Three centuries into the future, the human race has become a product of artificial selection through genetic engineering. The world has conquered poverty, crime, and most diseases and while there are still natural-born humans, they are generally considered inferior.

Despite this alleged Utopia, wealthy game designer Hamilton Felix questions whether mankind should even continue as a race. Felix is from a “star line”, the product of 300 years of tightly controlled genetics. Yet, when the District Moderator for Genetics, Mordan Claude, calls Felix to the Central Clinic to suggest that he take a wife and produce offspring, Felix balks.

Refusing to be easily dissuaded, Claude steers the attractive and willful Longcourt Phyllis in Felix’s direction, but while Felix slowly warms up to her, he comes into contact with a dangerous revolutionary known as McFee Norbert who is gathering forces to overthrow the government and institute their own version of a perfect world.

Despite Claude’s objections, Felix infiltrates the group, but can he and Claude stop the revolution when the rebels send forces to invade the Central Clinic?

A master storyteller, Heinlein does a deft job of revealing this new world as the plot develops, although the story is occasionally stifled by several pages—and an entire third chapter—of purely scientific (or pseudo-scientific) discourse in the form of dense info-dumping. This is something that would never make it past a contemporary editor, of course, but as an avid reader of golden age SF novels, I’m accustomed to it. At that time, it was fairly common in the genre. Modern readers might also stumble over Heinlein’s occasional use of what would now be considered archaic grammar, but, in such cases, meaning can easily be derived from context.

Published in 1948, Beyond this Horizon is one of Heinlein’s earliest novels and offers a glimpse into the imaginative and prescient mind of one SF’s legendary visionaries.