Methuselah's Children
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 First Edition cover |
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
|---|---|
| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Gnome Press |
| Released | 1958 |
| Media type | 188 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-451-09083-7 |
| Preceded by | Have Space Suit-Will Travel |
| Followed by | Starship Troopers |
Methuselah's Children is a 1941 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialised in Astounding Science Fiction (July, August, September 1941). It was expanded into a full-length novel in 1958.
Heinlein used his "Future History" series of stories (The Man Who Sold the Moon, Revolt in 2100, etc.) as a background for this novel about the long-lived Howard Families, star travel, and human freedom.
This is the first appearance of Lazarus Long, who becomes, through the series, so old that often when he miscalculates his age he is off by an entire century. Other Lazarus Long books include Time Enough For Love, The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. This book also features an appearance by the mathematical genius Andrew "Slipstick" Libby, previously seen as a young adult in the short story "Misfit".
Heinlein returned to the Lazarus Long character towards the end of his career, making this the base for his interrelated novels involving time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein called "pantheistic solipsism" or "world-as-myth" — the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere, even fictional worlds such as the Land of Oz are real.
The Howard Families (the titular Methuselah's Children) are the product of a centuries-long eugenics scheme started in 1873 by a millionaire named Ira Howard, who found himself (presumably through a rare mutation) dying of old age in his forties. He therefore set up a trust fund to execute a long-term plan to selectively breed humans for longevity (thereby saving others from his fate). The plan encourages particularly long-lived people to produce children, by providing a large payment for any baby born to parents who each have four centenarian grandparents.
Several centuries later, a stable and peaceful world discovers the Howards, whose average life expectancy is now around 150. Society demands the secrets of their extended life spans, refusing to believe that the Howard Families simply chose their ancestors wisely. When the Howard Families fail to produce any such techniques, the Families are persecuted and interned. This crisis precipitates an exodus to the stars as the families conspire with the beleaguered Administrator (President) of the planet, Slayton Ford, to hijack the colony starship New Frontiers and try to find a better planet to live on. Ford, dismissed from office, joins the trek at the last moment. They discover two habitable planets, but both are inhabited by aliens whose social systems do not mesh well with the Families'. When Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families behind Long, and who has always been fearful of death, joins one of the immortal minds which inhabit the bodies of the natives on the second planet, Lazarus, and a majority of the Families, decides it's time to go back to Earth and claim their rights.
Because of time dilation effects, seventy-five years have passed on Earth. To their surprise they find that on earth longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by a belief that there was some specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, they have explored every avenue known to science to duplicate the feat; and have succeeded through the production of artificial blood, to be tranfused into recipients and keep them "younger".
The New Frontiers is the second generation ship in this timeline; the novel describes the improvements made over the Vanguard, the vehicle for Heinlein's paired novellas, "Universe" and "Common Sense" (combined as Orphans of the Sky).
[edit] External links
- Methuselah's Children publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Heinlein Book Cover Museum
