Time Enough for Love

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Summary: Time Enough For Love - by Robert A. Heinlein
Review: Time Enough For Love is the best science fiction novel that I have read in many years. It is one of the few novels that I read over and over, again and again. It is SF, psychology, phylosophy, love, sex and adventure all rolled up into a saga of one person's life. Even though this novel is all of the above it is more for it takes hold of all of the sacred cows and shows them in lights that most of us have never looked at before. I was overwhelmed by the way that sex was treated by Bob Heinlein. He has sex flowing throughout the novel, not done in a pornagraphic manner but in a tasteful way that I think would uopset very few people.
I am a writer myself, using several nom de plumes, and I heartily recommend that everyone read this book. I think that Robert A. Heinlein was the king of SF writers and love all of his works, but I think that Time Enough For Love is the best that he ever wrote and recommend it highly to everyone.
Ilan Lamb

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Summary: Heinleins best work
Review: L. Long is a hero's hero, and as his book chronicles his history, Heinlein is able to comment on a vast array of subjects that affect society, all centered around the loves and life of the hero Lazarus. It takes a few pages as Heinlein sets up the story, but once the book starts rolling it is a nonstop page turner even though it is actually many stories wrapped in a story that spaces many many decades and cultures.
Something of a futurist, Heinlein never loses sight of the fact that man is still man. Whether during world war two or in the future when he can fly to other worlds, man has to live, love, eat and work. This brillant work is my favorite Heinlein book and I while I highly recommend it, I'd perhaps recommend a reader that is new to Heinlein to start with "Stranger', 'Moon..' or even 'Friday' first, then come to this work with a little of his style under your skin.

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Summary: a masterwork from a fantastic storyteller
Review: This book gives some autobiographical tidbits from the viewpoint of Heinlein's beloved rogue, Lazarus Long. When the phrase "Curl up with a good book" comes to my mind, this is the book I picture. Like many of Heinlein's other works, it seeks to educate the reader as it entertains.

The book is a string of stories narrated by Long, and Heinlein unabashedly uses Long to give the reader his personal views on life, government and politics, relationships, and many other subjects. Over four hundred pages of that, and I found nothing I opposed. However, that is not to say that they are all traditional views. It just means I am as wise - or as crazy - as Lazarus.

I recommend this fantastic piece of literature to anyone. My only complaint is the use of time travel, a plot device I personally despise. But I believe it was necessary for Heinlein to illustrate some of the taboos he wanted Long to overcome. Even with that drawback, I still rate the book good enough to deserve five stars.

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Summary: The Pocket Dictionary to Life:
Review: I'd say you have to be familiar with Robert Heinlan before reading this. He's got some pretty strarnge ideas, that I can't say I neccessarily agreed with. Untill I read this book. It all makes sense now. I thought Lazarus Long was fairly annoying. Until I read this book. But seriously, if you are willing to go along with a couple of hundreds of pages of a old man giving you his take on life, you will see that with age comes wizdom. The plot here is secondary to the point, but its worth every scandalous and insestuous page.

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Summary: One of my favorites
Review: If you like Heinlein's style you will like this book. If the notion of a writer promoting his crotchety, cranky, yet wise ideas in his work bothers you, you won't like it. But for those of us who love this man's work, this book is a treasure. I would rank this his third best work, with Stranger in a Strange Land being #1, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset as #2. Lazarus and Maureen Long are old friends of mine. Every once in a while I pick up these books just to see how they are doing. And they are always just fine.

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Summary: Self-serving drivel
Review: After a friend of mine went on about how great a writer Heinlein is, I tried out this book. What utter drivel! I actually read through the whole thing hoping that eventually there would be some point to it - I shouldn't have bothered - there isn't! It puts me off reading anything else by him.

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Summary: Space Colonization, Life Extension, Polyamory, and more
Review: First, I must say that even though this book has many flaws, I still reccomend it very highly. It explores some concepts that are very potent, even today; polyamory, gender, incest, assisted suicide, the nature of government, artificial intelligence, space exploration, life extension, the human condition and more. And, essentially, it appears that Heinlein is able to crack the egg of social conventions and look at the nature of being human from thousands of years in the future, through the eyes of the main character, Lazarus Long.
It is very artfully written.
The only major flaw I can find in it, is that the perspective is quite male.
Over all, a wonderful read, and one of the few books that can be read more than once.

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Summary: Beware of worship
Review: As a reviewer further down the list has already noted, the reviewers of this book either love it and wish the world would become Heinlein's vision or hate it and pray daily that publishers will stop printing such blasphemy. I distrust both groups and seek to offer a more unbiased view here.

Heinlein is a man of incredible vision and creative "outside the box" type thinking. His ability to rise above the mores of our culture, creating a world where Earth's moral code seems absurd and the absurd code of his world seems normal is to be commended. It is hard to tell if he does this through skill or sheer repitition and inculcation. The odd ideas that many other reviewers object to, primarily about sexuality and incest in particular, do command a large proportion of the book's lengthy pages. However, that very foundation of ideas is what this book is about. What many either ignore, find insignificant or completely miss about the Future Histories series is an underlying structure built on progeny. Heinlein predates the current scientific pundits who now look to evolutionary biology to explain why we behave the way we do...genetic necessity.

Heinlein's main characters in this book are aware of the genetic responsibility they carry. They accept as their personal mission locating the best possible genes and creating life from it. Somehow in this socio-biological construct a new culture is born. This culture is founded on "love" which is strengthened by communities whose only true purpose is to protect and raise children. The rest is just details. All of Heinlein's Twainesque advice on practical living, individual responsibility and all things pragmatic boils down to the basics: don't be stupid or you might die. If you die, how are you ever going to have more babies?

Taking Heinlein's perspective on his own world (that is to say looking from outside as he does on our society), it is largely an empty place, bereft of cosmological significance. It is a place consumed by genetic computation whose main goal is to find superb DNA matches that will create more beings who can have more babies and on and on...and oh yeah there is always time enough for love(sex) because that is all that really matters.

In short, it is a LENGTHY and long winded treatise against illogical social mores with pacing that matches an encyclopedia. The only redeeming portion is the last 100 pages where Lazarus Long travels back in time to make love to his mother. The narrative here is the only point where RAH abandons his pulpit to actually tell a story and proves that he is in fact a talented and worthy writer.

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Summary: Quintessential Heinlein
Review: I first read this book in 1974 while still a kid, and it remains one of my favorites to this day. I can honestly say that this book changed my life. This is Heinlein at his best. His sometimes long-winded dissertations on such subjects as genetics and physics, his breezy tolerance of varying socio/sexual patterns, his enlightening common sense, and his unwavering adherence to personal responsibility, not to mention some astounding ideas founded in mathematical principles have all served as touchstones throughout my life and were the basis for several avenues of study and at least one career. I frequently refer to and quote the "notebook" entries, and live by several of them. I can't say that I agree with everything in the book, as in his later years Heinlein did rather focus on incestuous situations, but even that seems to be consistent with his premise that the only consequence worth worrying about is zygotal; even those situations appear to be from the perspective of men who "cooperate with the inevitable" when faced with all-too-willing females --a somewhat chauvinistic attitude, to be sure, but also consistent with a man of his time. This intro to Lazarus also led me to explore other stories in the Future History series, including Misfit (Andy Libby) and Methusalah's Children , and to embrace the others which followed - Number of the Beast and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. His character remains one of my favorites; my only regret is that he is fictional - I can never hope to meet him.

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Summary: 4 and 1/2 Stars
Review: Since I came to the conclusion that this was the weirdest book I've ever read (and I've read quite a lot) before I was even half way through it, I decided to come on here and see what other people thought about it. It seems that the reviewers are split into two camps: those who give it a 1-star rating because of it's weirdness and controversial morals, and those who give it 5-star ratings out of blind worship of Heinlein while ignoring it's weaknesses. I waded through about 60 reviews, and there didn't appear to be very many subjective ones, so I'll attempt to provide one here.

First off, the strengths. As always with Heinlein, my favorite part about the book is the witty dialogue. Just reading the conversation between the characters, even when it does little to advance the plot, is immensely entertaining to me. I realize that there's probably not any "real" people who talk like this... but that doesn't make it any less entertaining. Other strengths include the many entertaining individual adventures, topped with the icing on the cake, Lazarus Long's delicious banter on all things Heinlein (Long's alter-ego) cared to comment on. These comments come to a headway on the two-part Notebooks of Lazarus Long. Some of these quotations, while not the revelatory statements some reviewers have claimed, are nonetheless both witty and worthwhile, and many hit home. Heinlein does tend to preach quite a bit, bordering on too much at times; such as the page-spanning sermons on how to raise children, this coming from a man who himself was childless. But please remember, this IS a work of FICTION. The book is broken up into many individual segments and stories, and because of this you will probably enjoy it more if you read the novel in bits and pieces, rather than large portions at once. My favorite part is the latter section of the book where Lazarus embarks on time travel, it could've easily been a book in itself; and a damn good one too.

Now to the weaknesses. Heinlein's controversial views on sex and moral values, while not as disturbing to me (having read many a Heinlein) as others, are nonetheless unsettling in places, and occasionally detract from the book. I don't have a problem with Lazarus Long knocking up just about every female character he comes into contact with, but I can't say I was indifferent to the book's excessive amounts of incest. Heinlein goes to pains (and I mean pains; chapter-length dialogue segments on the improbability of defects through screened and tested incestous relationships) to seemingly shed a positive light on what many consider the very blackest of sins. I don't know exactly how Heinlein came to take this controversial stance, some of his previous novels (Farnham's Freehold, for instance) hinted at it, but it never came out into the open like this. However he came upon it he stuck with it, as the issue clouds subsequent novels like The Number of the Beast and To Sail Beyond The Sunset. It crops up often in this book; not that unsettling, just a little immature. That's really the only thing in this book you could call a weakness, other than it's tendency to go on a little too long at points (kinda like this review, eh?), many of the individual stories are novella-length. The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail should've been left out, it's completely useless to the story and boring. The lengthy Tale of the Twins Who Weren't is long, but entertaining in it's sheer strangeness. The 140+ page Tale of the Adopted Daughter is a very sentimental piece that has undoubtedly brought some to tears.

All in all, an excellent (and weird, in the best sense of the word) book that you should enjoy unless you are put off by the controversial sex/incest issues. But then, if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be looking at reviews of post-Stranger RAH would you? Read and enjoy.