Time Enough For Heinlein
Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein
Robert Heinlein won every major science fiction award and is widely regarded as one of the genre's legendary writers. He created the twentieth century's version of the genre, carefully building upon the works of Verne, Wells and others with the prolific Asimov, Silverberg and the genius of Arthur Clarke.
These hard science fiction writers exhibited no fear of speculation, but their speculative science was plausible. An elf bearing magical potions would no more pop up in one of their stories than would a nuclear weapon in one of Shakespeare's tragedies. Heinlein's work grew more whimsical as he aged, but his interests in astronomy, political science and genetics incited readers to learn more about those and similar subjects. That gentle stoking of interest, educating and laying a base for future knowledge, is one of the more appealing elements found in this type of science fiction.
Aren't All Those Heinlein Books The Same?
There were some atrocious publisher economic games played with the Heinlein catalog, especially after he became ill in the mid to late 1970s. Long out-of-print books and short stories were repackaged with lurid titles, glitzy art and no mention that the work inside had actually been penned several decades before for a completely different audience. Much of this repackaging was apparently due to the wild success of Stranger In A Strange Land, the publication of which marked the period in which Heinlein became a name author outside the genre.
Heinlein himself is guilty of recycling stories and concepts to tie his Future History together in a loose series of books. This isn't a structured series such as one might find from Piers Anthony or other writers, but more similar to Asimov's Foundation stories; a loose collection where concepts and characters snugly fit against each other, and if, by the stars, they did not neatly fit, Heinlein was not above hammering the occasional square peg into a round hole.
But Time Enough For Love is the story of The Senior, Lazarus Long, Heinlein's most beloved character who enjoys even more fan adulation than Stranger's Mr. Smith. Lazarus' story is as old as Heinlein himself, starting in Kansas City at the turn of the twentieth century and extending for thousands of years into the future. He is not immortal, but thanks to rejuvenation, good pioneer stock and a gift for self-preservation, he has managed to survive centuries.
The Plot In Exactly 100 Words
The book is a series of vignettes, novellas and flashbacks describing Lazarus Long' life. The reminisces are due to a Scheherazade promise Lazarus makes to a descendant to detail his life's stories while deciding whether to commit suicide. Heinlein uses his Lazarus alter-ego to skip from future to past and back again, describing defining moments - colonization, parables and current events. Lazarus, "veteran of 15 wars" finally meets his match while time traveling to the World War I era where he ends up serving in the U.S. Army. His future family arrives in a continua (time) craft to attempt a rescue.
What Works Well
Heinlein's future worlds, Secundus and Tertius, are described in loving detail as places where man's folly's on Earth can be avoided through long live, computers with artificial intelligence and the destruction of victimless social mores of our own time. These sections are where Heinlein receives the majority of criticism, especially for this book. The Oedipal complex Lazarus is faced with when he travels back to his youth and falls in love with his mother is another taboo area, which Heinlein writing about almost thirty years ago, was mercilessly berated. Given the debunking of Freud that has only intensified in the last two decades, some readers may feel that this subplot is at best dated, but should remember the social context in which Heinlein wrote the story.
And frankly, if Lazarus does not love his mother, a lot of future events do not make sense.
The crown jewel of this book are the aphorisms Lazarus' descendants refer to as his wisdom. They are scattered throughout his dialogue, but a series are collected in two small sections Heinlein uses as interludes. They've also been published separately as The Notebooks of Lazarus Long and appear all over the web. One hangs a picture frame in my office while others frequently rotate as the tag line I use in various online discussions. The literary world is a better place even if none of Heinlein's work but Stranger and his Lazarus sayings survive.
I am also very enamored of Heinlein's no-nonsense descriptions of early genetic work and his forays into memory store, computer extensions and even mathematics. He manages to introduce these concepts as the price of admission to a world readers find attractive. Of all the positive elements in this book - and there are many - this is the most satisfying.
What Doesn't Work As Well
Heinlein is alternately called a misogynist, racist, conservative, liberal and everything in between by the critical literary press. Think of him instead as an author who shatters taboos. Finding and addressing those taboos in a palatable fashion is difficult. What makes Heinlein's later works hard for some readers to accept is that he deliberately searches out taboos and then seeks to demolish them using characters he's nurtured into the reader's heart. The technique is effective, but causes some unnecessary distancing between reader and characters.
The Bottom Line, Dog Earred Pages and All
The story careens through time and space much as its main character has over the centuries. A dedicated Heinlein reader has no trouble sticking with the twists and turns, but newbies will want to retreat back in the Heinlein catalog to at least the early, more linear works such as Farnham's Freehold or Podkayne of Mars. A special warning: While Stranger In A Strange Land is Heinlein's seminal work, that's not the book to start with either.
If you must jump right in and start reading this story, do so with an open mind and understand that while Heinlein always swore that Lazarus was not his alter-ego, he certainly remained the man's central character about whom hundreds of thousands of words were written. There's a lot of back story and history here that the first time reader can understand, but may not fully appreciate.
