To sail beyond the sunset
by Robert A. Heinlein · first published 1987
31% recommend54% neutral15% critical
SciFi - Subtitled "The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson (Being the Memoirs of a Somewhat Irregular Lady)". Maureen Johnson is the mother of Woodrow Wilson Smith/Lazarus Long/Theodore Bronson. This memoir takes sexually active Maureen from her childhood in the 1880s to her rescue 100 years later and on to her rejuvenation and activity as a time traveler.
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…boy), that book was revelatory. Every Heinlein I've read after that has just gone on and contributed to who I am as person today: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land (both editions), To Sail Beyond the Sunset, et al. It's almost literally impossible for me to overstate how much Heinlein's works has shaped who I am as a person, regardless of whatever flaws others might ascribe to his work.
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life?” ↗...and then of course you end up with To Sail Beyond The Sunset. Heinlein, both during his early sane and latter mad years, was an utter genius story-teller.
on “Ask HN: What book have you given as a gift?” ↗…me as much as his short stories, or his late novels like Friday (which did cyberpunk two years earlier and better than Neuromancer did), Job, or (as weird as they are) The Cat Who Walks Through Walls/To Sail Beyond the Sunset. I very much think, however, that Stranger in a Strange Land can only be read with vicarious embarrassment.
on “In the Strange Land of Robert Heinlein (1984)” ↗I think his views on nudity would have been the least offensive. Example..To Sail Beyond The Sunset was really weird and awkward in so many ways but at the same time, it is a book that I have read and re read many times. He certainly empowered many young female readers..but at the same time, there was…
on “Sci-Fi Author Robert Heinlein Was Basically MacGyver” ↗…slightly off-topic, but I've always been suspicious of the "TANSTAAFL" principle. Maybe reading some books by Heinlein soured me on it :P. (He's normally a great writer, but either I didn't understand To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which is likely, or it wasn't any good, which is unlikely but possible.) Basically, the assumption there is that the current equilibrium is optimal or close to optimal. The problem is that this is often…
on “Algernon's Law” ↗Heinlein suggested in his last novel (To Sail Beyond the Sunset) that telephones in the home killed house-calls by doctors, it became too easy to contact the doctor for any little thing that was bothering you. So it would not be surprising to find even easier and…
on “Off the clock? Hyperconnected workers sue employers” ↗…woman), where the self-described 'teenybopper' lists the number of people she's had sex with, and how she want to sleep with Arlo - someone she's just met. And I think there's a discussion in Heinlein's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" describing how the people of some era (1960s?-1980s?) feel as comfortable giving a blowjob as previous generations might have shaken hands. Heinlein was a proponent of sexual liberation and free love,…
on “Why won’t guys grow up? Sexual economics (2012)” ↗'Bottom 75 list'? You have not read much SF, have you? Sturgeon's Law [1] was created for a reason. If you think this is as bad as SF gets, I turn your attention to Robert A. Heinlein's "To Sail Beyond the Sunset". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law
on “New Wave Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1964–1983” ↗…looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics. Source: Jubal Harshaw in To Sail Beyond the Sunset
on “The Danger of Following Your Dreams” ↗…character? We then see "Or had it started with the resurgence of Scottish nationalism reflected in the wearing of kilts by many Scottish-Americans". Which ties into LL who wore a kilt. Which ties back to 'To Sail Beyond The Sunset', because it's showing us that the culture back in the 1950s was much more complex and knotty then the simple version that tricked down to me when growing up. This complexity embedded in his stories,…
on “Sci-Fi Author Robert Heinlein Was Basically MacGyver” ↗Read "To sail beyond the sunset" (iirc) Poly AND Incest mixed with infinite lifetimes, there were some things going on in that book...
…Musk is easy to read for anyone who is a Robert Heinlein fan. He is creating his own version of ‘Howard Families’. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_families [..]The books Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset tell the stories of two famous Howard Family members: Lazarus Long and his mother, Maureen Johnson. Lazarus Long also appears in The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.[..] To understand…
on “Elon Musk has another secret child with exec at his brain implant company” ↗…of standing up strawman characters just to give the main character a communist to berate and harass. It really ruined the experience for me. I have just now learned that there's a sequel to The Cat, To Sail Beyond the Sunset. The Wikipedia summary sounds.... really bad, but Mike has at least a few lines so I guess I'll go read it now.
on “Arthur C. Clarke predicted a computer-dominated future in the ’70s (2024)” ↗I think 'To sail beyond the Sunset' was quite wild. Read that in college.
on “All You Zombies” ↗