To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
On March 7, 2014 I reviewed Robert A. Heinlein’s “I Will Fear No Evil” and gave it one star. It was a sex-obsessed orgy with little “science fiction” to offer. Realizing it was published in 1970 during the Sexual Revolution, I thought maybe it was a one off. I was wrong. I started “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” yesterday and the initial premise seemed good — a woman wakes up in bed with her cat and an unknown dead man, and she doesn’t know who she is or where she is. Sounds good, right? Wrong. The next umpteen chapters are flashbacks to nineteenth century Missouri where Maureen, the main character, learns about sex as a pre-pubescent from her father and proceeds to whore herself out to every possible boy and man available. And to make matters worse, the dialogue is simply unbelievable. Witness the exchange between 12 year old Maureen and her pervert father. She says, “…this is why your anatomy book doesn’t show the clitoris. Mrs. Grundy wouldn’t like it because she doesn’t have one.” Um, okay…. Then “Father, there is something here that doesn’t make sense. Why is ‘vagina’ a good word while ‘cunt’ is a bad word? Riddle me that.” Seriously, how many 12 year old girls talk about clits and cunts with their father??? And he’s egging her on to lose her virginity too! Which she finally does when she’s 14, and damn proud of it too. The book reads like a cross between the Penthouse version of Caligula and de Sade’s “Juliette,” but not as good. There’s adultery, swappings, orgies, incest, etc., all over the place. I’m no prude, but Heinlein was a serious perv and he wrote this book in his eighties! Finally, the thing that kills it for me is there’s little science fiction. Oh, there’s time travel and alternate universes, but those hardly matter to the plot of Maureen getting laid as often as possible. It’s a very disappointing book to read and since this is my sixth Heinlein book I’ve attempted, it’s also going to be my last. He was a seriously overrated, perverted sicko writer with little to offer. Definitely not recommended.
hankrules2011 