To Sail Beyond the Sunset

I recently read (or re-read???) Robert Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. This is a remarkable book though I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it. That's not uncommon for me with Heinlein books...he was a thinker and extremely open-minded...to a fault I feel like. I felt the same way about Time Enough for Love. I stay engaged in the story as I read it but get uncomfortable with certain scenes. I'm pretty open minded too, but he's on a whole other plain.

I grabbed the book from eBay for next-to-nothing. I've had it for a while but hadn't gotten around to reading it...it's only been sitting and waiting for a few years though. It's got a risqué cover but is often the same in its content and so it works.

Cover of "To Sail Beyond the Sunset"

The cat on the cover is Pixel, the recurring character in several of Heinlein's books that can walk through walls (largely because he doesn't know that he can't). He's a cute and thoughtful looking cat and actually has a larger role in this book than in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, which is one of my all-time favorite books.

Pixel!

This book follows Maureen Johnson, the protagonist on the corner, as she gets imprisoned a couple of times in mysterious places and times. While she's there, waiting for Pixel to occasionally visit, she reflects on her life going back to her childhood in the late 1800s in Missouri. It follows her through her and her family's growth and journey through life. She accepts her membership in the Howard Foundation, which is an exclusive group of folks that have abnormally long lives and ultimately become stewards of humanity throughout all of its universes and alternative timelines. They even, in the distant future, have a rejuvenation process where someone is put down by an exotic drug and has an extreme update to their body that basically turns back the clock to when they were a late teen or young adult, further extending their already lengthy longevity.

Maureen's first marriage is with a guy named Brian. They really clicked and had similar viewpoints about the relationship and about the world. I was surprised when the suddenly divorced halfway through the book. As Maureen thinks, though, "Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a license. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink even faster than dead fish. Then it becomes time to divvy up, split up, and run, with no time wasted on recriminations." That's exactly what she did, too. She invested in herself and in her children, the latter at least within boundaries and only to the extent tenable. A couple of her children in particular really pushed the limits of what she was able to do.

She is later, in 1982, rescued from being run over by a bus and brought to a future time and location (same timeline though). While there she acclimates to the new environment and culture, gets rejuvenated, and later even takes a job performing rejuvenations and, later still, joins the Time Corps.

Heinlein is unpredictable as an author. Mark Twain was a character in this book. There is also a battle with Nazis. A lot happens in Maureen's life. And it doesn't end with the end of the book. I recommend this for any fans of fun science fiction. Just be prepared to be shocked or even disturbed a little here and there.

Robert Heinlein