Review: Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Time Enough for Love came out when I was just starting my freshman year at a local community college. If you had told me back then that I'd have a higher opinion of this novel when I was 59 years old than I did back then I would have had reason to doubt you. Heinlein was my favorite author back then. I read just about all the Heinlein juveniles, plus most of his adult novels. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was (and remains) my favorite.

Then he started writing stuff like Stranger In A Strange Land, I Will Fear No Evil, and this. It seemed like a big change in direction for him. You need to understand that in 1973 S.F. didn't really have much to say about sex, or even gender. When I got my seventh grade library card several years earlier and was allowed into the upstairs library for grown-ups I was allowed to read non fiction, fiction in the "Young Moderns" section, and any science fiction. (Non fiction books about sex were kept in a locked case with glass doors. You not only had to be old enough to read them, you had to ask the librarian to get them out of the case for you. They were pretty tame books, too).

So for most of my life there was no sex to speak of in science fiction, and then out of nowhere it seems like Heinlein can't write about anything else.

I enjoyed I Will Fear No Evil, but this one tested my patience. Heinlein seemed to have an unhealthy interest in incest in this one. (As opposed to a normal, healthy interest in it). He seemed to believe that any brother and sister, given any opportunity at all, would do the nasty together. I don't have any sisters myself but I was pretty sure at the time that this wasn't true.

His character Lazarus Long is a dirty old man, a 2,000 year old dirty old man. Any resemblance to a similar creation by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks is hard to find.

What I didn't appreciate when I first read the book was that Lazarus Long was actually a well thought out character. In the story a wealthy man who dies young founds an organization that identifies people who are likely to have a long life, based on their family history, and pays them to marry each other and have children. These families are called the Howard families after the wealthy donor. Lazarus was born in 1912, has been married many times (lifetime monogamy being unrealistic for people who stay alive for centuries) but only to long-lifers like himself (except once). This makes it more or less inevitable that he will marry and have children by one of his own descendants. The Howard families have to be inbred, and this has consequences.

Heinlein gave a lot of thought to what it would be like to live for hundreds of years (more than Mel Brooks did, at least) and the aphorisms collected in the book are what you might expect a man born in 1912 and still alive centuries later might come up with. ("Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark" being one example. His aphorism describing what a human being should be able to do is one of my favorite quotes of any author).

I won't say this is his masterpiece, because it isn't. Still, there are some good yarns in here, and it is worth reading. Just bear in mind that you might appreciate Lazarus Long more when you're a grumpy old man yourself!




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