related books

related books

Books related to the Future History Timelines, listed in the order they should be read

Contains:
Book titles
Publishing Data for most books
reviews of most books
Character Data (related characters organized by book)

This collection is still under construction!
Reviews/data for some books are missing, "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" is missing a character list, and most likely other unknown mistakes. Please send corrections and updates to: samuel@proulx.servebeer.com.

The Man Who Sold The Moon And Other Stories

First published in 1950

Latest edition: 2000

Publisher: Baen Books
Paperback

ISBN 0671578634

Collected in this volume:
"Life-Line"
"Let There Be Light"
"The Roads Must Roll"
"Blowups Happen"
"The Man Who Sold the Moon"
"Requiem"

Excerpts:
"When I was a kid practically nobody believed that men would ever reach the Moon. You have seen rockets all your lives, and the first to reach the Moon
got there before you were a young boy. When I was a boy they laughed at the idea.
"But I believed--I believed. I read Verne, and Wells, and Smith, and I believed that we could do it--that we would do it. I set my heart on being one
of the men to walk the surface of the Moon, to see her other side, and to look back on the face of the Earth, hanging in the sky.
"I used to go without my lunches to pay my dues in the American Rocket Society, because I wanted to believe that I was helping to bring the day nearer
when we would reach the Moon. I was already an old man when that day arrived. I've lived longer than I should, but I would not let myself die . . . I will
not!--until I have set foot on the Moon."

The Man Who Sold The Moon

D. D. Harriman
George Strong
Daniel Dixon
Chief Engineer Ferguson
Bob Coster
Leslie LeCroix

Requiem

D. D. Harriman
George Strong

Revolt in 2100 and Other Stories

First published in 1940/54

Latest edition: 1999

Publisher: Baen Books
Paperback

ISBN 0671577808

Reviews:
John Lyle was a boy like any other, perhaps a little more naive than the average, who had grown up believing in God and in the Prophet Incarnate. The
religious dictatorship of the Prophets had been running the USA for decades before his birth, and it was hard to imagine that things could be any different.
After all, it had always been that way.
Always a devoted and by-the-book boy, he went to military school and had the honor of being chosen for the military elite of his day, the Angels of
the Lord, the batallion which guarded the palace of the Prophet. But John's heart betrayed his faith: he fell in love with a woman forbidden to ordinary
mortals like him, one of the virgins consecrated to the Prophet himself.
With the help of his worldly roommate, John opts to join the Cabal, a secret society that plots the downfall of the Prophets' regime and the return
of the U. S. to democracy. From there, we follow his adventures as conspirator and as soldier, now fighting against the regime that had trained him.
During that process he discovers a whole side of life that had been denied to him as sinful. He discovers sex and the freedom to think for himself.
But, most difficult of all, he discovers how to live in a free society, without himself restricting the freedom of others. ~~~Carlos Angelo

If This Goes On

Nehemiah Scudder

Misfit

Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Libby Long

Methuselah's Children

First published in 1941/58

Latest edition: 1999

Publisher: Baen Books
Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0671577808

Excerpts:
They took him to the office of the Chief Provost, who invited him to sit down with formal civility. "Now then, sir," the Provost said with a slight
local twang, "if you will help us by letting the orderly make a slight injection in your arm-"
"For what purpose?"
"You want to be socially cooperative, I'm sure. It won't hurt you."
"That is beside the point. I insist on an explanation. I am a citizen of the United States."
"So you are, but the Federation has concurrent jurisdiction in any member state - and I am acting under its authority. Now bare your arm, please.
"I refuse. I stand on my civil rights."
"Grab him, lads."
It took four men to do it. Even before the injector touched his skin, his jaw set and a look of sudden agony came into his face. He then sat quietly,
listlessly, while the peace officers waited for the drug to take effect. Presently the Provost gently rolled back one of the prisoner's eyelids and said,
"I think he is ready. He doesn't weigh over ten stone; it has hit him rather fast. Where's that list of questions?"
A deputy handed it to him; he began, "Horace Foote, do you hear me?"
The man's lips twitched, he seemed about to speak. His mouth opened and blood gushed down his chest.
The Provost bellowed and grabbed the prisoner's head, made quick examination. "Surgeon! He's bitten his tongue half out of his head!"

Lazarus Long
Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Libby Long

Time Enough For Love

First published in 1973

Latest edition: 1994

Publisher: Berkley
Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0441810764

Reviews:
Remember Mel Brooks' 2,000-year-old man schtick? He complained once that he had 42,000 children--and no one came to visit. Such is not the case with
Robert Heinlein's 2,000-year-old man, Lazarus Long. Almost everyone he meets is descended from him--and many of them care for him very deeply indeed. When
Long checks into a flophouse on the planet Tellus Secundus under an assumed name, wishing to die at last, his children find and sequester him in an attempt
to persuade him to keep on living. It is this search for something to live for that occupies humanity's oldest representative throughout the rest of Time Enough for Love.
Lazarus Long is perhaps Heinlein's most popular character with fans. He made his first literary appearance in the 1940s, in the novella Methuselah's Children, which told the tale of the founding, persecution and diaspora of the Howard Families--a group of people artificially selected for their genetic tendency
to long life. (Long, at the age of 300-plus years, is their senior member, and it is he who saves the Howards from genocide.) In Time Enough for Love,
Long reappears some 1,700 years later, long after humanity has spread out among the stars, and long after the Howard Families' safety has been assured.
Ancient and weary, Lazarus Long is intent on dying, and even his descendants' persuasion fails to move him.
At least at first. Ensconced among his geneticist descendants, Long agrees to a Shahrzadelike scheme of storytelling to fend off death--only it is
he who tells the tales to his family--while they heal him and help him search for a truly novel adventure. As a result, Time Enough for Love takes the
form of the classic frame story; an account of Long's rejuvenation and formation of a new extended family constitutes the framework in which his tales
of remembrance are told. The tales themselves are of novella length ("The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" may well be the most moving of Heinlein's works),
and all of the stories in this lengthy masterpiece center around themes of love, happiness and childrearing--in essence, those things which sustain a fruitful,
satisfying life. And who better than a man with two millenias' worth of lifetimes to hold forth on what comprises a good life?
It turns out that Long still has one more adventure in store for him, as he embarks on a journey through space and time to the where/when of his youth:
the Kansas City of the early Pendergast days. Set down by his space yacht in the middle of a southern Missouri cow pasture in 1916, Long begins a journey
into his own past that leads him to the ultimate love--and the ultimate sacrifice.
This latter section of Time Enough for Love reads as if it were a love letter from Heinlein to the innocent America in which he grew up; it leaves
one wishing that Heinlein had written steampunk or alternate histories, so evocative are his depictions of bygone days. On the other hand, Time Enough
for Love is in a sense the vanguard of Heinlein's experiments with alternate realities, as evidenced by the sequels The Number of the Beast, The Cat who Walks through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.
Time Enough for Love might well be the "capstone of Heinlein's Future History stories," but it is the keystone of Heinlein's multiverse.
Preceding Time Enough for Love in the Future History continuum are Methuselah's Children and the collected short stories found in The Past Through Tomorrow.
In addition, the sections of aphorisms in Time Enough. . . have been illuminated by Vassallo and published separately as a gift book: The
Notebooks of Lazarus Long.
~~~Beth Ager

Excerpt:
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

Lazarus Long: AKA Woodrow Wilson Smith
Ira Weatheral
Hamadryad
Ishtar
Galahad
Tamara
Lapis Lazuli
Lorelei Lee
Justin Foote 45th
Theodore Bronson: AKA Lazarus Long
Dr. Ira Johnson
Maureen Johnson Smith
Brian Smith
Nancy Smith
Carol Smith
Brian Smith
Jr George Edward Smith
Marie Agnes Smith
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Ethel Smith
Richard Smith
Justin Weatheral
Eleanor Weatheral
Jonathan Sperling Weatheral

The Rolling Stones

Hazel Stone
Castor Stone
Pollux Stone

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

First published in 1966

Latest edition: 1997

Paperback

ISBN 0312863551

Hazel Stone
Mycroft Holmes IV

Stranger in a Strange Land

Uncut version First published in 1991

Latest uncut edition: 1991

Publisher: Ace Books

Paperback

ISBN 0441788386

Abridged Edition First published in 1961

Latest Abridged edition: 1995

Publisher: Ace Books

Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0441790348

Reviews:
If any work of fiction will earn Robert Heinlein a permanent place on the collective bookshelf, it is going to be Stranger in a Strange Land, for the
impact it has made on American society. If a person has not managed to read Stranger by now, then he has at least absorbed a bit of it osmotically, for
it flows throughout our cultural consciousness. Perhaps least of all, it anticipated Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrology and spawned the water bed and
the neologism "grok," (Heinlein's Martian verb for a thorough understanding), though "grok" would never have taken hold, had the young rebels of the 1960s
not discovered Stranger as their counterculture bible. Some went even further and formed "nests" and churches based on what they found in Stranger; perhaps
the most famous instance of that is the Church of All Worlds, a pagan group who lifted its name and logo intact from the book. Stranger has also begun
to be included in many canonical college reading lists, and Billy Joel saw fit to mention the title in his 1989 Top-40 hit about history, "We Didn't Start
the Fire."
Stranger's fire was kindled in 1948 in a brainstorming session between Robert Heinlein and his wife, Virginia. While looking for material to fit John
Campbell's title, "Gulf," Mrs. Heinlein thought it would be interesting to explore the case of a human raised by Martians. Heinlein thought that the idea would make a pretty good Lettres Perses-type novel, took some notes and filed it away for later use, finally placing the completed but abridged version with Putnam's in 1961 (an uncut edition was released in 1991).
Stranger in a Strange Land tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, orphaned progeny of the first manned expedition to Mars, who has been raised
by Martians and brought back to Earth by a second human expedition. Though he is a man in his twenties, Smith looks at absolutely everything on this new
planet through the ignorant eyes of a baby, and faces the job of learning how to be a human being. If the world government of Earth will let him, that
is, for Smith, through a legal fluke, not only has sole survivor rights to the space drive that his mother invented, but also to the surface of Mars. In
a Byzantine maneuver that makes Watergate seem minor, the government holds Smith hostage while it tries to figure out how to seize his assets. Ben Caxton,
a muckraking reporter, suspects the worst and attempts to rescue Smith. The problem is, if you can't fight City Hall, how can you even begin to fight a
world government?
Enter Caxton's friend, Jubal Harshaw, attorney, physician, hack writer, bon vivant, curmudgeon, anarchist. He caches Smith in Freedom Hall, his Poconos
enclave, and takes on the dual chore of fighting the world federation for Smith's liberty and of educating Smith in the ways of his biological race. The
youth is an apt student, a strange admixture of human infant and Martian superman, and as time goes on, he manages to win more and more people over to
his own alien viewpoint. He becomes a kind of messiah--with explosive results.
Given that, I leave it to the reader to pick up Stranger in a Strange Land and revel in it. In spite of the movements and religions it has birthed,
Stranger is no bible; it is a sprawling satire of human conceits, including marriage, love, sex and--most importantly--religion. Satire usually aims to
inform, so if one is looking for any message in Stranger, then one take a good, long look at Heinlein's targets and think. As Heinlein himself said in a letter to an avid fan, ". . .I would never undertake to be a `Prophet,' handing out neatly packaged answers to lazy minds. [. . .] anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think--not to believe." What an invitation. ~~Beth Ager
Heinlein's own words:
"I've had people offer to explain Stranger in a Strange Land to me. I was simply writing a novel, but apparently I clicked." (April 1980).

Excerpts:
Captain van Tromp decided that it was time to throw a tantrum. "This man Smith--This 'man!' Can't you see that he is not?"
"Eh?"
"Smith . . . is . . . not . . . a . . . man."
"Huh? Explain yourself, Captain."
"Smith is an intelligent creature with the ancestry of a man, but he is more Martian than man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a man.
He thinks like a Martian, feels like a Martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us--they don't even have sex. He's a man
by ancestry, a Martian by environment. . . "

Jubal Harshaw, on Jubal Harshaw:
"My dear, I used to think that I was serving humanity... and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served;
on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases Jubal Harshaw."

Gillian Boardman
Jubal Harshaw
Anne (Fair Witness)
Patty Paiwonski

The Number of the Beast

First published in 1980

Latest edition: 1989

Publisher: Fawcett

Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0449130703

Deety Burroughs Carter
Zebadiah John Carter
Jacob Burroughs
Hilda Mae Corners Burroughs
Lazarus Long
Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Libby Long
Lapis Lazuli Long
Lorelei Lee Long
Maureen Johnson Long
Hamadryad Long
Tamara Long
Hazel Stone
Castor Stone
Pollux Stone
Minerva Long
Jubal Harshaw
Athene
Anne (Fair Witness)
Dr. Jesse F. Bone
Samuel Clemens

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

First published in 1985

Latest edition: 1996

Publisher: Berkley

Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0441094996

Hazel Stone: AKA Gwen Novak
Col. Richard Colin Campbell Ames
Gretchen Henderson
The Rev. Dr. Hendrik Hudson Schultz
Tamara
Athene
Dong Xia
Marcy Choy-Mu
Pixel
Lazarus Long
Wendy Campbell Ames
Maureen Johnson Long
Justin Foote 45th
Wyoming Long
Jacob Burroughs Long
Deety Burroughs Carter Long
Jubal Harshaw

TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET

First published in 1987

Latest edition: 1996

Publisher: Ace Books

Mass Market Paperback

ISBN 0441748600

Reviews:
In his final novel, published just months before his death, Robert A
Heinlein ties up a loose end from "Time Enough For Love" yet writes a
novel on its own.

Maureen Johnson Smith, first met in "Methuselah's Children", is a very
different character than she was in that book. Here, we meet her in a
hotel room, "barefoot all the way up" with a cat and a dead man. The
technology is new to her, and she has no memory of how she got there.

When she discovers that the people all around her plan to celebrate
her daughter with a bacchanalian feast, she knows she is on an
alternate timeline.

When she is tossed into prison, a prison she does not understand how
she got into or how she will get out of, she begins her memoir to pass
the time. Her only visitor is the same cat who had been with her and
the corpse in the hotel room, Pixel by name.

She takes us from her early youth and the disclosure of her father to
her that she is a Howard and what it means. Things just get started
there, and the tale is a lively one indeed.

If explicit sex scenes bother you, give this one a miss. There is more
than the average amount of sex, and it is indeed graphic.

Excerpts:
Chapter I - THE COMMITTEE FOR AESTHETIC DELETIONS

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.
I closed my eyes and tried to pull myself together--hook "now" to my memory of last night.
No good. There wasn't any "last night". My last clear memory was of being a passenger in a Burroughs irrelevancy bus, bound for New Liverpool, when
there was a loud bang, my head hit the seat in front of me, then a lady handed me a baby and we started filing out the starboard emergency exit, me with
a cat in one arm and a baby in the other, and I saw a man with his right arm off--
I gulped and opened my eyes. A stranger in my bed was better than a man bleeding to death from a stump where his right forearm ought to be. Had it been
a nightmare? I fervently hoped so.
If it was not, then what had I done with the baby? And whose baby was it? Maureen, this won't do. Mislaying a baby is inexcusable.
"Pixel, have you seen a baby?" The cat stood mute and a plea of not guilty was directed by the court.
My father once told me that I was the only one of his daughters capable of sitting down in church and finding that I had sat on a hot lemon meringue
pie. . . anyone else would have looked. (I had looked. But my cousin Nelson-- Oh, never mind.)
Regardless of lemon pies, bloody stumps, or missing babies, there was still this stranger in my bed, his bony back toward me -- husbandly rather than
loverly. (But I did not recall marrying him.)
I've shared beds with men before, and with women, and wet babies, and cats who demand most of the bed, and (once) with a barbershop quartet. But I do
like to know with whom I am sleeping (just an old-fashioned girl, that's me). So I said to the cat, "Pixel, who is he? Do we know him?"
"No-o-o-o."
"Well, let's check." I put a hand on the man's shoulder, intending to shake him awake and then ask where we had met -- or had we?
His shoulder was cold.
He was quite dead.
This is not a good way to start the day.

Everyone and then some