shadowcat's Full Review: Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough for Love: The Liv...
Background Story:
In the 19th century a man named Ira Howard, despairing to find himself dying of old age in his forties, created a foundation whose sole purpose was to prolong human life. At that point, the only way they could think of to do this was to create an incentive-based breeding program; those who married on the "approved" list got sizable endowments for each child issuing from the union. Many of Heinlein's early short stories (which were later expanded into the novel Methuselah's Children, 1958) dealt with the Howard Families and their spread throughout the galaxy, and in particular Lazarus Long, born in 1912 and still alive at the beginning of Time Enough for Love, some 2300 years later.
Anyone familiar with R.A. Heinlein's work will notice a distinct dichotomy between his earlier and later work; the earlier young-adult space opera contrasting with the later works, which experiment with new concepts in societal organization and sexuality. Time Enough for Love falls firmly into the latter category, playing with ideas that most people will find hard to accept at first (I know I did).
Here are a smattering of the ideas examined in this book: immortality, human cloning, artificial intelligence, group marriage, incest, genetic engineering, slavery, anarchy, and time travel. Whew! If that isn't enough to stretch your mind, I don't think anything will be.
Heinlein's detractors often characterize him as a misogynist, but I can't think of anything farther off the mark; he obviously loves women, and says so at every opportunity in his works. His only flaw in this respect is that all of his female characters are based on one woman, his wife Virginia (or so I have heard it said, and it fits). This single character has some stereotypically feminine qualities that you should expect to find in almost any woman coming out of the early 20th century, but is also strong, not afraid to defend herself, and sexually liberated.
(A side note: this demonstrates the need to keep cultural context in mind when reading just about anything. Harriet Beecher Stowe gets criticized for being racist even though she dared to portray blacks as people in a time when that was unheard of; so Heinlein gets criticized for sexism even though he was raised in a sexist culture.)
Time Enough for Love goes farther even than many of his other books in showing the author's idea of utopia, and comes close to beating you about the head and shoulders with why it's so great. If you already agree with him, this can get tiresome; if you don't, it will probably just make you mad.
Heinlein is not afraid to make his own beliefs obvious to the reader, and does not shy away from criticizing cultural norms; if you think you may be offended or upset by the portrayal of blatant sexual promiscuity or other usually-frowned-upon ideas, you may want to avoid this book. If you have enjoyed other Heinlein in the past, or are interested in exploring some of the "forbidden" ideas mentioned above, give it a try.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.