Methuselah's Children - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The Howard Families derive from Ira Howard, who became rich in the California Gold Rush, but died young and childless. Fearing death, he left his money for the prolongation of human life, and the trustees of his will carried out his wishes by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry and have children. While the Families (who, by the 22nd Century, have a life expectancy of 150 years) have kept their existence secret, with the enlightened human society established under The Covenant, they decide to reveal themselves.

Society refuses to believe the Howard Families simply 'chose their ancestors wisely', instead insisting they have developed a method to extend life, and the Families are persecuted and interned. Though the beleaguered Administrator of the planet, Slayton Ford, is convinced the Families are telling the truth, he is helpless to control an increasingly irrational public and their efforts to force the Howard Families to reveal their "secret" or face execution.

The eldest member of the Howard Families, Lazarus Long, realizes this as well, and proposes to the Administrator that he help the Families hijack the colony starship New Frontiers, so they can escape. In the process of escaping, they are driven too near the Sun by military spacecraft. When they are a few minutes away from overheating, Heinlein invokes a deus ex machina: it turns out that one member of the Families, Andrew Jackson Libby, (known as "Slipstick" Libby because he is a mathematical genius), has managed to invent a device that removes inertia from any mass to which it is attached. Libby applies the device, and instantaneously, New Frontiers is accelerated by light-pressure from the Sun to nearly the speed of light. The Families leave the Solar System, with the deposed Ford joining them at the last minute.

The first planet they discover has humanoid inhabitants who seem friendly and advanced - however, they are merely domesticated animals belonging to the planet's true masters, indescribable beings of equally indescribable power. When humans prove incapable of similar domestication, they are expelled from the planet and sent to another world.

The second planet is a lush environment with no predators and mild weather. Its inhabitants are part of a group mind, with the mental ability to manipulate the environment on the genetic and molecular level. They have no independent personalities; anyone who joins the group mind ceases to exist as a unique individual. This becomes evident when Mary Sperling, second oldest of the Families, who has always been fearful of death, joins the group mind in an attempt to become truly immortal. The Families are further horrified when the group mind, in a mistaken effort to be helpful, genetically modifies the first baby born on the planet into a new, alien form.

Lazarus calls a meeting of the Families. He states that humans are what they are because they are individuals, and that they have no place on this world. The Families vote, and a majority of the Families decide to go back to Earth and claim their rights. Libby, with the help of the group mind, builds a new faster than light drive that will take them home in months instead of years.

The Families return to the Solar System seventy-five years after their original departure. To their surprise they find that on Earth great longevity is commonplace. Spurred on by the belief that there was a specific "technique" to the Howards' longevity, Earth's scientists developed a series of treatments that extended lifespans to several centuries. The Families are now free to return, and are even welcomed due to their discovery of faster than light travel. Thanks to humanity's increased lifespan, the Solar System is overcrowded; faster than light travel will allow emigrants to ease the population explosion. Libby and Long decide to recruit other members of the Families, and explore space with the new drive.