The first – The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail – is the story of David Lamb, an American naval cadet prior and during WW2, a man so lazy that his approach to everything was to find the way to do it with the least possible expenditure of energy. Lazarus tells three stories, while the Chairman tries to accomplish his side of the bargain.

Being a particularly stubborn person, Lazarus counters with an offer he’ll tell the Chairman Pro Tem stories from his life … if the Chairman can find something new for Lazarus to do.

The planet he rules is on the verge of a socio-political crisis that may destroy the Howard Families and Lazarus’s legacy. Returning to Secondus (the planet he founded as the home for the Howard Families (see below)) to die, Lazarus is unwillingly rejuvenated at the command of the Chairman Pro Tem, who feels himself to be in desperate need of Lazarus’s wisdom. The framing device is cunningly designed to allow the three stories to be told in a manner that feels almost natural. It is definitely one of Heinlein’s author tracts. It is steeped in a curious mixture of warmth and affection mingled with a cool pragmatism and – to some extent – ruthlessness that one might expect a four-thousand-year old man to possess. On the face of it, Time Enough for Love is one of the Lazarus Long/Howard Families stories, yet large parts of it consist of Lazarus recounting his adventures (and telling us about the life of a man who might have been a friend of his).

Time Enough for Love is, I think, one of the oddest of Heinlein’s later works. TL:DR – Lazarus Long plays Scheherazade, gets his groove back and seduces his mother. When faced with a choice of evils, accept the least hazardous and cope with it, unblinkingly.

Heinlein time enough for love