Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780893662820
ISBN number: 0893662828
Label: Gregg Press
Manufacturer: Gregg Press
Printing Date: 1981
Publishing house: Gregg Press
Sale Popularity Level: 6776924
Studio: Gregg Press
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Rated by buyers 
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People who knock on this work as "the worst of Heinlein" obviously haven't taken time to understand it. This is a masterpiece. But it is a subtle masterpiece. If you buy this copy, I'd suggest you also check out the essay in the beginning of the "Gregg Press science fiction series" version. It explains some important details that the average reader may miss. Most prominently, it calls the readers attention to a particular transition that occurs on a particular page in the second half of the novel. Simply put, if you don't understand the transition, you haven't understood the book at all.
I recommend you read it, and hang on for a great ride. But read it with care!
Rated by buyers 
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"However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring."
But not by much.
Of course there's something fine in the book, and that's because Heinlein wrote it: the fun of the imagined future, twinkling with unexplored wonders, the unbelievable and yet somehow unobjectionable superwit of the characters, (the erotic dominant/submissive roleplay), the guns. Scientific explanations still sound fresh and informative, and one forgives the author when he begins directly addressing the reader to describe the technology of his new world.
But even for 150 pages not much happens in this book---the climax crests ever so slightly about halfway through and leaves the plot sputtering, sputtering, refusing to die for another fifty pages. Characters are mostly supermen, who certainly don't need our pity and seem to get along fine without our caring. Hamilton plays a supporting role in his own tale. Our man from the past arrives only to tease us with a brief significance subsequently written off as a plot detail.
Heinlein has yet to hit his prime here. The writing, while enjoyable, clunkily switches scenes.
'"I wonder what Jack's up to?" wondered Amy.
'Here's what Jack was up to..."
Or...
'"We probably should go see Malcolm."
'At Malcolm's house, where they arrived...'
The author (as condescendingly as one of his characters) will relay fictive history to us of past wars and interesting events, and then crisply bring us back to the present, where such history has little effect or interest. There are too many speeches, too many damned theories let loose with nothing to attach, personify, or realize them.
Not that the theme isn't a significant one, and Heinlein does flesh it, but the story just won't fit around it: the shapes don't match. Bringing life to his imagination is a task competing with communicating with the reader: he proposes the fantastic again and again, forgetting the book's primary reason. What is life? Where are the answers? A grand game, suggests one of Hamilton's monologues, preprogrammed, or simple love as his macroeconomist friend discovers, children, reincarnation, the dollars of the man from the past--or the basic utilitarian goal, eugenically realized? That is a theme, damn it, something you can write a novel about. And it's there, no doubt, but I'm meeting Heinlein more than halfway: I'm dragging it out, really twisting the plot to get at it, being more cooperative than a reader should be.
An armed society may be a polite society, but a polite society isn't all that exciting.
And Heinlein's the best, but this isn't the best Heinlein.
Rated by buyers 
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As with many Heinlein novels, Beyond This Horizon isn't so much a straightforward narrative as it is an excuse to throw as many bizarre locales and situations at the reader as will fit between the covers. Indeed, the title betrays the author's intent, much like H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come, in that it places the depiction of a possible future as the purpose of the book; the plot takes second place, existing primarily as a convenient hook on which to hang the various prognostications.
And prognostications there are: humanity becomes a colossal genetics experiment, with some people paid not to enhance their genes due to the need for a control group; dueling is allowed in order to avenge slights, though if one opts out of dueling one may not be armed; Leisure time has increased immensely, and in fact one of the smartest men in the world, our protagonist, has amassed a fortune designing complex electronic games (not video games as we know them, but this is still remarkable prescient); and, of course, undercurrents of rebellion as a small group expresses dissatisfaction at the way such a perfect society is maintained.
It is this latter item that is ostensibly the source of the novel's conflict, at least according to the copy on the back cover of the Baen edition-the hero must decide which side he is on. But this conflict comes and goes with little real suspense, and in fact that may be the characteristic that best defines Beyond This Horizon: a pronounced lack of tension. But if you know Heinlein, you know that whether it succeeds or fails as a novel, it will not fail to fascinate, and it is on that basis that I recommend it. Don't read it for the plot. Read it for the prescience; along with video games, this is the novel in which Heinlein inadvertently invents the waterbed. Read it for the howlers; humans are said to have forty-eight chromosomes (though I've found this in several older stories, so they must have really thought that back then), and Heinlein identifies rabbits as rodents (but so does Monty Python, so I guess it happens to the best of us). Mostly, read it for the vision of the future, which, in Heinlein's hands, can be inspiring or ludicrous but is never boring.
Rated by buyers 
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Genetic engineering, Second Amendment implications, the war between the sexes, life after death, telepathy -- just what is this book about?
It meanders through numerous half-baked subplots (and the pointless intrusion of a twentieth century time traveler), only really dealing with genetics in detail, until it finally just peters out (presumably when the word count was sufficient for Astounding serialization in 1942).
Not only is it stuffed with Heinlein's usual lectures and pontificating, but it uses the annoying device of addressing the reader directly in very first and second person asides outside of its characters, and uses 1930's slang that was already obsolete by WWII.
Really a mess, nevertheless, Heinlein could come up with more thought provoking ideas at his worst than today's authors can come up with at their best, so I'm giving the book an extra star, but only recommending it for Heinlein fanatics.
Rated by buyers 
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This is one of Robert A. Heinlein's earliest novels. It was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in April and May of 1942, and then was published in book form in 1948. In the 1952 Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll it was rated 25th overall for science fiction books.
I found this book to be surprisingly poor. After reading it I was not sure what the purpose of this story was. The very first part of the book is somewhat standard, it is the story of Hamilton Felix, who questions what the purpose of life is. He is genetically superior to most people, and thus there is a lot of pressure on him to procreate. The society he lives in is considered a "Utopia", but frankly it has a lot in common with the society presented in Huxley's "Brave New World". However, the mood of this book is much lighter than that of Huxley's. After an incident at a restaurant things change for Hamilton. A revolutionary group tries to recruit him to use in their endeavor to seize control of the government and he meets a woman who changes his viewpoint on remaining single.
Once that story reaches a conclusion, the book continues on, touching on a variety of Science Fiction themes, but failing to deliver anything more than a chaotic mish-mash of a plot. There is a bit of a story about a man from the early 20th century being found in a stasis field. There is the start of a search for the meaning of life and the universe. There is the beginning of a story about a telepath. Finally, there is the start of a story about the transference of a dying person's consciousness into a fetus. Hamilton Felix is present throughout the book, and there are several other characters that are in most of the book as well, but there doesn't seem to be any conclusion to most of what happens in the book. Any and all of these themes could be used to make up a great science fiction novel, but this isn't it.
It is with extreme reluctance that I give one of Heinlein's books such a low rating. He is truly one of the greats of the genre. I suspect this must be his worst, as it isn't even near the same quality as any of his other novels or short fiction that I have read.
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