Maureen Johnson, the somewhat irregular mother of Lazarus Long, wakes up in bed with a man and a cat. The cat is Pixel, well-known to fans of the New York Times bestseller The Cat Who Walks through Walls. The man is a stranger to her, and besides that, he is dead . . . So begins Robert A. Heinlein's newest novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Filled with the master's most beloved characters, this compelling work broadens and enriches his epic visions of time and space, life and death, love and desire. It is also an autobiographical masterpiece--and a wondrous return to the alternate universes that all Heinlein fans have come to know and love...

One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was — as usual — in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars. Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake — failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line — for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!

Utopia has been achieved. For centuries, disease, hunger, poverty and war have been things found only in the history tapes. And applied genetics has given men and women the bodies of athletes and a lifespan of over a century. They should all have been very happy.... But Hamilton Felix is bored. And he is the culmination of a star line; each of his last thirty ancestors chosen for superior genes. Hamilton is, as far as genetics can produce one, the ultimate man. And this ultimate man can see no reason why the human race should survive, and has no intention of continuing the pointless comedy. However, Hamilton's life is about to become less boring. A secret cabal of revolutionaries who find utopia not just boring, but desperately in need of leaders who know just What Needs to be Done, are planning to revolt and put themselves in charge. Knowing of Hamilton's disenchantment with the modern world, they have recruited him to join their Glorious Revolution. Big mistake! The revolutionaries are about to find out that recruiting a superman was definitely not a good idea....

It wasn't the communists who got us after all... You can read about its beginnings in Heinlein's immortal STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: At the height of America's secular decadence came Nehemiah Scudder, bearing the rod and the wrath of the Lord for those who opposed him, and the promise of earthly happiness and heavenly bliss for those who followed him...and America fell under an absolute religious dictatorship that was to last a hundred years. But nothing endures forever. The smoldering embers of liberty have burst into flame again. It is time for a new beginning. Contents: · The Innocent Eye: An Introduction by Henry Kuttner · If This Goes On - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction February 1940 · Coventry - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction July 1940 · Misfit - originally published in Astounding Science Fiction November 1939 · Concerning Stories Never Written: Postscript by Robert A. Heinlein

A clever architect designs a house in the shape of the shadow of a tesseract, but it collapses (through the 4th dimension) when an earthquake shakes it into a more stable form (which takes up very little room in our 3-dimensional space.)

This text offers a mix of wit and wisdom of Robert A. Heinlein on subjects ranging from crime and punishment to nuclearm power, from pragmatics of patriotism to post holocaust America; from the nature of courage to the nature of reality.

The stars were closed to Max Jones. To get into space you either needed connections, a membership in the Guild, or a whole lot more money than Max, the son of a widowed, poor mother, was every going to have. What Max does have going for him are his uncle’s prized astrogation manuals—book on star navigation that Max literally commits to memory word for word, equation for equation. From the First Golden Age of Heinlein, this is the so-called juvenile (written, Heinlein always claims, just as much for adults) that started them all and made Heinlein a legend for multiple generations of readers.

Jim Marlow and his strange-looking Martian friend Willis were allowed to travel only so far. But one day Willis unwittingly tuned into a treacherous plot that threatened all the colonists on Mars, and it set Jim off on a terrfying adventure that could save--or destroy--them all! From the Paperback edition.

Winner of four Hugo Awards and the Grand Master Nebula Award for Lifetime Achievement. Three high school students formed the Galileo Club to share their interests in science and space exploration. But they never imagined they would team up with a nuclear physicist to construct and crew a rocket bound for the moon. And they never expected to gain some powerful enemies in the process.

Don is a citizen of the Interplanetary Federation - yet no single planet can claim him as its own. His mother was born on Venus and his father on Earth, and Don himself was born on a spaceship in trajectory between planets. And he fights for the rights of this curious citizenship in very curious ways. Heinlein reveals in a dashing fast-moving style what can happen when politics - on an interplanetary scale - disregard the liberty of the individual. In the end, only the remarkable scientist-dragons of a rebellious Mars can resolve the conflict within a man who cannot live without the society that he knows is killing him.

'General Services', a very successful company that provides various personal services such as shopping for you or walking your dogs or supplying a host for a party, but also proudly advertises that no job is too large (One ad campaign idea the staff discusses: "Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call.... It Pays!"), is asked to do the impossible: enable an interplanetary conference to be held on Earth, whose strong gravity is inhospitable to many of the native races of other planets in the solar system. Much of the action of the story is not, as one might expect, about the science or engineering of creating an antigravity device to allow the conference to take place, but about how to persuade the world’s leading physicist to undertake the job. It turns out he is fond of a museum piece, a porcelain bowl called "The Flower of Forgetfulness," which humanizes all the participants.

A fix-up consisting of the novelette "Universe" (1941) and the novella "Common Sense" (1941). First published in 1963. Hugh had been taught that, according to the ancient sacred writings, the Ship was on a voyage to faraway Centaurus. But he also understood this was actually allegory for a voyage to spiritual perfection. Indeed, how could the Ship move, since its miles and miles of metal corridors were all there was of creation? Science knew that the Ship was all the Universe, and as long as the sacred Convertor was fed, the lights would continue to glow and the air would flow, and the Creator's Plan would be fulfilled. Of course, there were the muties, grotesquely deformed parodies of humans, who lurked in the upper reaches of the Ship where gravity was weaker. Were they evil incarnate, or merely a divine check on the population, keeping humanity from expanding past the capacity of the Ship to support? Then Hugh was captured by the muties and met their leader (or leaders), Joe-Jim, with two heads on one body. And he learned the true nature of the Ship and its mission between the stars. But could he make his people believe him before it was to late? Could he make them believe that he must be allowed to fly the ship?

"By His Bootstraps" is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein that plays with some of the inherent paradoxes that would be caused by time travel. It was originally published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (US) under the pen name Anson MacDonald.

First came the news that a flying saucer had landed in Iowa. Then came the announcement that the whole thing was a hoax. End of story. Case closed. Except that two agents of the most secret intelligence agency in the U.S. government were on the scene and disappeared without reporting back. Then four more follow up agents also disappeared. So the head of the agency and his two top agents went in and managed to get out with their discovery: an invasion is underway by slug-like aliens who can touch a human and completely control his or her mind. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And most of Iowa is already under their control. Sam Cavanaugh was one of the agents who discovered the truth. Unfortunately, that was just before he was taken over by one of the aliens and began working for the invaders, with no will of his own. And he has just learned that a high official in the Treasury Department is now under control of the aliens. Since the Treasury Department includes the Secret Service, which safeguards the President of the United States, control of the entire nation is near at hand.

A must-read for any science fiction fan, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume Two (published in two volumes, A & B) is a compilation of twenty-two of the best novellas published between 1895 and 1962.The two volumes were originally published in 1973 (Two-A) and 1974 (Two-B) after the stories were selected by a vote of the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA, now known as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America).Volume Two-A has complete novellas by the following authors:Poul AndersonJohn W. Campbell, Jr.Lester del ReyRobert A. HeinleinC. M. KornbluthHenry Kuttner and C. L. MooreEric Frank RussellCordwainer SmithTheodore SturgeonH. G. WellsJack Williamson