Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. passed away last week at 95.
You’re thinking, “What makes him so special?” Lyon Tyler died 175 years after his grandfather left the White House! His grandpa was John Tyler, the 10th president, who was born in 1790. More amazing still is the fact that Lyon’s brother is still alive. As of about 10 days ago, John Tyler had two living grandchildren.
How can they have a grandfather born 230 years ago? President Tyler had 15 children over a long stretch of time, quite late in his life. He was 63 when his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler Sr. was born. In his turn, Lyon Sr. had sons when he was 71 (Lyon Jr) and 75 (Lyon’s brother, Harrison). Those sons, in their turn, lived to be very old men.
I’m sorry to hear that. I worked for years for Harrison. He was (is) the nicest boss I ever had, eventually transferring ownership of the company (ChemTreat) to we employees through an ESOP program. It was later purchased by Danaher Corp. who still owns it.
Harrison is still alive…amazing.
Jeez. And I was always impressed that James Longstreet’s daughter was still alive as late as 1957.
Then some people have a grandfather in his 30s.
So Lyon Jr.’s father was TOO YOUNG to be a Civil War veteran, since he was born in about 1853 and was only about 12 years old when the Civil War ended. That is stunning as well.
Robert A Heinlein wrote a novel about a group of long-lived people created by a society that simply gave people whose ancestors had lived to great old ages financial incentives to marry each other. That started sometime before 1900, so in Heinlein’s future in the 2000’s, it had had a number of generations to pay off. The members of this society were beginning to be persecuted because the public had found out about them and thought they were withholding some technological solution for longevity. They fled in a spaceship and had various adventures. They eventually gave up and returned to Earth, where due to Einsteinian time effects of travelling at a substantial portion of the speed of light, a good deal of time had gone by. A technological solution to extended life HAD been developed and they were now regarded as having been unjustly persecuted. It was a good story if you liked conventional 1950’s science fiction. It was not one of Heinlein’s political forays.
It just hit me that having their father be to young to be a Civil War veteran is exactly what you would expect for a someone dying in 2020. I don’t know how I got that turned around in my head. But 1853 is very early for the birth of the father of someone born in 1924. My father was born a few years before 1920, and I think his father was born well after 1880.
Robert Heinlein is my all time favorite author. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite of his novels. But I enjoyed Methuselah’s Children, the novel you describe above, as well as the sequel featuring Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love as well. I thought the excerpts from the “Notebook of Lazarus Long” peppered throughout Time Enough for Love featuring advice from the oldest human being in history was the best part. On the other hand, the part where Long time travels to when he was 3 or 4 years old, meets his mother, and has sex with her in the front seat of a car while his younger self is sleeping in the back seat? I would have preferred if that was left out.
So would everyone else, Michael McC. That is not how I remember LL having sex with his mother, but I am not about to get a copy of the book to find out. I was so into Heinlein when that book was published that is was the first hardcover book I ever bought brand new. I think it was also the first such book I got rid of.
As it happens, the first Heinlein book I read was his first novel, Rocket Ship Galileo. That was probably some time time in the late 1970’s. I had found the book in the library and from there read most of his “juvenile” novels. When I got older, I came across his adult novels. It is my understanding that Heinlein began writing books for kids in the 1950’s before transitioning to adult novels as his original readers grew older. By chance, I read his work in the same order. I enjoy Heinlein’s philosophy and agree with much of it, but only to a point. I consider myself libertarian leaning as opposed to a libertarian because I do believe in a social safety net. The polyamory that seemed to be a part of most of his later works was interesting, but in my opinion quite unrealistic. Human nature being human nature such relationships will fail due to jealousy. Though they can work for some people. I purchased his later novels in hardcover, starting I think with Friday. The Number of the Beast I remember borrowing from the library and not liking when I first read it. I would have been 12 at the time, but did read it a few years later and liked it quite a bit. The premise of that book was that whenever an author wrote a book they were creating a universe where what they had written was reality. He then used that premise to put all his many novels and stories in a common multiverse. That book came out in 1980. Take that MCU!
Heinlein’s first novel was actually “Beyond This Horizon”, which I quite like, although it’s kind of a mess. Still fun to read, though. “Rocket Ship Galileo” was the first juvenile, and the most dated. I’m glad you enjoy his work too. I got rid of a number of paperbacks of his books because I figured I would always be able to get them at the library. Very wrong; he and Asimov barely exist on the library shelves of today.
I agree with you about a social safety net, and the unrealism of Heinlein’s polyamory. It was once thought that Heinlein had a good grasp of the female point of view, and his novel “Podkayne of Mars” was once well regarded; nobody thinks those things any more.