"Methuselah's Children" by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988)

Publisher:  Signet Books

Copyright: 1958

Methuselah's Children is one of the more important novels written by Robert A. Heinlein. It is part of his Future History series which includes: "The Man Who Sold the Moon" (February 11, 2019), "The Green Hills of Earth" (February 18, 2019), "Revolt in 2100" (January 14, 2019), "Orphans of the Sky", and "The Past Through Tomorrow". The first three of these I have already reviewed on the dates shown.

These six books lead the reader into the World as Myth series, the first book of which is "Time Enough For Love" (1973) which I'll be reviewing in a few weeks. The other books in the future history series are: "Number of the Beast" (1980), "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" (1985), "To Sail Beyond the Sunset" (1987). Which will be reviewed in the future, but I'm not sure exactly when as they are all rather long books.

As for Methuselah's Children it introduces and tells the story of the Howard Families who are extremely long lived individuals. This is due to the fact that they are the result of an experiment in eugenics. In which individuals were encouraged to marry and have children within a select group who have a history of long lived relatives.

At the beginning of the story there is a crisis within North America because the general population has found out about the existence of the Howard Families, and mistakenly believe they have found the fountain of youth through some experimentation of their own. Because of this erroneous idea the government is being pressured into obtaining the secret of their long life for everyone.

This is when we first meet Lazarus long, the senior of the Howard families (the oldest member at 214), who is attending one of their meetings for the first time in a number of decades. Due to the above crisis things quickly come to a head and Lazarus is forced to act for the families and help them escape before they are arrested and tortured for their 'secret'.

IN the course of this novel we are also reacquainted with another character Andrew Jackson Libby, a mathematical and engineering genius, who was introduced in the short story 'Misfit' from the 'Revolt in 2100' collection.

This is an extremely good story, which I have read a number of times. It does tend to drag slightly in the beginning due to backstory being presented, but for the most part this not only doesn't detract from the story, but in fact helps in introducing the Lazarus character. It may be considered by some to contain slightly more mature themes than would normally be recommended for very young adults, but this shouldn't mean they can't read it, but that it might take a little explaining on the part of someone older.