Rereading: TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET by Robert A. Heinlein

Cover art by Boris Vallejo

Published in 1987, the final book completed before Heinlein’s death in 1988. This book is long and complex, and overstuffed with characters and plot, but I did enjoy rereading it, despite some of the usual flaws of late Heinlein work such as too much talking/lecturing as well as the things mentioned above. It’s mostly the life story of Maureen Johnson Smith, born in Missouri in 1882, who narrates after being captured and imprisoned in a future and different Earth. Her only companion is the cat Pixel, from the previous book “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls,” who has the ability to find her and visit here in any time, place, and dimension. While Maureen waits and hopes for rescue, she uses an internal recorder to tell her story. Much of it is surely the author’s story as well, and one would think Maureen is also modeled on his own mother and siblings, and perhaps also based somewhat on his first wife Leslyn and his second wife Virginia.

Like “Cat,” and other late novels, this one continues to tie together many of Heinlein’s past works. Most importantly it describes the early days and evolution of the Howard Foundation, the group that systematically encouraged the births and lives of long-lived people through genetic selection using financial and social incentives. This figures in a number of other books, but is given more detail here. The book also allows the author to comment on what he liked and didn’t like about the many years of his own life, and there are plenty of opinions. I have to say that I agreed with a lot of them, but not all. There’s an obsession with sex, something Heinlein was probably unable to write as frankly about earlier in his career, which has its moments, but gets tiresome at times. When Maureen is not thinking about sex, she has some interesting adventures along the way to becoming a wealthy, well-educated, and successful person. I liked the fact that this book ties up loose ends from “Cat,” whose ending I found disappointing, and in general I enjoyed this one more. At the end is not only a list of characters, but a list of previous Heinlein works showing where they previously appeared. But there are too many, and characters I would have liked to see more of are often short walk-ons or only named. Heinlein liked the work of James Branch Cabell, who did a similar thing by tying together many of his books into one connected epic, some revised to do that after they were first published. It worked better there than here simply because there are so many Heinlein characters, and most of them are simply versions of the author himself, so when in groups, each one does not stand out much.

Still worth reading, and a pretty good wrap-up to his long career. Recommended.

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