chapter by chapter it was still an enjoyable read and a solid character study.

I truly don't know how to review this. This must be the third or fourth time I've read this over the years and the incest stuff certainly smacked me between the eyes this read.

As for Maureen I have a feeling that she was probably quite an influence on my younger self. She has her own, non religious, moral code and belief in her own sexuality. She's pragmatic. She's also very intelligent although that doesn't really come out until she and Brian divorce. After that Heinlein makes some very interesting points about women in work and power.

There's so much in this: the aforementioned incest (everyone); swinging; darktown; American patriotism combined with deprecation of population growth, liberal attitudes etc which I found ironic as it was Heinleins generation that took the world in that direction. The way that Maureen acts the perfect wife, letting Brian make all decisions, without reflecting on how that makes her feel - she's lucky that he makes sound financial decisions with their money as she would have no come back legally otherwise.

Parts annoyed me, parts inspired me, parts made me cry oh John Ringo no! Despite its many flaws I do love this book. And the quote from Tennyson? I love that it is Maureen who smites the sounding furrows, leaving her men behind, and sails beyond the sunset.

I have no doubt that there are many people who, knowing that I reserve the 5-star rating for books that I think must be read, will start to read this book (or read it entirely) and conclude that I have become simply a dirty old man. A glance at the other Goodreads reviews of this book will tell you why; the vast majority of them seem to give it a rating of one or two stars with passionate complaints about the sex in the book, the “horniness” of the first-person narrator, the lack of action (!), etc. A very few give it five stars, suggesting it perhaps was Heinlein’s greatest book; put me in that latter category. I find myself absolutely amazed that I had no idea that this book existed until 24 years after its publication, and I only happened to notice it because one of the librarians displayed it on a shelf with its cover showing, depicting a voluptuous red-headed nude (with parts of her anatomy discreetly covered by her flowing red hair, standing in a very large clam shell (which has nothing to do with the story), accompanied by a cat sitting beside her (a cat sitting on his tail, by the way, despite the fact that he is repeatedly described as always having his tail pointing straight up).

Many moons ago (52 years ago, actually) I attended a conference for technical writers in St. Louis, where the keynote speaker was an admiral who berated us all for writing boring technical manuals and demanded to know why we could not write manuals as interesting as Heinlein’s novels. I happened to have a Heinlein pocketbook in my back pocket at the time, and it took all my self-control to prevent myself from leaping to my feet and yelling “Because he can write about sex, and we have to write about gizmos.” I now think that anecdote shows the silliness of my youth; Heinlein did not write about sex—he wrote novels in which one or more of the characters engaged in sex one or more times as part of the historical narration of the overall story, and that is just as true here as it was then. Yes, Maureen does have sex--with a teenage boy in her town, then with her cousin, then with some other boys and even a couple men, including her eventual husband, and later with friends … and eventually with her son and perhaps with a great-great-grandson or two--but the gross details of the acts, such as run rampant through all the trashy romances my eldest loves to read, are not given; it all happens between paragraphs, or even between lines. More to the point, it all happens over the course of a few thousand years, actually, and the real point of the story is to get from one end (early in the 19th century in Minnesota) to the other (God know when or where), involving time travel, multiple universes, extra-dimension cross connections, and the inevitable change of the human condition through all those years.

The other chief complaint against Heinlein seems to be that he engaged in social engineering by promoting ideas different from those held by the majority of men. But isn’t that true of all writers? I’ve must finished other reviews of books by Charlene Harris, Anne Perry, and Patricia Cornwell, and I have to believe that their characters were being portrayed in such a way as to reflect the authors’ ideas that we all should think differently about certain things. Harris shows that small-minded Christians cannot accept ways of life outside their own (such as vampires, werewolves, fairies, etc.); Perry is fascinated about the different and disparate ways of life of the rich and the poor, and Cornwell projects the hope that goodness and intelligence eventually must win out over the evildoers of the world. Heinlein himself maintained that all this prolific outpouring was not social engineering at all but just writing to entertain (and to sell).

This was Heinlein’s last book, published when he was dying at the age of 80. He had already established a practice of weaving his various different novels and stories together, and this one was simply a continuation and culmination of that same trend. It also requires a basic background understanding by the reader of various diverse concepts that had evolved in science fiction since he and John Campbell essentially created the genre back in the days of my childhood, as this novel ties a lot of them together. My parents would not have liked this book, and I have friends who would have no idea what it was talking about for most of its length.

I was amused that one of the debunking reviewers proclaimed that he stopped reading the book half way through because there wasn’t enough science-fiction (!) … while another protested that the sex scenes were described in clinical detail (!) … and another expressed strong objections about the unrealistic portrayal of women in Heinlein’s writings. There can be no doubt that most of Heinlein’s women (and particularly Maureen Johnson) were based on his second wife, Virginia, whom he truly loved throughout their long marriage. I was also amused to notice how many of the 1-star and 2-star reviews had misspelled words, incorrect homonyms, and totally irrelevant comments.

I really should add the names of the people whose reviews I have cut and pasted...these are not my words but really express my opinions. Excuse old lady who is lazy but loves books and words.

It has been close to 20 years since I read this, and remembering it still makes me want to scrub my brain.

This is Heinlein's last novel. It's what you get during your I-don't-give-a-flying-fuck author phase of your life, and it's wonderful. Full of references to earlier works and characters, this one is pure fun and I love it.

Quite interesting, I think Heinlein did a very good job writing from the perspective of a woman. I do not remember his books being so erotic. Maybe when I was younger I read more of his earlier books. I guess I'll find out as I am in the process of reading/re-reading all of his books.

I"ve said before that there are story-telling aspects of RAH that I love. I even like world-as-myth.

I hate RAH's characterizations of women. He writes them as he imagines they are - if he were prepubescent boy.

Early on, Maureen's father (a doctor) calls her an amoral wretch (lovingly). Like himself, she is an atheist (like me) and he encourages her in how one goes about doing what one wants without being castigated by society. The idea of writing out your own commandments appealed heavily to me- and there are tiny gems of good in his writing.

But Maureen is attracted to every single man that she likes - including her father. He's regularly written in his books (see Number of the Beast) comments like 'he never laid a hand on me, but if he did, I wouldn't have objected' (paraphrasing).

Incestual abuse is not something to speak of lightly - but then, RAH's views on rape horrify me as well, so I'll just say that he wasn't empathic at all, and should not write books from a female point of view.

I read it to find out what happened to Mycroft Holmes

Robert A. Heinlein (RAH) was a grand master of science fiction. I had to keep telling myself that when reading any of RAH's later works featuring free love, cats and time and/or space travel. At times this gargantuan novel gets nostalgic, epic, laughably bad and then deeply up its own arse in its own importance. Sometimes I wonder if RAH was sniggering to himself the whole time he wrote this, knowing it was going to get published no matter what he wrote.



Apparently, this is supposed to be the memoirs of the mother of recurring character and satyr, Lazarus Long. It winds up being partly RAH's autobiography of his childhood town, partly the perversions of a family deeply into incest and partly RAH's own convoluted theory of how to make a crap-load of money through the centuries.

And yet, somehow, I managed to read the whole thing. Perhaps there is some deeply perverted part of me that likes reading bad RAH books. I'm not into incest. Or inbreeding. So it can't be that. I defiantly want to state now and for the permanent record that I have NEVER had any sexual fantasies about ANY of my family members' members.



I am tempted to wonder if my life would have turned out any better if I never read RAH's later works. I could have devoted the time I spent in these monumental door-stoppers could have been better spent doing something more worthwhile. Like watching cat videos.



Great. Now I'm wondering if RAH would have bothered writing this last novel if he had cat videos back then. And what would the consequences have been? That would be a question for a modern science fiction master to answer.

Just, for fuck's sake, NO INCEST.