Time Enough For Love is kind of a collection of short stories...or more like...4 or 5 novellas tied together by a single character, Lazarus Long, who has lived for roughly 2000+ years. Since he was born in the early nineteen hundreds the stories span this time being both historical fiction and science fiction. The stories are told either by Lazarus himself to a sometimes reluctant audience of relatives in the future, or by letters and journal entries and historians.

There is a lot of food for thought in this book. Heinlein seems to want to challenge a lot of sexual taboos especially where incest is concerned. At least one of the main ideas presented is that sex with a relative is pretty much only as wrong as the chance that they will produce a genetically deformed child. If science can take away that problem then the sin is gone and you should feel free to fornicate with relatives. Lazarus, while understanding this truth still has trouble embracing incest since he comes from olden times where incest is just a straight up sin. I myself couldn't figure out if this internal conflict in the main character meant that Heinlein himself might not fully embrace the concept or if he was just pointing out that tradition alone should be blamed for anyone not willing to nail their sister.

Another big theme in the book is pioneering. Heinlein pretty much blatantly states that smart people pioneer and dumb people don't resulting in new places that will thrive due to smart pioneers founding them and old places doomed to self destruct since the dummies are all that stayed. He is pretty much talking about earth and while the book was written in the 70s, you cant help but notice that he is talking about whats going on politically in the states now. There was a quote that went something like "a civil servant is really a civil master".

I like a lot of Heinlein's point of views. I will read more of his books. I have Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land already. There are other books with Lazarus Long as a supporting character from what i understand, but from what ive read online, they are not sequels or prequels (Long appears in books published before this one) but just stories from the same universe.

This book is kind of "out there" and i wouldn't recommend it to anyone who needs a lot of structure in a book. Another way to describe it would be "all over the place". As a direct result of this, it took me a long time to read it. Its not that it didn't keep my attention, because it absolutely did, but there are only a few parts that are engaging. It doesn't pull you in for hundreds of pages at a time. Instead i found my self chipping away at it over the last few months. Its for this reason alone that i give it only 4 out of 5 stars.

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