Methuselah's Children
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| Methuselah's Children | |
 First Edition cover |
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| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Gnome Press |
| Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 188 pp |
| 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. In it, he details his views of various types of government, and finds them all wanting.
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.
[edit] Plot summary
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 dying of old age in his forties. He therefore set up a trust fund to selectively breed humans for longevity, thereby saving others from his fate. The plan encourages particularly long-lived people to produce children, by providing large monetary rewards for the birth of any baby to parents who each have four living grandparents. The resulting children were offered larger rewards for the birth of any baby by a fellow product of the plan. Soon the products of the plan began contributing to the fund themselves out of gratitude for their already noticeably increased lifespans. By the 22nd century, the average life expectancy of a Howard is around 150 years.
More than a century before, the Howards began a "masquerade" to escape the scrutiny of a tyrannical fundamentalist government. The second American Revolution that toppled it resulted in a stable and peaceful society freer than any ever before seen in human history – the perfect representative democracy. Feeling ashamed of having to hide themselves and wishing to share a number of advanced medical technologies, the Families thus decided to attempt an experiment – a small fraction of their number revealed their long lifespans. However, the fact that increased lifespans exist but are unattainable except by inheritance creates an atmosphere of jealousy that threatens to plunge society into chaos.
Society refuses to believe that the Howard Families simply 'chose their ancestors wisely', instead insisting that they have developed a method to extend life. When the Howard Families fail to produce any such techniques, the Families are persecuted and interned. Though the beleaguered Administrator (Prime Minister) of the planet, Slayton Ford, knows that the Families are telling the truth, he is helpless to control an increasingly irrational public – and as a democratically elected official he must act on the behalf of the majority no matter the consequences. He can visualize only two horrific solutions – and is wracked with self-hatred as he tries to imagine which would be more humane: mass execution or mass sterilization. In short, his duty as a democratic leader is to commit genocide.
Lazarus Long realizes this as well, and proposes an alternative – that the Administrator assist them in hijacking the colony starship New Frontiers. To survive, the Howard Families must embark on an exodus to the stars. Ford himself joins the trek at the last moment to escape the wrath of his former constituency. A member of the Families, Andrew Jackson Libby, (known as "Slipstick" Libby as he is a Mental calculator) is a genius who invents a light-hugging stardrive. This permits them to travel between stars in years instead of centuries.
The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants who seem friendly and advanced - however, they are merely domestic animals belonging to the planet's true masters, indescribable beings of equally indescribable power. It is in fact the perfect benevolent dictatorship. But though humans are less intelligent than the masters, they are still too intelligent to be "pets". Thus, the masters decide to send the humans to another planet. Even as the humans are in the process of leaving, an indescribable force places them back within their ship and sends it on its way, as gently as a child would take a caterpillar from a sidewalk and place it on a branch.
The second planet seems far more welcoming - it is a lush environment with no predators and mild weather. Its inhabitants are just as welcoming, though just as strange as the other two races the Families have met - they are a group mind. Their abilities are in a way even more impressive than the inhabitants of the first planet the Families visited: the reason the planet is so welcoming is because they have made it so with a form of genetic engineering. However, their civilization is perhaps even more unsuitable for the Families than the master/pet civilization. This becomes evident when Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families behind Long, and who has always been fearful of death, joins the group mind in an attempt to become truly immortal. Many consider it a failed attempt. But when the first baby conceived on the planet is born, the Families are horrified. The group mind has altered it as they have the planet, and though objectively the alterations are an improvement (every organ is more efficient, potent and better arranged, along with secondary miniature hands supported by miniature eyes) many cannot consider it human.
Lazarus then confronts the entirety of the families, saying that humans are what they are because they are individuals, and that he feels he has no place on this world. He asks if any agree with him. Thus, though about a fourth of their number remain on the planet, Lazarus, and a majority of the Families, decides it's time to go back to Earth and claim their rights. Libby, with the help of the group mind, has designed a true faster than light drive - they can be home in just months.
The Families return to the Solar System to discover that their travels have taken seventy-five Earth-years. To their surprise they find that on earth great longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by the (false) belief that there was some specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, Earth's inhabitants have explored every avenue known to science to duplicate the feat; and have succeeded through the production of artificial blood, to be transfused into recipients and keep them "younger." Thus, the Families are no longer threatened - in fact they now possess something even more important than immortality: faster than light travel! The Solar System is incredibly crowded (one now must acquire a licence to have a child!), and immigration to other worlds can prevent catastrophe. The Families sell Libby's stardrive and regain their lost property, but have reached a conclusion on how they wish to spend the rest of their long lives – Earth's government would have exterminated them, the Masters would have enslaved them, the group mind would have dehumanized them. Democracy, dictatorship, socialism – all were unacceptable. Instead they will be explorers, living the only life that would permit them to live as they wished - that of nomads.
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
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