Beyond This Horizon

Originally published at FanLit.
http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/beyond-this-horizon/

Hamilton Felix is a genetic superman, carefully crafted from the best chromosomes his ancestors had to offer. He lives in a world where most people live long easy lives untroubled by disease, poverty, and tooth decay. It???s boring. Until Felix accidentally infiltrates a revolutionary group of elitists who want to take over the world and run things their way.

As boring as Hamilton Felix???s life is, this book about him is even more boring. There are lots of ideas in Beyond This Horizon, but very little story to connect them together and make them interesting. One problem is that most of these ideas ??? eugenics, selective breeding, survival of the fittest ??? are neither new nor particularly interesting for the 21st century reader, though that???s not Heinlein???s fault because Beyond This Horizon was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1942. What is Heinlein???s fault is that he presents these ideas in lecture format. He spends most of the page count of Beyond This Horizon drily teaching us Mendelian inheritance, embryology, natural selection, and economics. I felt like I was back in high school.

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http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/beyond-this-horizon/

“The one thing that could give us some real basis for our living is to know for sure whether or not anything happens after we die. When we die, do we die all over—or don't we?”

A fine Heinlein utopian, futuristic novel on genetics and economics. Sometimes I felt like the plot wasn't really going anywhere and that he was trying to cover too much ground, but it was certainly an enjoyable read nonetheless. I couldn't stop thinking in how this relates to Huxley's Brave New World hierarchical society but with synthesists and geneticists; it's, of course, way more science-packed as you might expect from the Grandmaster.

Hamilton Felix is the culmination of a three hundred year program of controlled genetics and selective breeding. Leader type. He is part of a “star line” group of high-quality human characteristics. He enjoys life but thinks it's meaningless, thus he gives a rat's ass about line continuity... until he is drawn into new adventures.

3.5