Lazarus Long and Time Enough for Love

When I was about 10 years old in 1958 I discovered Robert Heinlein and then Isaac Asimov and then Arthur C. Clark and then Robert Silverburg over the years. In 1973 Heinlein wrote "Time Enough for Love" with Lazarus Long who I found to be a truly archetypal character. He reminded me a lot of relatives of mine in some ways and made me think back upon my Great Grandfather who lived to be 105 years old in Kansas on his farm there. It made me wonder if it was possible that I too, would live to be 100 or more like Lazarus Long. However, when I got to my twenties I was very disillusioned with life and at that point expected to be gone by 25. However, life has a way that if we are one of the "lucky ones?" that survive to 30 there is a tendency now to live until 90 or more these days we now live in. Though many of us watch our friends die young from all the various causes from suicide to too much risk, to alcohol and drugs to falling in love with the wrong person and not able to survive it to you name it, in the end if you live to be 30 you likely will also live to be 90. This is sort of a given the way things work here on earth at least in the U.S.

begin quote from Wikipedia under the heading "Time Enough for Love" 

Time Enough for Love

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Time Enough for Love
Time Enough For Love (first edition cover - 1973)
Author(s)	Robert A. Heinlein
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction novel
Publisher	G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publication date	June 1973
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	605 pp
ISBN	0-399-11151-4
OCLC Number	639653
Dewey Decimal	813/.5/4
LC Classification	PZ3.H364 Ti3 PS3515.E288
Preceded by	I Will Fear No Evil
Followed by	The Number of the Beast

Time Enough for Love is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in 1973. The work was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1973 ^[1] and both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1974.^[2]

Contents [hide] 1 Plot 1.1 The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail 1.2 The Tale of the Twins Who Weren't 1.3 The Tale of the Adopted Daughter 1.4 Boondock 1.5 Da Capo 1.6 The Notebooks of Lazarus Long 2 Connections to other books 3 Reception 4 Editions 5 Footnotes 6 References

[edit] Plot

The book covers several periods from the life of Lazarus Long (birth name: Woodrow Wilson Smith), the oldest living human, now more than two thousand years old.
The first half of the book takes the form of several novellas tied together by Lazarus's retrospective narrative. In the framing story, Lazarus has grown weary and decided that life is no longer worth living, but (in what is described as a reverse Arabian Nights scenario) he will consent not to end his life as long as his companions will listen to his stories.