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 - Well, this man he does things and....and travels to places and talks to people

Robert Ash - Really! Sounds exciting.

Heinry Lein - It is, it is.

Robert Ash - Terence what do you make of this

Terence Ash - Ahhh. My goodness it’s a selection of words on paper. There’s was, the. Good grief theirs even r, f, t and d and well letters bludgeoned and smeared everywhere.

Phone rings.

Chartwell - Hello, chartwell here sir. I’m afraid there has been an accident and thirty manuscripts have been knocked over and they seem to have mixed together. At least four thousand pages sir.

Terence Ash - Never mind just shuffle them together and release them as alternate fiction and then we will sort them out later.

Chartwell - Very good sir.

Terence Ash - Now tell me more.

Heinry Lein - Well he travels back in time and you know “does it with his mother.”

Terence Ash - Does it?

Heinry Lein - The thing.... The beast with two backs.

Terence Ash - You mean to say, he turns the hands back on the clock and does rude things with his mummy.

Heinry Lein - Weeelllll, yes and no.

Rings chartwell.

Terence Ash - Chartwell get in here and have a look at this.

Chartwell - I say.

Terence Ash - What do make of it?

Chartwell - It is a WH Smith number 48 staple in the corner, Very nice.

Robert Ash - AND the rest of it?

Chartwell - Ink and paper. Makes words sir.

Terence Ash - Thank you Chartwell, get Edgar for me on the way back.

Robert Ash - Aaaahh Edgar do come in.

Edgar - Yus sIR.

Terence Ash - Tell me your honest opinion on this if you will.

Edgar - Yes sIR. Mmmnmnmnmnmm fnm.mnmnm.

Terence Ash - Well Edgar?

Edgar - Issa steaming puddle of horse piss sIR.

Terence Ash - T.R. Ash would be honoured to publish this delightful book.

Edgar walks down the hall.

Edgar - They’ll print any old shite these these dayze mumble, mnrnrmn.

Robert Ash - Chartwell shuffle some of those pages together, about two hundred. Just enough to fatten this up.

Chartwell - Yes sir.

Dear lord Terence and Robert Ash might return.

Темата за далечното бъдеще на Земята е вълнувала много фантасти през годините. Повечето представят апокалиптични, мрачни и пълни с безнадеждност визии за живота, които често плашат или провокират. Хайнлайн обаче, поне според скромния ми досега опит с научната фантастика, представя картина, в която не преобладава изцяло мракът - човечеството се изправя пред времена, изпълнени с мрак и безнадеждност, но и с умението да се наслаждаваш на живота и винаги да отдаваш дължимото на любовта.
"Достатъчно време за любов: Животите на Лазарус Лонг" за мен е една песен. Песен за човека, за неговите силни и слаби страни, за бъдещето, което го очаква, както и за любовта, която го съпътства във всякакви форми. Това е история за човек, чийто дом ще бъде е там, където
той намери себе си. Човек, живял хиляди години, опитал от абсолютно всичко, което животът може да предложи, видял абсолютно всичко и срещал абсолютно всякакви хора. Неслучайно книгата е структурирана и разделена като музикално произведение - сама по себе си е една мелодия, една песен, носеща се около този, който надникне между страниците й.
В "Достатъчно време за любов" Хайнлайн ни запознава с един от своите най-пълнокръвни и интересни пресонажи, Лазарус Лонг. Лазарус, роден под името Удроу и носещ хиляди други имена, е мъж, живял четири хиляди години. Забележителното му дълголетие се дължи на процедури по подмладяване, до които той има достъп благодарение на фондация, която спонсорира процедурите. Разбира се, тези подмладяващи процедури са за отбрана група хора, но докато много обикновени хора мечтаят да бъдат подложени на тях, Лазарус, който ги е минавал вече стотици пъти, започва да се отегчава от живота, който вече му е предоставил всичко, дал му е възможности да бъде който поиска, да живее колкото и както желае. Отегчението му води до отказ от поредното подмладяване и опит за прекъсване на вече въздългия житейски път. В началото читателят го открива точно там - на границата със смъртта, която обаче той не прекрачва поради една група от хора, които го искат жив за свои цели и всячески се опитват да задържат интереса му към живота. Оттам нататък следва една шеметна история, пълна с разкази от живота на Лазарус, последвана от завръзка и развръзка в настоящето. Подредбата на творбата като музикално произведение определено спомага за усещане за плавна мелодия, съпровождаща историята.
Използвам думата "шеметна", тъй като само тя може да предаде усещането, което тази книга оставя - усещане за безкрайност, за една необятност, до която ние не можем да се докоснем, за вихър от събития, които бележат живота ни. Има моменти, които са откровено странни или прекалени за преобладаващите днешни разбирания, но се вписват перфектно в духа на книгата - за човек, който е получил всичко от живота, вече няма много оставащи начини да живее, освен считаните за греховни такива. Той живее греховно, но по своите правила. Дълголетието на Лазарус обаче му е донесло едно нещо, което на всеки средностатистически човек му липсва - достатъчно време за любов. Толкова много време за любов, че в един момент той пристъпва към крайни и на моменти смущаващи действия. Лазарус среща любовта във всякакви форми, като при всяка среща с нея се възползва максимално от ситуацията.
Хайнлайн гениално преплита любовните моменти от живота на Лазарус с неговите приключения през вековете и ни прави част от едно пътуване из човешката душа. На всяка страница човек си задава въпроси - има ли право някой да ти попречи да отнемеш живота си, има ли смисъл хилядолетният живот, твои ли са мислите и чувствата ти, след като ги споделиш, имаш ли нужда от някого, за да си щастлив...
Цялата тази смесица от въпроси, отговори, сцени и моменти е прекрасно представена на читателя. Хайнлайн е безспорен майстор и каквото и още да кажа, няма да бъде достатъчно, за да обясня всичко в тази книга. Думите не ми стигат, а Хайнлайн не заслужава клишета. Мащабността на книгата не го позволява - това е книга, която усещаш, но за която трудно можеш да пишеш. Книга, която те повлича и по най-добрия начин те прави част от едно мащабно приключение. Краят също е нещо, което отчитам като плюс - след като го прочетох, сама си представих какво е последвало, въз основа на моя прочит. Моментът, в който свършва историята, е подбран изключително добре. Оттам нататък всеки решава за себе си и точно в това се крие чарът - Хайнлайн има невероятен размах и въображение, но накрая оставя читателя сам да използва своето въображение, за да дострои картината.
"Достатъчно време за любов" е приключение в опасните води на бъдещето, което обаче обещава също и надежда и възможност за изживяване на любовта във всичките й аспекти.

This is the saga of humanities oldest man and his many lives. From his life as a small child in The Midwest during World War I the the early exploration of space and colonisation of the stars. To his future lives and relationships with his many descendants. An excellent tale from a master story teller.

En esta relectura no le pondría las 5 estrellas, pero entiendo porque se las puse en su momento. Ciencia ficción de la que me gusta, muy innovadora para la época en que fue escrita, con algunos momentos que han envejecido mal. Continuaré con las historias situadas en este universo, seguro.

In college I remember reading this book by Robert Heinlein, which had an enormous impact on me. It had all the right ingredients for me: time traveling, adventure, science fiction, and lost loves. It was about Lazarus Long who, due to some genetic experimenting within his extended family, stopped aging in his late 30's. He lived out many different lives over hundreds of years, watching his contemporaries grow old and die, then moving on to new experiences on different worlds. He became very experienced and wise, and the book is filled with his witty take on the world around him. The time traveling takes him back to the early 20th century, his beginnings, where he describes his life so wistfully. The book is filled with the thoughts and strong opinions of the main character which will cause you to rethink your own values and opinions about society.

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.

Diese Ausgabe sollte die erste ungekürzte Übersetzung des Werkes in deutscher Sprache sein, weshalb ich das Buch zum 2. Mal gelesen habe. In dem, nun fast 1000 Seiten umfassenden, Roman versucht Robert A. Heinlein viele Themen aus seinen früheren Werken (z.B. kennt man Lazerus Long schon aus dem Roman "Methuselah's Children"[1941/58], dt. "Die Ausgestoßenen der Erde [1967]") zu verküpfen und eine "Future History" zu schaffen. Deswegen führt er zu keiner stringenten Handlung sondern eher zu einem Kaleidoskop von Geschichten mit witzigen Ausführungen und Sprüchen des vermeintlichen Philosophen Lazerus Long.
Lazarus Long wurde Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts als Woodrow Wilson Smith geboren. Im 42. Jahundert gibt es ihn immer noch, und er muß wieder mal Feuerwehr spielen. Er ist immer noch der Diogenes-ähnliche Freizeitphilosoph, der immer für ein Bonmot gut, aber leider auch unbelehrbar ist. Er lebt(e) als Woodrow Wilson Smith oder Aaron Sheffield, der Kapitän eines interstellaren Raumschiffs; und als Ted Bronson, der Zeitreisende, den es zurück auf die Erde des Jahres 1916 verschlägt. Und dann gibt es da noch viele viele Frauen. Darunter auch seine Mutter, Maureen Johnson. Als er ins Jahr 1916 zurückkehrt, erobert er auch sie und wohnt ihr bei, um die ultimative Zeitreisephantasie zu erfüllen: sein eigener Vorfahre zu werden!..
Neben der typischen (Un)Art des späten Heinleins mit seinem Übermaß an Chauvinismus und Sexismus, dessen er sich in jüngeren Jahren geschämt hätte, brilliert er mit einprägsamen Sprüchen ("...geboren ohne Gewissen, ohne Vorhaut und mit einer fatalen Fehleinschätzung der aphrodisierenden Wirkung von Achselschweiß...") und Zitaten, wie z.B. Lässt sich etwas nicht in Zahlen ausdrücken, so ist es keine Wissenschaft, sondern eine Ansicht oder Von all den merkwürdigen "Verbrechen", welche die Menschheit aus dem Nichts konstruiert hat, ist "Gotteslästerung" das verrückteste, dicht gefolgt von "obszönem Betragen" und "Exhibitionismus" und dem Cheopsgesetz: Kein Bauwerk wird innerhalb der gesetzten Frist und im Rahmen des Kostenvoranschlags fertig gestellt (Ob das die Projektplaner des Berliner Flughafens und S21 kennen?). Das Buch strotzt so vor diesen Zitaten, so war es kein Wunder, dass ein amerikanischer Verlag ein ganzes Buch mit diesen Inhalten veröffentlichte.
Für mich ist "Die Leben des Lazerus Long" nicht sein bestes, aber auch nicht sein schlechtestes Werk, auch weil die Überlänge das Werk etwas sperrig und ausufernd macht...

If Lazarus Long wasn't such a dislikeable/likeable character, this might manage to crack mt top 5 RAH books. But he is.

2025 reread - this book varies from some fairly readable stories (although none of them are really terrific) to some interminable stuff that just has to be waded through. It's really just four stories (The Man Too Lazy To Fail, the Twins who weren't, Dora, and the story of Ted Bronson and Maureen Johnson) linked together with a story about the Families and building up the Lazarus Long household.

Others think that Lazarus is RAH. I don't. By all accounts, RAH was a gentleman and never a bully. Lazarus Long is a bully.

I don't think I'll read this book again. Despite RAH's excellent story telling skills, there really isn't any depth to any of the stories nor any real challenges. The first time, the book might shock. The second time, you pick up nuances and little extra bits. But that's it. There are no real subtleties to this book unlike Stranger in a Strange Land or The Moon is A Harsh Mistress.

*** 2024 reread -

One of the greatest joys of my reading career has been the rediscovery of Heinlein’s later works. For years, decades even, I have had a tepid reception for the later third of the Grandmaster’s work, from I Will Fear No Evil in 1970 to his passing in 1988, comprising seven novels.

It was not so much that I disliked the novels entirely, they just were not my favorites (though I will need to reread I Will Fear No Evil since I did dislike that one).

The change was a progression. I did like some sections of his work, but was turned off by his over the top concentration with sex, and just wrote it all off as old man creepiness. But I reread many of his earlier juvenile works and also the non-fiction collection Grumbles From the Grave, with letters to and from his editors and publishers, compiled by his widow Virginia after his death. I realized that the hokey delivery so representative of Heinlein’s writing was a carefully crafted facade to soften the impact of his world shattering ideas and to create an approachable and endearing homely narration.

Rereading his 1982 novel Friday, I then realized that what I had earlier taken for dirty old man syndrome, was a wink and nod orchestration of satirical attacks on fundamentalism and conservatism. Heinlein was using his time tested delivery to serve up some HAVE AT YOU! to the powers that be.

Heinlein’s 1973 novel Time Enough For Love (nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and Locus awards) was a lengthy conglomeration of shorter works tied together with a framing story about recurring protagonist Lazarus Long and some of his adventures as told to archivists who interviewed the “Senior” after more than two millennia of the old rascal hopping from bed to bed across the universe. When I first read this I liked the stories but glossed over the framing story. With my new approach to his later writing, I paid more attention to the “between the lines” story and really enjoyed it now.

BTW - Long has been described as having red hair, freckled skin and a big nose. Some have opined that Heinlein tailored the look to resemble L. Ron Hubbard, but for my own reasons I have always seen him as looking like Jimmy Buffett, a lovable rogue.

What Heinlein has done is quite amazing. He has taken many mores, customs, rules and even laws about relationships, sex, gender, sexuality, child rearing and family structures and tossed them on a heap, sorted through them, threw out most and settled on a stripped down version of what works and for practical, pragmatic reasons, eschewing any held together merely for religious or conservative philosophy. He then presents the new morality against the older models and comments upon what works and why, and in his inimitable libertine country doctor fashion.

Then, he saves up his piece de la resistance for the end, an all out, no holds barred, attack on one of the most revered institutions in all of Western Civilization, in a time travel trick that would make Larry Flint blush.

Highly recommended to Heinlein fans, SF fans and maybe even to modern readers who are looking for fresh ideas in unlooked for sources.

***

Robert A. Heinlein 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.

July 2024. Reread for book club. Wonderful. No blichs (suck) fairy. Cried andor laughed out loud at parts. How can a book that I am reading for the 10th time at least (and know many parts by heart) make me stay up until the early morning hours to read it? it must be a good book!


Reread for probably the 8th time at least. Wonderful plot. Lots of things relevant to our time (October 7, 2023 war and others). The writing is very basic, not at all beautiful. But still good. Recommended for book club.
ולא, אני לא מנחה. יעל כבר התנדבה, לא?

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.

I first read this book in 1977, and have thought often about returning to it. I finally did. I loved it just as much this time around, but approached it with 35 more years of living under my belt. It's charm has not diminished, it has been enhanced by my experience of life. This episodic life story of 2,000-year-old Lazarus Long might seem 'long'-winded, but just sit back, slow your pace, and give yourself 'time enough' to 'love' it. Sorry... I couldn't resist.