Howard families

The Howard Families are a fictional group of people created by the author Robert A. Heinlein.

According to Heinlein, the Howard Foundation was started in the 19th century by Ira Howard, a millionaire dying of old age in his forties, for the purpose of extending human lifespan. Howard himself did not live to see the outcome; he simply endowed the experiment with his own fortune, and the trustees of the Howard Foundation used the limited scientific knowledge of the time to create a selective breeding human program to encourage, financially, people of long-lived ancestry to have children together. The Howard Foundation is greatly enriched during the Great Depression by knowledge gained through time travel so that they get out of the stock market before the crash and invest in gold rather than cash and are able to reinvest in stocks that rebound after the crash.

The novel Methuselah's Children is focused on the Howard Families and their quest for acceptance on Earth and other planets. According to Methuselah's Children, envy of the Howard Families and the false belief that they have some artificial secret to long life eventually leads the "short-lifers" to develop a therapy for "rejuvenation." Initially, the therapy consists simply of blood replacement (using new blood grown in vitro), but according to Time Enough for Love, this single therapy was eventually expanded to include the gradual replacement of nearly all body parts as well as emotional therapy. Members of the Howard Families generally opt to undergo rejuvenation, thereby extending their already-long lifespans practically indefinitely.

Methuselah's Children

Methuselah's Children is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in the July, August, and September 1941 issues. It was expanded into a full-length novel in 1958.

The novel is usually considered to be part of Heinlein's Future History series of stories. It introduces the Howard Families, a fictional group of people who achieved long lifespans through selective breeding. The space ship in this novel, the New Frontiers, is described in the Future History timeline as a second generation ship, following the Vanguard, the vehicle for Heinlein's paired novellas "Universe" and "Common Sense".

According to John W. Campbell, the novel was originally to be called While the Evil Days Come Not. This provisional title stems from a quotation from Ecclesiastes that was used as a password on the second page of the story.

Plot summary

Ira Howard became rich in the California Gold Rush, but died of old age in his 40s. The trustees of his will carried out his wishes to prolong human life, by financially encouraging those with long-lived grandparents to marry each other and have children. By the 22nd century the "Howard families" have a life expectancy exceeding 150 years and keep their existence secret with the "Masquerade", in which the members fake their deaths and obtain new identities. The Masquerade helped the Families survive the dictatorship of Nehemiah Scudder, but as an experiment some Howard members reveal themselves to The Covenant, hoping that the free society established after Scudder's defeat will be friendly. They are mistaken; others refuse to believe that the Families obtained their lifespan by selective breeding, instead insisting they have developed a secret method to extend life. Administrator Slayton Ford, leader of Earth, believes that the Families are telling the truth, but cannot prevent efforts to force Howard members to reveal their alleged rejuvenatory abilities.