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Time Enough for Love

(The World As Myth #1)

Robert A. Heinlein

3.96 · Rating details · 29,530 ratings · 770 reviews

The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein's famous Future History, Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it.

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Mass Market Paperback, 589 pages

Published August 15th 1988 by Ace (first published June 19th 1973)

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3.96 ·

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Oct 20, 2011 Lyn rated it liked it

Was Robert A. Heinlein a dirty old man?

Yes.

But he was also a visionary who saw the trends of Western Civilization and expounded out into a foreseeable future, not just in terms of science fiction but also in regard to cultures, morals, sociology and ideology. Time Enough for Love demonstrates the fundamental attractiveness of science fiction, the eternal hope that things will get better.

Dystopian fantasies aside, science fiction deals with the future, and that there are people in the future s ...more

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May 22, 2009 Manny rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, parody-homage, story-review, older-men-younger-women

- Mr. Lazarus Long, since you happen to be passing through the early twenty-first century, could you give us a few priceless gems of homespun wisdom for the Goodreads membership to marvel at?

- Gosh darn it, when I see all the cute females on this site, how can I say no? Could you just pass me the... cuneiform tablets? Papyrus rolls? Parchment? Oh yes, laptop. Sorry, hard to keep things straight. So...

1. If you're a tired SF hack who's completely run out of ideas, don't worry. Just recycle the ol ...more

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Apr 20, 2012 S.C. Jensen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

People seem to have a love it or hate it kind of relationship with Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love. And I’ve gotta say I’m strapped firmly to the former bandwagon. Granted, I can see why some of the negative Nancy’s are getting their panties in a knot (okay, maybe the incest theme goes a little far), but Heinlein’s weirdness just doesn’t bug me. And I think some critics have missed the mark entirely, by focusing on the wrong stuff. Which is fully within their rights, of course, and an opinion is People seem to have a love it or hate it kind of relationship with Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love. And I’ve gotta say I’m strapped firmly to the former bandwagon. Granted, I can see why some of the negative Nancy’s are getting their panties in a knot (okay, maybe the incest theme goes a little far), but Heinlein’s weirdness just doesn’t bug me. And I think some critics have missed the mark entirely, by focusing on the wrong stuff. Which is fully within their rights, of course, and an opinion is only an opinion. Blah blah blah. Here’s my two cents on why they’re wrong:

Time Enough for Love is set up as a series of tales told by the oldest living man in the universe, Lazarus Long. Lazarus is confined to a rejuvenation clinic, where he is being held against his will by a team of people dedicated to preserving his knowledge. You see, they’ve “rescued” Laz from attempted suicide, in order to record his life’s story and hopefully glean some of the wisdom he’s accumulated in over two-thousand years of life. And Lazarus has agreed not to try to take his own life again, until he’s told them about the most important lessons learned in his long life. Time Enough for Love is like Arabian Nights, but in reverse; Laz is telling his stories for his right to die.

So the structure necessitates a kind of “bracketing” set up, wherein Lazarus’ tales are divided by his present experiences in the rejuvenation clinic. And I’ve got to admit, Lazarus’ voice is where Heinlein’s storytelling excels. I sometimes had to restrain myself from skipping forward until the next story, although, in the end I’m glad that I did (restrain myself, that is). Heinlein brings everything together nicely once Lazarus regains an interest in life and goes on to set up his free-lovin’ hippie commune on the planet Boondock, and all of a sudden his present becomes the next tale.

The number one complaint that I’ve noticed in other reviews is with Heinlein’s apparent preoccupation with incest. But I think that, unusual as the theme is in modern writing, it has a place in the story and is essential to Lazarus’ character. First and foremost is the fact that Lazarus Long is completely obsessed with genetic purity. As one of the first “long-lifers” on Earth, he was contractually obligated to reproduce only with other long-lifers in order to preserve the longevity they had acquired. Then, there is the fact that old Laz, being nearly three-thousand years old, is the great-to-the-nth-degree grandfather of nearly everyone in the universe, so the older he gets the harder it is for him to find partners with whom he is genetically compatible (not being related to them is virtually impossible).

Lazarus comes to view the appropriateness of sexual pairings solely through the lens of healthy reproduction—and then, only if reproduction is the goal (in the most extreme example (view spoiler)). And although the taboo of incest, in the traditional sense, once served a primitive purpose to people who didn’t really understand genetics—the over simplified concept is not applicable in Lazarus’ world. In any case, I really didn’t find any of the questionable relationship in this novel to be creepy, even if I did raise an eyebrow at them initially.

Creepy incestuous relationships aside, the next biggest complaint of this novel that I’ve encountered has to do with Heinlein’s characterization. Really, everyone in the novel except for Lazarus himself, seems to fall into a stereotypical kind of mould. Every male character is interchangeable with every other male character, and the same goes for the female characters, even if they have slightly different physical characteristics. However, I would argue that, perhaps this sameness has more to do with Lazarus’ memory than Heinlein’s skill as a writer. It seemed to me, that people kind of blend together for Lazarus; every character is a mixture of all of the people he has ever known, their personalities and their deeds are not necessarily attributed accurately (Lazarus is a textbook unreliable narrator, and is frequently caught in contradictions and fallacies throughout the book). The secondary characters in Lazarus’ tales are place-holders, used by Lazarus to get his point across to his audience, but not important in their individuality. They are anecdotal.

This sameness, I would also argue, serves to illustrate Heinlein’s vision of human kind. Ultimately, even thousands of years in the future, human beings can be reduced to their basic needs—the same needs that we have had since the beginning of time. First and foremost, is our need for love. Lazarus’ overarching lesson for humanity is that a person’s worth is measured not by the property and wealth that they accumulate, or by the fantastic deeds that they accomplish, but by the quantity and quality of the time that they spend with those they love—family, friends, and lovers.

And that’s a position that I can stand by.
...more

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Feb 19, 2018 J.L. Sutton rated it liked it

There is plenty of Heinlein's reshaping/questioning of social mores in Time Enough for Love (much like Stranger in a Strange Land); however, without the driving force of Stranger's narrative behind it, Time Enough mostly feels disjointed and long-winded. The novel begins with a recalling of adventures from the oldest man alive. There are some interesting stories here (including one involving colonization on a more primitive planet and time travel to one's own youth); however, the more developed ...more

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Oct 27, 2012 Till Noever rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Everybody

(Read the other reviews for plot summaries. No point in rehashing.)

Heinlein has profoundly influenced my thinking and life since I was but in my early teens, so I guess this review isn't exactly impartial. Still, there are books of his that bored me, among them Stranger in Strange Land. In other words, I know the man's limitations.

With all this said, I still think that TEFL qualifies as a curmudgeonly masterpiece, and it banged my head against a wall again and again and said "Get a life, man! Ge (Read the other reviews for plot summaries. No point in rehashing.)

Heinlein has profoundly influenced my thinking and life since I was but in my early teens, so I guess this review isn't exactly impartial. Still, there are books of his that bored me, among them Stranger in Strange Land. In other words, I know the man's limitations.

With all this said, I still think that TEFL qualifies as a curmudgeonly masterpiece, and it banged my head against a wall again and again and said "Get a life, man! Get a sense of perspective about what matters and what doesn't."

For that's what it's all about. Quoting the man himself: “May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.” It was YB Yeats who wrote that “Sex and death are the only things that can interest a serious mind.” While that almost covers it, and while it's a very Heinleinian thing to say (even though it came from Yeats), I suspect that Heinlein would have replaced the word 'sex' by 'love', with a particular emphasis on the 'romantic' kind.

In TEFL, like in other novels, Heinlein cut through taboos (and especially those relating to sex and its many expressions) with gusto. He had the audacity (and it still scandalizes a lot of people today, as evidenced by the comments on this book) to assert that all taboos are social construct—which they self-evidently are!—with possibly a biological basis (e.g. incest); but when that basis disappears then screw the taboos. Move on and get a life.

The biggest one of these taboos is incest. I wonder how long it'll take until, for example, consenting, non-child-issue sex between consenting adult siblings will be decriminalized and destigmatized, and become so accepted that the 'ick'-factor disappears from people's knee-jerk reactions. Anybody reading TEFL has to confront this issue and their own reactions to it. The point is that Heinlein shows the breaking of these taboos not as something to be disgusted about, or as something that has terrible social consequences, which is the usual way of representing it in almost all fiction, but rather as no 'biggie' at all.

About that other subject of the Yeats quote above:

It's been said that TEFL is Heinlein's personal 'fantasy' about immortality, written at a time when he was pretty much staring his own death in the face. Sure, that's what TEFL is also all about. A very thoughtful treatise on human life beyond the boundaries currently imposed on it. And along the way, for those who think about the potential for significant human longevity becoming a reality fairly soon, it gives us a lot of food for thought. Because if human life expectancy is, indeed, extended on a large scale to possibly hundreds of years, all bets are off, and the rules of society and personal life as we know them now are going to go out the window.

But if we're still wanting to be 'human', despite our longevity, and if we continue to be driven by our basic human urges, how will we cope with that? Heinlein is the only author I know of who had probed this in sufficient depth, both intellectually and emotionally—and for that alone we should look to this novel as a guide into a possible future by a visionary and passionate humanist who was many decades ahead of his time.

But in the end, TEFL is really about the central story, the tale of the adopted daughter, which is still one of the most touching stories I've ever read. It's about love and death and being human and what it all means; what it all can mean, if it's to mean any damn thing at all. And can you really ask for more than that from a storyteller? ...more

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Aug 01, 2011 Caroline rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: Anyone studying misogyny in literature

Shelves: sci-fi, boring-as-hell, relationships, adults, bah-humbug, fiction

This is one of those books that I wanted to stop reading, but I persevered in the hopes that something would redeem it by the end. There was no redemption; only sadness and a burning expletive on the end of my tongue. In a book with over 20 characters, the only one I enjoyed was a talking mule. In a book with nearly 600 pages, only 30 of them contained a story I cared about.

(view spoiler) This is one of those books that I wanted to stop reading, but I persevered in the hopes that something would redeem it by the end. There was no redemption; only sadness and a burning expletive on the end of my tongue. In a book with over 20 characters, the only one I enjoyed was a talking mule. In a book with nearly 600 pages, only 30 of them contained a story I cared about.

(view spoiler)[The author’s command of the English language was acceptable, but there were a few spelling errors that made me stumble, not to mention irritating characterization of everyone but the main character (affecting nearly all of the females). While Heinlein is fully capable of stringing together a coherent sentence, his inability to SHOW and not TELL leaves the story to drag on quite painfully for nearly 600 pages.

The first issue I have with this story is the disturbing lack of conflict, which is what usually drives the characters and plot forward. Unfortunately, the main character, Lazarus Long (LL), is written as a God-character, used as a vehicle for Heinein to self-insert and fantasize about impregnating women. These God-type-characters, also known as a Marty-stus (male) or Mary-sues (female), are most often found in fanfiction, but not exclusive to that medium. Their purpose is to be amazing, receive compliments and attention from other characters, and to breeze through conflicts while demonstrating how fantastic they are. Lazarus Long fits this description perfectly; he is ornery, has an answer to everything, lectures everyone about how they are wrong and he knows everything, everyone is drawn to him and fights to keep him alive and works together to make him happy. Anytime there is a *hint* of conflict, where I wondered “how will they get out of thi--?” it was quickly solved by LL’s all-knowingness.

Of course, LL isn’t 100% perfect, as he suffers from an unnamed condition that is evident by how many women beg him to impregnate them. This is typically triggered whenever he announces he is going anywhere, which usually involves women asking for his babies and then crying when he denies their request, which results in him impregnating them. He has been approached by every woman in the story. NOT. ONE. WOMAN. has been able to resist his allure, and this is a story that includes: a computer inserted into a cloned human body, twin female clones of LL himself, and his mother. (His mother didn’t beg for babies, though, but she made up for it with her bawdy comments and advances. She was conveniently able to sleep with LL without guilt because her husband knows that she is lustful and would not be able to control herself while he was in the army, and so trusted her good judgment to sleep with a man she liked and then tell him all about it after.) This book is rife with incest, or at the very least, emotional incest, where LL becomes romantically and/or sexually involved with a woman he’s raised from childhood. While I’m not a prude when it comes to this topic, I felt disturbingly numb to the concept by the end of the book when LL declared he was IN LOVE with his mother. (In her defense, she didn’t know he was her son, simply believing him to be a distant relative, or, at worst, her brother.) Five-hundred pages of emotional incest had dulled my senses to genetic incest.

In addition to incest, the women do not behave as real women do. They seem to enjoy being flirtatious and affectionate to a fault, existing only to warm men’s laps, make men feel better, have floppy breasts, get pregnant and then (on one occasion) flippantly discuss aborting their fetuses if the gender is not female. (Protip: even if a woman chooses to abort her baby, she is not flippant about it, nor does she joke about it with her friends.)

This book is not ergonomically safe and I do not recommend it to anyone who has issues with their eyes. I suffered repetitive strain injury from rolling my eyes – usually triggered when someone begged for LL’s babies.

Sadly(?), this is an unfinished story. In the middle of one of the two action scenes (in the whole book) LL is shot and then supposedly “killed”. The next few pages show an almost epilogue-style scene where LL is magically back on a spaceship, saved by his Tetrius family (aka. the-hippie-love-family) and brought back to life… FIN. What happens next? I don’t know. I wanted nothing more than for this book to END, but when it finally did, I grudgingly noted that it required 50 more pages to actually tie up its loose ends. Even at the end, when I should have been happy that I wouldn’t have to read any more, Heinlein has robbed me of any satisfaction in knowing things are wrapped up. I’m now plagued by wandering thoughts about “what happened next”. It is a cheap trick to make readers think of a Marty-stu character when they should have been able to put his existence out of their minds.

I hope the same trick is not used in Heinlein’s other books. Against my better judgment, I’m allowing my significant other to convince me to read them. Perhaps they will improve my opinion of Heinlein. (hide spoiler)] ...more

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Apr 20, 2012 Gabriel C. rated it did not like it

Shelves: among-others, 2012

Holy fucking shit. I made a bad mistake, I'm never going to read 30 books in April now. This book is as long-lasting and stupid and boring and disgusting and horrifying as its main character. I'm almost halfway through it and I need to write a half review because I'm going to lose my memories just like Lazarus Long.

#1. This isn't science fiction. This is a pathetic old man (Heinlein was 66) hanging on to his memories of a bygone era. Everything good is frozen in the pioneer era. Pathetic. They h Holy fucking shit. I made a bad mistake, I'm never going to read 30 books in April now. This book is as long-lasting and stupid and boring and disgusting and horrifying as its main character. I'm almost halfway through it and I need to write a half review because I'm going to lose my memories just like Lazarus Long.

#1. This isn't science fiction. This is a pathetic old man (Heinlein was 66) hanging on to his memories of a bygone era. Everything good is frozen in the pioneer era. Pathetic. They have space travel but they can't muster any technology and trade price-fixed wheat across space. A spaceship is not a grain train, dude. Economies don't scale like that, and technology doesn't freeze in one place but not in th'other.

#2. He hates taxes so badly. SO BADLY. But he loves the idea of joining the navy, not doing anything, and then lying to retire early with a disability pension. Who pays that pension? FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!

#3. It goes without saying, but this is some fucked up gender shit. Right now I just got to the part where he rescues an orphan, raises her from age four, and then slips with no discomfort into her bed. I expect this from Fabio's "Pirate." I guess that's about the quality I'm stuck with here.

#4. Unrelated, but related. Page 222 was a doozy. It had both of these:

Addressing the computer: "Dear, I wish you were a human girl with a spankable bottom long enough for me to spank it---I would!"

and here's the real quibbler.

"Anyone...knows that a boy can get as horny over his sister as over the girl down the street, and his sister is often more accessible. And little Libby was a redheaded pixie so endearingly sexy at eleven that even I could feel it." The narrator is hundreds of years old.

Intermission: Oh fuck I just accidentally read the synopsis on goodreads. Now I know how this weak ass shit is going to end.

OMG the synopsis was a lie. I finished and immediately started swearing. I wanted him to die soooo badly. Of course he couldn't die. That would be too fucking easy. It seemed like it was happening, such a fucking cock tease.

Oh, the plot? You want to know about the plot of the second half? I don't really care about the incest taboo so that wasn't going to shock me. The second half is all about how he joins a plural marriage, fucks his two female clones and goes back in time to seduce his mother and then kidnap her into the future to join the plural marriage. Nothing objectionable in the content, I guess, if you're an immature slob, but do you see how I did that in three lines? Do you see how it didn't take me 280 pages of garbage? Also, can we talk a little bit about gramp and what a piece of shit he is? All jingoistic and patriotic at the drop of a hat even though he was all fraud-y and cynical two seconds ago? Fuck this weak tea. Three more shit Heinlein books and I'm done forever.
...more

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Jun 03, 2008 Angel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science_fiction

I have a love-hate relationship with Heinlein. Some of his stuff is great. Some of it, like Farnham's Freehold, which I reviewed here, I simply hate. However, I like enough of his work that I seek more. This was a book that took me a long time to get through, but when I got done, it was well worth it. I read it back in 2002. From my journal back then:

>>I found it to be a book that makes you think. I thought the opening was a bit slow, but once the narrative was set up, it got interesting. ...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Emily rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What would you do if you could live 4,000 years? Try out every profession at least once? Make enough babies to populate a planet? Travel as far as the galaxy goes? Lazarus Long has done all that and more. He’s about to die peacefully when he’s kidnapped and rejuvenated and coerced to tell his memoirs. I could read stories about Lazarus’ life for months, but unfortunately this book only contains two. The rest is action in the ‘present’ (4272 Gregorian), and at the end, an account of Lazarus’ trip ...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Tracey rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: people who aren't easily offended by immoral sex scenes

Shelves: favorites, must-reread, sci-fi

I love Lazarus Long. That is all.

I think RAH transcends mere sexuality (or he's a horny old goat, one) and winds a tale in his 'future history' series that is unlike anything else I've ever read. IOW, I don't think he could have quite told the tale without sorta 'getting rid' of standard morals about sex and love.

This IS one of my favorites of the series, but I've got to re-read it to remember why I was left with such strong sentiment about this particular book. It, along with Number of the Beas ...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Jim rated it liked it

Shelves: scifi, 1paper, 2fiction

This is one of his pivotal books. Until the 60s, he was quite constrained by what he could write by contracts (e.g., Scribner Juveniles) & editors. After his big hit with Stranger in a Strange Land & several others, his popularity grew & the reins slipped off. In 1970, he had a close brush with death, was desperate to publish what he wanted without restraint, & did so. The result was I Will Fear No Evil, his descent into wordiness & weird sex. This book followed a few years l ...more

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Sep 19, 2010 Raja99 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is (probably) a great book, but it does have one significant barrier for the reader. I don't consider bringing it up to be a spoiler, since it's an idea and not a plot point, but if you hate even minor spoilage, you should stop reading NOW.

Time Enough for Love consists of a framing story, set in (our) far future, about the oldest man in the universe, and his reminiscences. The final section merges the two. It's less a solid, streamlined novel than a fixup. Which is fine with me; fixups are This is (probably) a great book, but it does have one significant barrier for the reader. I don't consider bringing it up to be a spoiler, since it's an idea and not a plot point, but if you hate even minor spoilage, you should stop reading NOW.

Time Enough for Love consists of a framing story, set in (our) far future, about the oldest man in the universe, and his reminiscences. The final section merges the two. It's less a solid, streamlined novel than a fixup. Which is fine with me; fixups are my favorite strategy for long-form fiction. The reminiscences (and the last section) are extremely readable, and I (mostly) found them hard to put down. The parts of the book that aren't centered on the main character are often tedious, cringeworthy, or both. (For instance, the leadup to the last section took me many days to get through; by contrast, the last section, which was perhaps 3x as long, was hard for me to put down.) The most famous of the reminiscences is the centerpiece, titled "The Tale of the Adopted Daughter"; it's often referred to among Heinlein fans as "The Dora Story", and Virginia Heinlein wrote that when Robert died, she turned to it for consolation.

The main character would be horrifically unlikeable in real life but, due to Heinlein's considerable skills, comes off as a charming, eccentric old coot rather than one of the hectoring lecturers who inhabit far too many of Heinlein's novels. (Of course, your mileage may vary.) One of the things I like is that he is clearly an unreliable narrator; he claims that some of the stories aren't about him, but about one of his friends, and the stories are larded with inconsistencies with each other and with the real world. (Or "our timeline", anyway.)

Why do I say this is "probably" a great book, and what is the significant barrier? This is a book about incest. Heinlein leads up to it gradually, and in a gingerly fashion, but it becomes more and more central to the story. (If there is a form of heterosexual incest that isn't featured here, I missed it.) I borrowed a copy of this book from a friend who's a bigger Heinlein fan than I am, and he warned me that it was a book he hadn't been able to finish (and he didn't want me complaining later that I hadn't warned him ;-). If it hadn't been for that warning, I might not have been able to finish the book (motivated slightly, perhaps, by my desire to finish a Heinlein book that he hadn't ;-). I therefore extend the same warning to anyone reading this.

(Finished 2010-09-15 0:08:59.6 +/- 0.01s, approximately.)
...more

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Mar 29, 2014 David rated it did not like it · review of another edition

The calculation of literary kink: 2 stars for coming up with an interesting premise (2000 year old man reminiscing about life and his times among the stars) MINUS 1.5 stars for ignoring said premise and instead focusing on taunting every sexual more known to current cultural standards, culminating in time-travel visits to meet Mom and thus begin what I can only describe as pornographic Back To The Future fan-fiction.

Plus half-a-star to have the willpower/stubberness/tone-deafness to continue on ...more

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Jun 26, 2012 Ivis Davis rated it it was amazing

Robert Heinlein was a brilliant author and an observer of the strength and frailties of man. He develops all of his stories around the relationships of the characters, and allow them to reveal the story and all its diversities in a natural flow and rhythm. Were he a musician, he would be a maestro.
Lazarus Long is old and tired, and has come home to one of his favorite planets to die quietly among strangers. After 2400 years of life, and out lived many families, he has run out of reasons to li Robert Heinlein was a brilliant author and an observer of the strength and frailties of man. He develops all of his stories around the relationships of the characters, and allow them to reveal the story and all its diversities in a natural flow and rhythm. Were he a musician, he would be a maestro.
Lazarus Long is old and tired, and has come home to one of his favorite planets to die quietly among strangers. After 2400 years of life, and out lived many families, he has run out of reasons to live. He leaves his private interstellar yacht at the spaceport and goes about his final preparations as he feels the chill of death wrapping around his frail bones. He buys old rags for clothing, and retires to a flop house where he pays in advance and lays down to die among the sounds and odors of mankind.
When he awakens, not to the expected darkness of death, but to find himself in a hospital having undergone advanced geriatric regeneration, he is furious enough to kill. "Why?" he demands, "am I in this damn jail?" The answer to that question, by the head of the planetary government, outrages him even more. "Lazarus, we need your wisdom."
In the midst of a dozen people who utterly love him, Lazarus Long is slowly restored to love of life and living and finds a challenge and a reason to live. During this process, the 'wise' old man gives his memories of his long life, and proves the value of teaching the young, though he is loathe to do so.
Young people don't know what they don't know. Old people realize that the young often don't want the hard-won gems of wisdom they possess. When the two come together in affectionate relationships, the exchange of wisdom for enthusiasm brings a delightful life to all concerned.
If you read this story, you'll meet a crusty old codger, wise, worn and petulant. I promise you will discover the humor of the aged, rich with the experiences of life, with a little self deprecation thrown in. You'll also read a story of stories, written first person, and perhaps the most excellent and diverse novel I have ever read.

I highly recommend this novel to people of mature years, as they'll need the wisdom to sort out the gems from the rubbish, and to ignore a growing sexuality prone to depravity and incest.

Mr. Heinlein, like a great many authors, fell to the trap of the intellectual. He believed his own press. His insights, while diverse and hilarious, were tainted with his sexuality, which I feel deprived this and many of his later novels of the dignity they deserved. So I took away a star many people thinks he deserves.
...more

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Nov 11, 2009 Mike (the Paladin) rated it did not like it

Shelves: fantasy, science-fiction

Not his best (in my openion). Tying up the Long's story. In his later years Heinlein got more comfortable with putting his thoughts into his books. I find him (and some may disagree with this or find it odd) very close to Ayn Rand in some ways.

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Aug 12, 2007 L S rated it it was amazing

All right, another rating biased by the age at which I read this book. I read Time Enough for Love in what was then the Soviet Union over the course of a white night. I'm not kidding.

At any rate, Time Enough for Love is a decent enough story and entertaining. Par for the course with Heinlein, though, is negotiating his complicated relationship to gender and his often overblown moralising. This is not to say that these issues are wholly negative; Heinlein's relationship to gender and morality is ...more

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Apr 15, 2008 Smokey rated it it was amazing

Presented primarily as the musings, ramblings, and experiences of one Woodrow Wilson Smith, aka. Lazarus Long, et. al., this book has enough proverbs, pithy sayings, thou-shalt-nots, and who-begat-whom's to qualify as a potential "Hedonists' Bible." Unlike some of Heinlein's other works, the gratuitous sex is kept to something of a minimum (not ignored!), and he instead focuses on the attitudes and platitudes that have allegedly kept his main charater alive for 2500+ years in an exciting and dan ...more

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Jul 31, 2015 Monica rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

‘QUE VIVA TANTO COMO DESEE Y AME TANTO COMO VIVA’. CON ESTA MAGNÍFICA FRASE, QUE ES LA CLAVE DE LA EXISTENCIA DEL SER HUMANO, BIEN PUEDE RESUMIRSE UNA DE LAS NOVELAS MÁS SINGULARES DEL MAESTRO HEINLEIN, QUE HABLA DE LA VIDA Y LA MUERTE ;EL SIGNIFICADO DE AMBAS CON SUS VARIANTES.

‘TIEMPO PARA AMAR’ RESULTA SER UNA LECTURA NO ‘AL USO’ NI DENTRO DE LA CIENCIA FICCIÓN, E INCLUSO ME ATREVO A DECIR, NI DENTRO DE LA NARRATIVA EN GENERAL, TANTO POR SU ESTRUCTURA COMO POR SU TEMÁTICA Y DESARROLLO NARRATI ...more

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Jun 13, 2015 Peter rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: matches-and-petrol

A Review

-----The Players-----

Terence Ash – publisher and editor
Robert Ash – younger brother, sub editor
Chartwell - Office assistant and explorer of the darker corners of staples
Edgar – warehouseman and dogsbody
Heinry Lein - writer

TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE

Heinry Lein - Hello I wonder if you would be so kind as to look at
this.

Robert Ash - What is it?

Heinry Lein - A manuscript.

Robert Ash - A manuscript?

Heinry Lein - You Know Ink on paper ....Words.

Robert Ash - Oh! Mmmmm. What is it about?

Heinry Lein - W ...more

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Jul 02, 2009 Valerie rated it really liked it

Recommended to Valerie by: Mom, Uncle Rick

Shelves: heinlein, math, fantasy-sf

I wanted a paperback to read on the plane recently, and this one was right on top of a stack of books, so I reread it. I've reread a few Heinlein books recently, and I realize as I have with so many other books that I read when I was young, (believe it or not, I think I might have been 10 the first time I read this, I was certainly no more than 12) how much they shaped my sense of myself. For instance, every Heinlein book has pages and pages devoted to math, and not glossed over math, real math. ...more

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May 03, 2012 Kat Hooper rated it did not like it

Shelves: audiobook

Yuck!

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Jun 05, 2009 Chad Bearden rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Any complaints about Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" that are centered around the absurdity and perversity of a two thousand year old man having sex with every single woman he ever meets, most of whom are descended from him or raised from childhood by him or gave birth to him (!!), are completely valid complaints. As much as I enjoyed this read, Heinlein's obsession with knocking down every possible sexual barrier got a little hard to swallow after a while and kept me from rating this a five-s Any complaints about Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" that are centered around the absurdity and perversity of a two thousand year old man having sex with every single woman he ever meets, most of whom are descended from him or raised from childhood by him or gave birth to him (!!), are completely valid complaints. As much as I enjoyed this read, Heinlein's obsession with knocking down every possible sexual barrier got a little hard to swallow after a while and kept me from rating this a five-star novel.

That I still gave it four stars testifies to how engaging Heinlein's signature character, Lazarus Long, is. Since his introduction (which I read in the "The Past Through Tomorrow" collection), I've always been captivated by the long-lived, sage, straight-talking know-it-all (even when Heinlein called him Jubal Harshaw), and he makes a great protagonist for the various tales collected in this pseudo-novel. 'Pseudo' because even though there is a clear through-line for Long and the extended family he builds for himself over the couse of this work, Lazarus spends the bulk of the novel telling stories about other periods in his two-millineum long life, set on various planets, which allows him to play around with different genres. Kind of like how the writers of the old Star Trek series could have Enterprise stumble onto a Gangster planet if they had a notion to tell a gangster story.

The two standout stories for me involved a Western-style story about life as a pioneer on a barely settled planet, and his time-travel story, where Lazarus travels back to the early 20th century to meet his family. Both of these stories hooked me as they had a distinctly historical feel to them, and I guess I was just in that kind of mood.

The portions of the book that take place in a more recognizable future are also quite enjoyable, reading like everything else Heinlein writes. Revolutionary characters pushing against whatever society they find themselves a part of, making a case for living life to its fullest and giving into all of your basest desires, because you only live once, and if you're not hurting anyone, then why the hell not? That Heinlein uses Lazarus and the Howard families (a two thousand year old man and a family genetically bread for long life) to make a case for the brevity of life and living every moment to its fullest just makes it all the more interesting.

For those that say this work is mysogenistic, I guess I can almost see where you're coming from, but in all fairness, all of the characters in this novel are pervy and sex-obsessed. Heinlein seems to want very badly to paint sex as something that people shouldn't obsess about, and should be talked about and dealt with and undertaken as freely as you wish. This goes for both the men and the women. It just so happens that the primary character is a most alpha of alpha-males. This, combined with the fact that he crams so many sexually based situations upon his characters kind of leads one to the opposite conclusion: that Heinlein himself is obsessed with sex. Which he probably is.

In spite of this, the novel is still an epic, sweeping, romantic read that collects a number of captivating ideas into one volume. A self-admittedly flawed, but still fascinating protagonist, and Heinlein's artistry with language make this a very satisfying read for fans of his particular brand of sprawling sci-fi. ...more

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Nov 19, 2010 Felix Dance rated it it was ok

I'd been looking out for this one ever since I saw it new in the KL super-bookshop several months back. A few days ago I got it in exchange for AK from the American girl in my Kathmandu hotel. Unfortunately, as I read the first few pages I realised I’d made a terrible mistake. Lazarus Long, the main character from Methuselah's Children, is, inexplicably, 2000 years old and living on a distant planet. The leader of this planet has foolishly asked the rambling old man to tell him random and stupid ...more

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Nov 15, 2014 Buck rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, science-fiction, wwend-2015

This book is very long; too long. It is a collection of anecdotes and tales linked together by a meandering conversation with much pontification. There are two 'intermissions' containing lists of Heinlein aphorisms and even a spate of doggerel. There is no real plot except for the ones in the individual stories. The predominant theme is incest. In the end, our protagonist, Lazarus Long, proves himself to be, literally, a motherf***er.

Wikipedia says: "Three novels from (Heinlein's middle) period, ...more

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Mar 11, 2016 Olethros rated it liked it · review of another edition

-Lazarus Long en estado puro, quedan avisados.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. Recopilación de las memorias de Lazarus Long, fruto del trabajo de los diferentes Archiveros Jefe de la Fundación Howard que consiguieron encontrar a Lazarus, cuando éste se estaba matando con su comportamiento, y convencerle para que comparta sus vivencias y que sirvan de inspiración para todos los que, como él, poseen el don de la larga vida. Continuación, en cierto modo y a su manera, de “Las 100 vidas d ...more

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Jan 12, 2009 Javier rated it really liked it

A number of fellow poly-folk and friends whom I respect highly had mentioned this book when discussing their awakening to their polyamourous natures, and so I decided to pick it up a while back. I'm normally a fairly fast reader, but this took me months to slog thru (with lots of breaks for other books). Heinlein's writing is difficult for me to read because I feel it's a bit convoluted and sometimes poorly executed, but he is a great storyteller, and while I can't say that I agree with all the ...more

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Nov 28, 2016 David Joseph Mikels rated it really liked it

Time enough for Love book review

This book was very deep, very long, and greatly offensive to anyone with any morals what so ever. That being said I believe Robert's goal was to get the reader to free their mind of social taboos incest. I found the book interesting only because I find Robert interesting forces me to wonder how he lived his privet life. Was he a free thinker on paper only or a real life social degenerate. Either way I wish I'd been this authors friend something tells me he would h ...more

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Dec 03, 2010 Steven Wilson rated it it was amazing

My favorite book of all time. So many stories, so much wisdom, and a cast of characters I love spending time with. I can't give it an objective review. I'm just too much in love with it.

This is the story of the lives of Lazarus Long, oldest member of the human race. He's been alive for thousands of years, and saw humanity go from the idyll of pre-World War I to the conquest of space and beyond. He's practiced nearly every profession, sired hundreds of children, and now he's bored with life and ...more

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Mar 05, 2014 Ruth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy

Before everyone rants on me, yes, I know there are many problems with this book. but I read it long before recognized or understood (as in understood on a gut level) about things like sexism, incest, etc, and this book hit home with me. I haven't read it in decades and now I am almost afraid to. I want to keep the feeling in my heart that I have when I just think about Lazarus Long, and other characters, of course.

My memory sings five stars to me and that's where it stays.

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Feb 15, 2010 Jeff Yoak rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-collection, read-in-2008, read-in-2007, read-in-2005, read-in-2004, read-in-2001, read-in-1999, read-in-2010, read-in-2012, read-in-2013

Heinlein's rambling stories collected under auspices of memoirs of Lazarus Long remains one of my favorite bits of literary comfort food. Except for once, all "readings" were listenings to the narration by Lloyd James who does an amazing job personifying these characters. He adds tremendously to the book.

In 2015, I tried this with the kids. It took a very long time in small bites, and their reaction was luke warm, but overall, not a bad experiment.

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the worse of two evils: virtue signalers, or giving attention to incest	2	14	Dec 19, 2018 02:06AM
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About Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

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Robert Anson Heinlein was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers", he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction".

He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first SF writer to break into mainstre ...more