Update: Finished it. Kept the 2/5 score. The writing isn't that bad. This isn't the way a story should be written, as every character is just an author self insert, but if I look at the book purely as a vehicle for Heinlein to explore his own ideas (well, mostly to preach them), then this book has some merit. Ignoring the incest (which isn't very doable, but still), the main character is interesting and at times well-written.


Original review:

DNF 43%.

(tl;dr: The problem is not that there's incest, but that this book reads like an incest fantasy with little else to it, and that the character writing is one of Heinlein's worst.)

It's not a bad book. In most respects it's a usual Heinlein book, with the usual Heinlein caveats. Only this one takes the Heinlineniness to the extreme: every character with any kind of page time, and I mean EVERY character, is simply a self insert of the author with zero variation. In his other books usually every character portrays a different aspect of Heinlein, but here they're all exactly the same. Also, there's no plot and no action, and instead a lot of political ramblings and sex.

This is a historical drama about Maureen Johnson, a 19th century girl (and later woman) experimenting with sex, getting married, and living in general. Sounds interesting? in theory, sure. Even the incest could, in theory, be explored in an interesting manner. But it isn't.

The problem isn't the content, but the execution: 1. It reads purely like a sexual fantasy. 2. Every character is just Heinlein (I mean, more than usual). 3. There's only the preaching of ideas, never explorations of them. 4. Having no plot, the characters have to do the heavy lifting -- but they aren't nearly good enough for that.

Imagine an 80 year old man. He just wrote a book. The book is about a fourteen year old girl in the late 19th century who's character is exactly like the old man's. She's hypersexual, and strongly attracted to her father, who's an exact image of the old man. Her body leaves a scent that makes men unable to control themselves around her, so she has to wash her skin regularly. She often enters into "rut", unable to think of anything other than sex. She sleeps with all sorts of people, most of them disappointing to her. She finds a perfect man and marries him. He is also an exact copy of the old man. They have lots of sex. Both of them just happen to be swingers, irreligious, and libertarian, with the same opinions on everything else. They have several children. I haven't gotten to that part yet, but from what I hear one of the children (Lazarus) will later, as an adult, marry his mother.

If this is your kind of book, I'm honestly not judging you (though I am judging the book). The contents are not for me, and the writing I simply find bad.

Not what I expected. A few chapters are pretty cool sci-fi. But most of it is a historical fiction account of the very active sex life of a girl from the Midwest. Heinlein likes his free love, marriage swingers, and incest, with occasionally accurate complaints about social mores. Would not read again.

There is a lot of unhealthy paradox to unpack here. To start with, I would probably retitle it "Anachronistic Polyamory in the Multiverse, but Mostly Missouri." Then again, that might make you more likely to read it. The truth is, it is among the least favorite books that I've ever read. But I did finish reading it. This is partly because it was recommended to me, and partly because it was always just intriguing or absurd enough to keep me going. Maybe if I had read some of Heinlein's earlier work first, I would have been less flabbergasted by the odd plot choices and more amused by the entrance of certain characters. As a stand-alone work, however, I cannot recommend this book to anyone.

The narrative is somehow both punchy and plodding; playful, and pedantic. Its bouts of sudden social commentary are followed by exhausting divergences into investment portfolios and family lineage. And then, quite suddenly, time travel. I say "quite suddenly," even though the story actually begins in the undefined future. Maureen, the central protagonist, awakens imprisoned in a room with a dead body she doesn't recognize and a cat named Pixel. I was, admittedly, hooked. But from this predicament, Maureen begins to recount her (very, very, very) long life to the reader, spending the bulk of her time in a Missouri of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet, despite the belabored backstory, there was not enough groundwork being laid for the larger plot, and I was startled by the unsatisfying jump back to science fiction and time travel.

Then there are the views of the author, which have not aged well. In attempting to portray Maureen as a woman liberated from sexual mores, Heinlein ends up defining her personality almost exclusively through her sexual appetite, regularly pointing out how hot she is, and engaging in quite a bit of moralizing of his own. And while paying lip service to gender equality and giving her victories against male counterparts, he consistently presents Maureen as an exception rather than the norm. Ultimately, it is less about being a free-thinking individual (as the author perhaps was aiming for) than it is about the "right" kind of thinking (that the author dogmatically hammers into his pages). Which, it turns out, is basically libertarianism, but with SEEEXXXXXX (insert flashing neon lights). To describe this work in its own copulatory terms, it is the unlikely literary lovechild of Ayn Rand and Tom Robbins, raised in the year 3132 of timeline 69.

The least forgivable aspect, however, is its "the world is going to hell" shtick. Kids have stopped respecting their parents, education is being watered down, and democracy descends into mob rule once we do something crazy like letting everyone vote. The book is overtly paternalistic, covertly sexist, and incurably cranky. If it is indeed satire, as some readers have argued, then it fails in its most basic task: it does not entertain.

P.S. There's lots and lots of incest.

More tales of the Heinlein multiverse

Another book in Heinlein's loosely knit World-as-Myth series. The book starts with the main character in a mysterious situation, then diverges into a lengthy retelling of that characters early life, much of which covers the same ground as the last part of Time Enough For Love.

Many people feel Heinlein's writing dropped in quality near the end of his life, and the World-as-Myth books are far from my own favorites by the author. Since these books incorporate many characters from his previous stories, I would only recommend them to readers already fairly familiar with Heinlein's earlier books.

I find reading Heinlein to be such a strange experience. His books are always fun, even this strange "world as fiction" stuff he gets further and further into later in his career. They're enjoyable. I reread them ad nauseam.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

When my good friend Russel handed me this book to read I think he assumed that I'd read a LOT of Heinlein. I thought I had too, but apparently, there is a lot more to drink in from this prolific writer. To Sail Beyond the Sunset was drawn from all sorts of his previous works that you would think were disparate being in different times and basically different universes.

It all comes together with the wife and mother of one of Heinlein's very common characters, Lazarus Long. Maureen is... difficult to describe; extremely sexually liberated by 2012 standards, but lived through the turn of the 19th century; biologically immortal (more or less); genius level I.Q. and fearlessly brave. Throw in incestuous, a polymath, a polyglot, a mother of dozens of children, and a righter of wrongs on several time-lines and... well it was an ambitious book. I recommend it only to people who've read more Heinlein than me.

First reading, long ago, I hated HATED this book. Billed as a sequel and cleanup of many of the threads of Heinlein's "Future History" and following "Time Enough for Love" which I enjoyed, I despised the recurring theme of forbidden love no longer forbidden (ie incest) which is a deep taboo among most of the world's cultures--and for good reason. Heinlein keeps pushing this boundary and finally oversteps it in this novel several ways from Sunday. Do we need this? Eventually he slithers out of the problem of brother-sister and father-daughter by having rejuvenated and time-transported characters living in the far future where old taboos aren't relevant anymore due to genetics and really, because the characters have changed with time. But it is deeply disturbing nonetheless because that is one of our deep societal taboos and it really is NEVER going to be changed, as it's to protect the young from undue influence from a power figure (the parental position is one of highest authority) and from abuse from older siblings. Nothing good comes of it. So this makes the theme from Heinlein toxic..and it features strongly in this biography of Maureen Johnson Smith, Woodrow Wilson Smith AKA Lazarus Long's mother and love interest in "Time Enough for Love."

The rest of the story isn't bad actually. Maureen discusses how she was raised (liberally and with philosophical instruction from her free-thinking father Dr. Ira Johnson and with discipline and household smarts from her corset-strapped Victorian mother.) Maureen is long-lived, a "Howard", one of those bred to be uber-centenarians, and she joins the Time Corps, future characters (see The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) who try to correct the various future threads that emerge around the time the Earth manages to land on the Moon. Has the "World as Myth" (if you imagine it, it can exist) which I don't care for, but it works more or less in this novel.

Better than "The Number of the Beast" and not quite as good as "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" but still in re-reading, if you hold down your nausea at several chapters, a good adventure. Sort of a C-plus grade; Heinlein at his worst still is entertaining but not his best: written after he suffered a lot of health reversals and shows in the fact is is written less well and focuses a lot on sex, which seemed to be an obsession later on with him. I actually enjoyed the book but I can't recommend it as "really good" because it isn't. Still, I found it entertaining with reservations.

I've got to say I'd lean towards 3.5 or so, but rounds up to 4 given the lack of that option. I like Heinlein in general, and this is his last work. The last book of his I read, "The Cat who Walks through Walls", which was also immediately preceding this one, was moderately better in my opinion; that would've rounded down to 4 stars, rather than up.

This is the 4th book of 4 of the "world as myth" motif, which has so far generated complex timelines and been used to bring back characters from his older novels and other works such as baum's oz works.

Not gonna lie, probably one of the worst books I ever read. I've read the other reviews and took in the points that were habituated about this novel, it was no secret to me. Besides being a completionist (I must finish what I start), I would've stopped reading this novel a long time ago. I'm glad to be done with it.

I plan to read other Heinlein novels as one good point I got out of this book is the intriguing story that is integrated from his other novels. But this book in particular just set my standards lower for what I expect from another novel. Here's to a second chance...

Started really good. Soon enough it moved into something strange. Sexuality is a big point in Heinleins book. But this is in my opinion way too much.

The History of the Mother of Lazarus Long is a big history about all her man and what she was doing with them.

Free sex, harassment, men with men, wimen with wimen, all in. I stopped in the middle of the book. Compared to other books of Heinlein, it was not my favourite.

To view SciFi. I am more in space opera or fiction. From Star to Star was a good one. Also Star Ship Troopers, difficult to read and totally different to the film, was better.

This is his worst book by far of what I have read. It is really just bizarre sex thing over and over again apparently told by a woman. Which when you remember this is actually being written by a weird old man makes you just feel creepy.

Though Heinlein is certainly beloved, I have to admit I am kind of confused as to why. This is the only Heinlein novel I have read and I almost didn't make it through. What is he trying to say with the constant incest? Is there some deeper meaning I was supposed to glean from that or is it just the literary manifestation of the author's screwy oedipal complex. I finished it only from the thread of hope that it would redeem itself. I read it ten years ago and I haven't picked up a Heinlein since.