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Time Enough for Love
by Robert Heinlein
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Working in a genre that prized plot and artifice above
everything else, Robert Heinlein had a peculiar knack for
creating character-driven narratives. His novels are populated
with big personalities, charismatic
individuals who still show their
humble pulp fiction origins, yet
possess a life force that is rare in
the cardboard world where most
sci-fi resides. These aren’t neces-
sarily realistic characters—but
they are all the more charming for
being so different from the folks
you meet in day-to-day life.
Much of the success of Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land is
driven by that paradoxical
protagonist—a mixture of cult
leader and naïve child—Valentine
Michael Smith. The same book
brings us the even more peculiar figure Jubal Harshaw, who
seems to be a lawyer at some points in the book, a writer at
other moments, then again a doctor, or keeper of a harem, or
just a celebrity without portfolio. This projection of Heinlein’s
fantasy vision of himself is both totally implausible, yet also
fascinating to observe. In a similar manner, two powerful but
sharply contrasting characters impart vitality to The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress—a book which deserves to be far more widely
read: the one-armed techie Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-
Davis, whose quaint, colloquial speech pattern make him a
lunar counterpart to Huckleberry Finn, and the computer
Mike, who would be out HAL 9000 and Robbie the Robot
combined in any fair tabulation of electronic gravitas.
Related Link:
Robert Heinlein at One Hundred
But the Heinlein character with the greatest seniority is Lazarus
Long. Of course, it is hard to get any more senior than Long,
who was born before the outbreak of World War I and was still
going strong some 2000 years later. But this character also
had a long-standing relationship with his author. Readers first
encountered Long when he appeared imposingly on the cover
of the July 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which
featured the first installment of Heinlein’s Methuselah’s
Children. The author returned to Long periodically, and after
Heinlein became a world famous writer of bestsellers, he
focused on this now well-seasoned character for his 1973 book
Time Enough for Love.
To some degree, this character is a hodge-podge of the traits
we repeatedly find in Heinlein’s leading men. This protagonist
is iconoclastic, independent, resourceful, libidinous,
philosophical, crafty and restless. He is no more believable
than Indiana Jones or Odysseus (two figures with which he has
much in common), but out of deference to age, we won’t point
that out to Mr. Long. But he is definitely not one of those stick
figures that we find in Asimov, Bester, Clarke and other
paragons of the sci-fi genre. Heinlein projects so much of his
own emotional currents and psychic energy into this character,
that we find ourselves swept away despite ourselves. You can’t
judge a Disney ride or a Jungian archetype (and Long is a cross
between the two) on standards drawn from reading Tolstoy or
Balzac.
Time Enough for Love is—strange to say—both one of
Heinlein's most disorganized books, and also one of his finest.
Make no mistake about it, this book is stitched together. It
could easily have appeared as a collection of short stories with
a common protagonist—think of Lazarus Long as sort of a sci-fi
Nick Adams. For 600 pages of small print, Heinlein jumps
hither and thither, moving from space ships to the Woodrow
Wilson administration to discourses on genetics and economics
to wild west scenarios on distant planets, and dozens of other
subplots, tangents, and hobby horses. Along the way, Long
even finds time to date his own mother.
Have you heard of that Parisian café where, if you sit there
long enough, anybody who is anybody is sure to stroll by?
Well Time Enough for Love is the novelistic equivalent of the
same. Give Heinlein enough pages, and everything is bound to
show up sooner or later. Yet the storytelling here is so well
done, that it’s hard to complain. There may be plenty of loose
ends in this novel, but there is no padding.
Around the same time Heinlein was writing this book, the
Beatles put out Abbey Road, and on side two of that classic LP
the fab foursome sewed together various bits and pieces and
unfinished songs into a finished product that somehow seemed
much, much larger than its constituent parts. Heinlein does the
same here. I can only surmise that he had a private stash of
great story ideas he had been saving for years, and now was
tossing them into a single book.
Did you ever have a favorite uncle or teacher or mentor who
could keep the whole room entranced with anecdote after
anecdote? This book is much like that. Some of the best parts
of Time Enough for Love are totally irrelevant to the
convoluted plot—one of my favorites: there is a section on
banking and finance that ought to be taught to MBAs—and are
all the more delightful for coming out of left field. Sure, this
book could have been trimmed by 200 pages—heck, it
probably could have been chopped down by 400 pages—but
this is one meal where the fat is as tasty as the meat.
No, you couldn’t teach someone to write like this. You
wouldn't even want to try. But Heinlein was a law unto
himself, and if you decide to read him, you will have to do it on
his terms. It tells you something about the man when you
consider that this, his most self-indulgent book, was also
among his very best.
by Robert Heinlein
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Working in a genre that prized plot and artifice above
everything else, Robert Heinlein had a peculiar knack for
creating character-driven narratives. His novels are populated
with big personalities, charismatic
individuals who still show their
humble pulp fiction origins, yet
possess a life force that is rare in
the cardboard world where most
sci-fi resides. These aren’t neces-
sarily realistic characters—but
they are all the more charming for
being so different from the folks
you meet in day-to-day life.
Much of the success of Heinlein’s
Stranger in a Strange Land is
driven by that paradoxical
protagonist—a mixture of cult
leader and naïve child—Valentine
Michael Smith. The same book
brings us the even more peculiar figure Jubal Harshaw, who
seems to be a lawyer at some points in the book, a writer at
other moments, then again a doctor, or keeper of a harem, or
just a celebrity without portfolio. This projection of Heinlein’s
fantasy vision of himself is both totally implausible, yet also
fascinating to observe. In a similar manner, two powerful but
sharply contrasting characters impart vitality to The Moon is a
Harsh Mistress—a book which deserves to be far more widely
read: the one-armed techie Manuel Garcia "Mannie" O'Kelly-
Davis, whose quaint, colloquial speech pattern make him a
lunar counterpart to Huckleberry Finn, and the computer
Mike, who would be out HAL 9000 and Robbie the Robot
combined in any fair tabulation of electronic gravitas.
Related Link:
Robert Heinlein at One Hundred
But the Heinlein character with the greatest seniority is Lazarus
Long. Of course, it is hard to get any more senior than Long,
who was born before the outbreak of World War I and was still
going strong some 2000 years later. But this character also
had a long-standing relationship with his author. Readers first
encountered Long when he appeared imposingly on the cover
of the July 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which
featured the first installment of Heinlein’s Methuselah’s
Children. The author returned to Long periodically, and after
Heinlein became a world famous writer of bestsellers, he
focused on this now well-seasoned character for his 1973 book
Time Enough for Love.
To some degree, this character is a hodge-podge of the traits
we repeatedly find in Heinlein’s leading men. This protagonist
is iconoclastic, independent, resourceful, libidinous,
philosophical, crafty and restless. He is no more believable
than Indiana Jones or Odysseus (two figures with which he has
much in common), but out of deference to age, we won’t point
that out to Mr. Long. But he is definitely not one of those stick
figures that we find in Asimov, Bester, Clarke and other
paragons of the sci-fi genre. Heinlein projects so much of his
own emotional currents and psychic energy into this character,
that we find ourselves swept away despite ourselves. You can’t
judge a Disney ride or a Jungian archetype (and Long is a cross
between the two) on standards drawn from reading Tolstoy or
Balzac.
Time Enough for Love is—strange to say—both one of
Heinlein's most disorganized books, and also one of his finest.
Make no mistake about it, this book is stitched together. It
could easily have appeared as a collection of short stories with
a common protagonist—think of Lazarus Long as sort of a sci-fi
Nick Adams. For 600 pages of small print, Heinlein jumps
hither and thither, moving from space ships to the Woodrow
Wilson administration to discourses on genetics and economics
to wild west scenarios on distant planets, and dozens of other
subplots, tangents, and hobby horses. Along the way, Long
even finds time to date his own mother.
Have you heard of that Parisian café where, if you sit there
long enough, anybody who is anybody is sure to stroll by?
Well Time Enough for Love is the novelistic equivalent of the
same. Give Heinlein enough pages, and everything is bound to
show up sooner or later. Yet the storytelling here is so well
done, that it’s hard to complain. There may be plenty of loose
ends in this novel, but there is no padding.
Around the same time Heinlein was writing this book, the
Beatles put out Abbey Road, and on side two of that classic LP
the fab foursome sewed together various bits and pieces and
unfinished songs into a finished product that somehow seemed
much, much larger than its constituent parts. Heinlein does the
same here. I can only surmise that he had a private stash of
great story ideas he had been saving for years, and now was
tossing them into a single book.
Did you ever have a favorite uncle or teacher or mentor who
could keep the whole room entranced with anecdote after
anecdote? This book is much like that. Some of the best parts
of Time Enough for Love are totally irrelevant to the
convoluted plot—one of my favorites: there is a section on
banking and finance that ought to be taught to MBAs—and are
all the more delightful for coming out of left field. Sure, this
book could have been trimmed by 200 pages—heck, it
probably could have been chopped down by 400 pages—but
this is one meal where the fat is as tasty as the meat.
No, you couldn’t teach someone to write like this. You
wouldn't even want to try. But Heinlein was a law unto
himself, and if you decide to read him, you will have to do it on
his terms. It tells you something about the man when you
consider that this, his most self-indulgent book, was also
among his very best.
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