Books like Time Enough for Love

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 still carrying on everyday lives. At its heart, science fiction is about hope, hope that we’ll see a few more years ahead. Time Enough for Love goes one step further and introduces us to Lazarus Long (though he was in prior Heinlein novels) as the oldest living human, over 2,000 years old. Thus, Heinlein allows us to imagine an almost eternal existence, and without the need to live at night and drink blood. I like reading Heinlein because I like Heinlein, chauvinistic and militaristic as he may be; he is also a libertarian humanist who loves life and tells a good story. He’s not misogynistic, he clearly loves women and sees them as capable and wonderful people. Heinlein’s voice, whether Lazarus Long, or Jubal Hershaw, is that of Heinlein himself, his experience is cast upon science fiction of the future. The best thing about Heinlein is that he is a good writer, a great writer of science fiction. And that is demonstrated both in the positive and negative in TEFL. When he is telling a story, it is very good, but in the “in between sections” it drags poorly. The best section is the story about Lazarus and his marriage to short lived Dora and their pioneer life. If RAH made the “Tale of the Adopted Daughter” a full length novel, cutting out about 300 pages, this would have been a very good story. Ultimately, it’s just too long, Heinlein is too ambitious and throws too much in and it collapses under it’s own weight.