Home > Howard Families

According to Heinlein, the Howard Foundation was started in the 1800's by Ira Howard for the purpose of selectively breeding human beings to expand their lifespans. (Ira Howard himself did not live to see the outcome; he simply endowed the experiment with his own fortune when he found himself dying of old age in his forties.) 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 Howards 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 a number of other associated techniques. Members of the Howard Families generally opt to undergo rejuvenation, thereby extending their already-long lifespans — in practice indefinitely.

Interestingly, the most famous member of the Howard Families — Lazarus Long — did not acquire his extreme longevity through the breeding experiment; according to Time Enough for Love, he simply possessed a mutation in his twelfth chromosome pair (which of course he passed on to his own descendants, thereby contributing to the success of the experiment). This genetic deus ex machina does make a certain kind of biological sense: selective breeding does not, in and of itself, create new genotypes but merely favors certain genotypes already present in the selectively-bred population.

The books Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset tell the stories of two famous Howard Family members; Maureen Johnson and Lazarus Long. Lazarus Long also appears in The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.