History Literature / ToSailBeyondTheSunset

* BrotherSisterIncest: Maureen accidentally discovers one of her sons and daughter are having sex, and decides to gently confront them so as neither to frighten them nor anger them and make them rebellious.

* ParentalIncest: Two ways: Maureen and Lazarus, and then later Maureen and her own father, Ira. The latter does not occur onscreen but Maureen makes it clear that it is one of her motivations for rescuing him.
** Also an encounter between Brian and Nancy, his oldest daughter by Maureen. Nancy is an adult, pregnant, engaged, and definitely a willing participant.

After she is finally rescued, she then embarks on the mission she joined the Time Corps to accomplish in the first place: to rescue ''her'' father, who disappeared during the Battle of Britain in WorldWarTwo.

* InThePastEveryoneWillBeFamous: In the comparison of the various alternate universe timelines, one person notes that their universe's HarryTruman was a haberdasher and therefore couldn't have entered politics (Truman was, in fact, a haberdasher).

* StableTimeLoop / TemporalParadox: Before Lazarus went off to WorldWarOne in ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'', he gave Maureen a laundry list of future happenings, which she carefully recorded. She parlayed that list not only into considerable fortune for herself but also into helping ensure that the things on the list actually came to pass.

* MutuallyFictional: TheWorldAsMyth concept continues in this novel, mainly continuing the themes from the past two.

* DefaultAnswer:
-->'''Maureen:''' "Donald, when someone asks 'Why do they?' or 'Why don't they?', [[MoneyDearBoy the answer is almost always, 'Money']]."

''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' is the last novel that Creator/RobertAHeinlein wrote and published before his death. Set in TheWorldAsMyth established in the previous two novels, the story focuses on a character first introduced in ''TimeEnoughForLove'': Maureen Johnson Long (aka Maureen Johnson Smith), mother of Heinlein's archprotagonist Lazarus Long.

* MixAndMatchMan: Pallas Athene gets a human body in this novel, like her "sister" Minerva in ''TimeEnoughForLove''.

* StableTimeLoop / TemporalParadox: Before Lazarus went off to WorldWarOne in ''TimeEnoughForLove'', he gave Maureen a laundry list of future happenings, which she carefully recorded. She parlayed that list not only into considerable fortune for herself but also into helping ensure that the things on the list actually came to pass.

* AuthorAppeal: Maureen may be the single greatest example of this in the history of Heinlein's writing, embodying a double Oedipal fantasy: Mother-Son, then Daughter-Father. Also, Her husband has sex with his daughter, and some of her children have sex with each other, and Maureen's as shameless as a cat in heat all the time (but especially when she's pregnant), and good lord Heinlein loved all sorts of kink.

* AuthorAppeal: Maureen may be the single greatest example of this in the history of Heinlein's writing, embodying a double Oedipal fantasy: Mother-Son, then Daughter-Father.

The setup takes a bit of explanation. In ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'', Lazarus traveled in time from the year 4292 to the year 1916 to meet his original family. In so doing, he fell in love with and romanced his own mother. In ''Literature/TheNumberOfTheBeast'', he used a more advanced TimeTravel technology to rescue her from late 20th century Earth and bring her back to his time, whereupon she was rejuvenated with 43rd century technology and joined his extended [[{{Polyamory}} group marriage]]. In ''Literature/TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls'', Lazarus' [[TimePolice Time Corps]] fought a battle throughout the timestream to rescue the dormant supercomputer Mycroft Holmes from Luna to help them predict the effects of their time manipulations.

The setup takes a bit of explanation. In ''TimeEnoughForLove'', Lazarus traveled in time from the year 4292 to the year 1916 to meet his original family. In so doing, he fell in love with and romanced his own mother. In ''TheNumberOfTheBeast'', he used a more advanced TimeTravel technology to rescue her from late 20th century Earth and bring her back to his time, whereupon she was rejuvenated with 43rd century technology and joined his extended [[{{Polyamory}} group marriage]]. In ''Literature/TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls'', Lazarus' [[TimePolice Time Corps]] fought a battle throughout the timestream to rescue the dormant supercomputer Mycroft Holmes from Luna to help them predict the effects of their time manipulations.

!!Provides examples of:

''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' is the last novel that RobertAHeinlein wrote and published before his death. Set in TheWorldAsMyth established in the previous two novels, the story focuses on a character first introduced in ''TimeEnoughForLove'': Maureen Johnson Long (aka Maureen Johnson Smith), mother of Heinlein's archprotagonist Lazarus Long.

* STDImmunity: Maureen never gets one, despite decades of philandering, presumably because she is very careful in whom she sleeps with. One of her daughters, however, is quite a bit less careful and winds up with a double dose (gonorrhea and syphilis simultaneously).

* STDImmunity: Maureen never gets one, despite decades of philandering, presumably because she is very careful in whom she sleeps with. One of her daughters, however, is quite a bit less careful and does get one.

This novel has two story threads. It starts with Maureen waking up naked in a hotel room on a strange planet next to a dead man. As the story evolves it turns out that she has been stranded in a previously unidentified timeline after an apparent accident involving a pandimensional transport. She must negotiate the bizarre, yet strangely familiar culture while investigating her situation and surviving long enough to be rescued.

* ABloodyMess: Maureen wakes up next to a dead man covered in blood. When the doctors show up, one tastes it -- much to her horror -- and then starts discussing [[TheKetchupTest which brand of ketchup it is]].

* StableTimeLoop / TemporalParadox: Before Lazarus went off to WorldWarOne in ''TimeEnoughForLove'', he gave Maureen a [[GraysSportsAlmanac laundry list of future happenings]], which she carefully recorded. She parlayed that list not only into considerable fortune for herself but also into helping ensure that the things on the list actually came to pass.

While she does this, she subvocally narrates her memoirs to an implanted recording device, recounting her life from adolescence all the way to her rescue by Lazarus. The result is something of a POVSequel to large chunks of Heinlein's "Future History" series, as her presence at various events in the timeline did everything from saving the Howard trust from bankruptcy in the Great Depression to saving the first manned spaceflight from bankruptcy.

* TimeTravel: Again, thanks to the Burroughs device, temporal and interdimensional travel are common. The problem with rescuing Maureen is that they can't at first figure out which time-space-dimension she's in.

* AuthorAppeal: Maureen may be the single greatest example of this in the history of Heinlein's writing, embodying a double Oedipal fantasy: Mother-Son, then Mother-Father.

The setup takes a bit of explanation. In ''TimeEnoughForLove'', Lazarus traveled in time from the year 4392 to the year 1916 to meet his original family. In so doing, he fell in love with and romanced his own mother. In ''TheNumberOfTheBeast'', he used a more advanced TimeTravel technology to rescue her from late 20th century Earth and bring her back to his time, whereupon she was rejuvenated with 44th century technology and joined his extended [[{{Polyamory}} group marriage]]. In ''Literature/TheCatWhoWalksThroughWalls'', Lazarus' [[TimePolice Time Corps]] fought a battle throughout the timestream to rescue the dormant supercomputer Mycroft Holmes from Luna to help them predict the effects of their time manipulations.