Beyond This Horizon
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Beyond This Horizon is a 1942 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein.
The novel depicts a world where genetic selection for increased health, longevity and intelligence has become so widespread that the unmodified 'control normals' are a coddled, almost endangered minority. The control normals are preserved to maintain a backup of human stock in case the gene selection takes a wrong choice somewhere. The world has become an economic utopia; the "economic dividend" is so high that work has become optional -- a sort of welfare state for the upper middle class. The chief economic problem is in finding a way to use up the economic surplus: much goes into scientific research, but this has the side-effect of further increasing productivity a decade or three later, so long-term projects with no possible economic return are favoured (e.g. galactic astronomy).
But there's trouble: dissatisfied elements are fomenting revolution, and it's up to gun-totin' Hamilton Felix to stop them. Guns and duels are permitted (An armed society is a polite society.), except for the control normals, whose reflexes are so poor compared to current human stock that they'd be slaughtered in combat.
Editions
- Paperback, ISBN 0451075994
- 1948, Signet, paperback, ISBN 0451089669
- 1981, Gregg Press, 242 pages, ISBN 0839826729
- April 1989, Roc, paperback, ISBN 0451156161
- June 1, 1997, Roc, paperback, ISBN 0451166760
- September 2001, Baen, hardcover, 256 pages, ISBN 0671318365
- September 2001, Galerija, limited edition paperback, 86 pages, ISBN 1886060169
- September 1, 2002, Baen, paperback, 256 pages, ISBN 0743435613fr:L'Enfant de la science