 | |
| Author | Robert A. Heinlein |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Boris Vallejo |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | G. P. Putnam's Sons |
Publication date | 1987 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 416 (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-399-13267-8 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC | 14588878 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3515.E288 T6 1987 |
To Sail Beyond the Sunset is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1987. It was the last novel published before his death in 1988. The title is taken from the poem "Ulysses", by Alfred Tennyson. The stanza of which it is a part, quoted by a character in the novel, is as follows:
... my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It is the final part of the "Lazarus Long" cycle of stories, involving time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein named pantheistic solipsism, or 'World as Myth': the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, so that somewhere (for example) the Land of Oz is real. Other books in the cycle include Methuselah's Children, Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.