Time Enough For Love:
The Lives of Lazarus Long
Reviewed by J. Neil Schulman
This is the review which I sold to The New York Times Book
Review in 1973, minus irrelevant material about another book not
by Heinlein. The New York Times killed the review ... but by
doing so inadvertently made it possible for me to meet Heinlein.
***
Immortality has long been fair game only to the science
fiction author or earlier equivalents, therefore it shouldn't
surprise anyone when its most revered living practitioner chooses
to return to the subject.
In Methuselah's Children, a novel from his "Future
History" series written mostly in the 'forties, Robert A.
Heinlein introduced Lazarus Long, the oldest and most
curmudgeonly member of the Howard Families, a clan of humans whom
scientific inbreeding had given a lifespan of several times the
norm. Time Enough For Love, his eagerly-anticipated latest
novel, returns to the "Future History" series -- though
familiarity with it isn't necessary to enjoyment of this new
book--by chronicling Lazarus Long's activities over twenty-three
centuries of life.
In 4272 on Secundus, a planet owned entirely by Lazarus Long
and populated mostly by his descendants, Lazarus has been
imprisoned in a rejuvenation hospital by a descendent, Ira
Weatheral, Chairman Pro-Tem of the Howard Families (Lazarus's
status as Senior Member makes him Chairman at will), after
Lazarus attempts to bypass rejuvenation and die peacefully: he is
bored and wishes to die.
His indomitable will temporarily foiled, the "Senior" offers
a deal: he will agree to Weatheral's request that he complete
rejuvenation and dictate his entire memoirs if Weatheral can find
something new for him to do; if he fails, Lazarus is to be
allowed to suicide. Weatheral agrees.
The ensuing chronicle is not a single, consistent narrative,
but several interconnecting ones, comprising first and third
person expositions, lengthy stretches of conversation, notebooks
(meditations), all supposedly compiled and edited by the Howard
Archivist Emeritus. In this, his longest, most ambitious, and
most mature novel in a career studded with masterpieces, Heinlein
examines virtually every aspect of the human experience, from
war, peace, religion, slavery, pioneering, gangsterism, and a
host of sexual practices, to several experiences unique to
science fiction. Perhaps the most revealing statement about his
goal in this novel could have been made by Heinlein himself in a
Oui Magazine interview in December, 1972: "A novel--which is
what I've been writing in recent years--if it's to be a real
novel and not simply an extended short story, necessarily takes
in the human condition, and if you don't think the human
condition as a whole is in fairly bad shape at the moment, take a
look around you."
A Heinlein fan accustomed to his tightly-constructed,
adventure stories of the 'forties and 'fifties may be somewhat
disappointed by the leisurely pace and muted philosophic tone
Heinlein takes in Time Enough For Love, but it is perhaps this
stylistic departure that signals Heinlein's emergence in the
'seventies as a speculator into humanity's soul, as well as its
purely external progress. But where else can a serious science
fiction writer go when he has seen speculations ridiculous
fifteen years ago transformed into fact--indeed, even being
outstripped by reality itself?