
Publication date: | 1987.07 |
---|---|
Genre: | Science fiction novel |
Series: | World as Myth Lazarus Long |
Preceded by: | The Cat Who Walks Through Walls |
Followed by: | |
Wikipedia page |
“To Sail Beyond the Sunset” is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published by “Ace Books” in July 1987. It was the last novel published before he died in 1988.
The title is taken from the poem “Ulysses”, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. The stanza of which it is a part, quoted by a character in the novel, is as follows:
…my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It is the final part of the “Lazarus Long” series.
Exposition
Maureen Johnson, the somewhat irregular mother of Lazarus Long, wakes up in bed with a man and a cat. The cat is Pixel, well‐known to fans of the New York Times best seller “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.” The man is a stranger to her, and besides that, he is dead. So begins Robert A. Heinlein’s “To Sail Beyond the Sunset.” Filled with the master’s most beloved characters, this compelling work broadens and enriches his epic vision of time and space, life and death, love and desire. It is also an autobiographical masterpiece—and a wondrous return to the alternate universes that all Heinlein fans have come to know and love.