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joeytitmouse 's review for:
Time Enough for Love
by Robert A. Heinlein
Ok. That was hard.
How do I review it? he should have just cut the crap and called it "Time Enough for Sex."
Certainly, this book is far too ambitious. Of the three side-stories they could have been released as separate short-stories. Except that damn Dora Wild West story, sooooo boring.
Listen. Lazarus Long is over 2,000 years old and every time a woman (and some men) get even a whiff of him they instantly drop their pants and beg him, yes, beg him, to impregnate them. Some in those words.
It works somewhat in the context of the story; Heinlein has an arcstory for this and other books - A rich man in the 19th century is dying young so sets up a trust for a positive eugenics programme > basically if you live to be old, make babies with others that live to be old (since evolution doesn't select for old age). Lazarus is an early success of this experiment, who would have probably died of old age in his 200s if not for medical technology that makes people essentially immortal. So, you can imagine a culture growing out of this, obsessed with genetics, and, naturally, obsessed with the poster-child for old age, the oldest man in the universe.
Maaaaaaaybe. But every. single. woman. EVEN THE COMPUTERS. >>>>S<<<<. are passionately in "love" with this magic man.
And he can do no wrong. I mean. His math might be off once or twice but he's always got the perfect answer to every conundrum. Some of this you can't just pay off to "old age wisdom."
The writing, the prose at least was reasonable. He knows how to use English. But I felt no sympathy for Lazarus, and really started to hate him near the end. Discounting the whole cesspool of squick - I won't spoil it for you :) in the book, he just comes off as an overconfident douche. At the beginning of the book he's an old miserable cummuffin and then a couple of stories later BOOM! I love everything man. Yea, there is an omitted timeframe there but a good author should at least let his audience see the transformation in the character, non?
Oh--- OH and some other reviewer posted this too. The grand grotesque. Just when you thought the whole 600 page journey was over, oh no, you're brought back. WTF! So you think you have closure and at least this painful claptrap has ended but like a bad soap opera it's left wide open and you don't want to read anymore BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Maybe that was Heinlein's evil plan all along, to sell more books BUT THEN YOU NEVER CONTINUE THE STORY YOU JERK
Ok, this review is getting a little too heated.
If you can survive the squick, and can handle a gods-awful 100-page story about the Wild-West-in-Space-but-still-even-though-this-is-the-far-future-they-are-stuck-to-early-19th-century-technology-for-some-reason-even-though-they-had-a-freeking-spaceship-that-they-didn't-want-to-use-for-no-good-reason (REALLY THE WORST PART OF THE BOOK), then by all means try it. Like I said, the storywriting is reasonable, better than a pulp book at least, if only lacking in characterization.
Though, once again I must express distaste for my Ace Books edition. Some of the text is even rotated almost 15 degrees?! And the blurb on the back is wholly inaccurate. I'm going to stay away from them in the future (Oh why did I already buy the whole Dune series by them!?)
How do I review it? he should have just cut the crap and called it "Time Enough for Sex."
Certainly, this book is far too ambitious. Of the three side-stories they could have been released as separate short-stories. Except that damn Dora Wild West story, sooooo boring.
Listen. Lazarus Long is over 2,000 years old and every time a woman (and some men) get even a whiff of him they instantly drop their pants and beg him, yes, beg him, to impregnate them. Some in those words.
It works somewhat in the context of the story; Heinlein has an arcstory for this and other books - A rich man in the 19th century is dying young so sets up a trust for a positive eugenics programme > basically if you live to be old, make babies with others that live to be old (since evolution doesn't select for old age). Lazarus is an early success of this experiment, who would have probably died of old age in his 200s if not for medical technology that makes people essentially immortal. So, you can imagine a culture growing out of this, obsessed with genetics, and, naturally, obsessed with the poster-child for old age, the oldest man in the universe.
Maaaaaaaybe. But every. single. woman. EVEN THE COMPUTERS. >>>>S<<<<. are passionately in "love" with this magic man.
And he can do no wrong. I mean. His math might be off once or twice but he's always got the perfect answer to every conundrum. Some of this you can't just pay off to "old age wisdom."
The writing, the prose at least was reasonable. He knows how to use English. But I felt no sympathy for Lazarus, and really started to hate him near the end. Discounting the whole cesspool of squick - I won't spoil it for you :) in the book, he just comes off as an overconfident douche. At the beginning of the book he's an old miserable cummuffin and then a couple of stories later BOOM! I love everything man. Yea, there is an omitted timeframe there but a good author should at least let his audience see the transformation in the character, non?
Oh--- OH and some other reviewer posted this too. The grand grotesque. Just when you thought the whole 600 page journey was over, oh no, you're brought back. WTF! So you think you have closure and at least this painful claptrap has ended but like a bad soap opera it's left wide open and you don't want to read anymore BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Maybe that was Heinlein's evil plan all along, to sell more books BUT THEN YOU NEVER CONTINUE THE STORY YOU JERK
Ok, this review is getting a little too heated.
If you can survive the squick, and can handle a gods-awful 100-page story about the Wild-West-in-Space-but-still-even-though-this-is-the-far-future-they-are-stuck-to-early-19th-century-technology-for-some-reason-even-though-they-had-a-freeking-spaceship-that-they-didn't-want-to-use-for-no-good-reason (REALLY THE WORST PART OF THE BOOK), then by all means try it. Like I said, the storywriting is reasonable, better than a pulp book at least, if only lacking in characterization.
Though, once again I must express distaste for my Ace Books edition. Some of the text is even rotated almost 15 degrees?! And the blurb on the back is wholly inaccurate. I'm going to stay away from them in the future (Oh why did I already buy the whole Dune series by them!?)