Sort-of-weekly book discussion: the LAZARUS LONG novels (spoilers, long)

Cafe Society
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It’s not quite a new week yet, but (a) I started the last thread later than I meant to, (b) have been writing this bit by bit during the week while I work on that STUPID BORING CAR AD, so it seems only fair to start this one a day early, and © who really gives a flip, anywhistle?

I thought I’d try straight-up science fiction this week, specifically one from the greatest author of the genre (in my entirely unhumble opinion), Robert A. Heinlein–hereafter RAH. With that in mind, let us discuss the books featuring Lazarus Long.

Anybody interested in posting, I’m sure, will have read at least one of these, but some people may not have read them all, or not read them recently. To jog your memories I post some quick summaries, spoiler-spaced for your convenience:

Methuselah’s Children (1941)

The first (by far) in order of publication. This story, set in the early 22nd century, introduces Lazarus Long, nee Woodrow Wilson Smith, longest-lived member of the Howard Families, a living eugenics experiments whose members average century-plus life spans. When Earth’s government learns of their existence, the Howards are herded into internment camps; to save them Lazarus must commandeer a spaceship and take them into the galaxy in search of a new world. This story also features Andrew Jackson Libby, the only other character who’ll make it into later tales.

Time Enough for Love (1973)

In this book, set about 1800 years after Children, humanity has colonized the galaxy, Earth is in depressing condition, and Lazarus is ready to die. His suicide is interrupted by Ira Weatheral, current leader of the Howard Families, who wants the benefit of Lazarus’ “wisdom”–something the old man does not believe he has to offer. Ira sets his super-computer, Minerva, to the task of finding something new for Lazarus to do and so restore his will to live. Minerva devises a way for Lazarus to travel back in time and see early 20th-century America as an adult rather than a child. Making the trip back in time, Lazarus adopts yet another pseudonym, has an affair with his mother (Maureen Smith) and nearly gets killed in World War I. Much of this story consists of flashbacks and tall tales Lazarus tells Minerva and Ira.

The Number of the Beast (1980)

Lazarus appears only in the final quarter of this novel, and only in a supporting role. Having used Minerva’s time-travel method to restore Andrew Jackson Libby to life (as a female), he wants to the same for his mother. Since Minerva’s method is insufficiently precise to deal with Maureen’s situation, he tries to shanghai the continua device used by the book’s main characters (the Burroughs/Carter family). Hilda, leader of the BCs, turns the tables on him but decide to rescue Maureen for the fun of it–and in exchange for her family being offered Sanctuary in Lazarus’ new colony.

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

Lazarus is again relegated to a supporting role in the story of Richard Ames/Colin Campbell. More than in any other story, he comes off as an ass; certainly Richard can’t stand him. Of particular note is the fact that, unbeknownst to Richard, Lazarus is his father; Richard is perhaps the only child Lazarus has ever bugged out on raising.

To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)

The last Lazarus novel and RAH’s last work to be published before his death. This is the biography of Lazarus’ mother, Maureen, and a large section of it retells Lazarus’ affair with her from her point of view. We learn, among other things, that Lazarus also slept with two of his sisters during his time travel trip. Near the end of the story, Lazarus and Richard Ames reconcile.

Damn, I’m glad I didn’t write all that crap at once.

And now some questions! As always feel free to address any issues I overlook or to ignore any topic that doesn’t interest you.

  1. Which book do you like best, and why? Which do you like least, and why? Which do you think best written? If this one is not your favorite, why not?

  2. There’s no particular reason to read these novels in publication sequence; I myself read Beast first, then Love, Walls, Sunset, and finally Children. What order did you read these in, and why? If any of these books was your first RAH, what about it moved you to seek out others?

  3. What are your opinions on RAH & sex? Are the multiple relationships meant only to be titillating, or do you think RAH had a specific thematic reason for including them? If so, what is that thematic reason? Does the explicit incest in Love and Sunset so offend you as to ruin the scenes–if not the entire books–in which they appear? Does it seem odd that there are several overt male homosexual liaisons, but no overt lesbian liaisons?

  4. Is Lazarus a Mary Sue–that is, an idealized stand-in for the author? If so, why do you think RAH presents him so unfavorably in Beast and Walls? (Hilda easily outwits him in the former, and Richard actively despises him in the latter.)

  5. RAH loves technical minutiae. There’s the lecture on stocking a wagon train in Love, the ballistics discussion in Walls, even the theory behind the continua device in Beast. Do these slow down the action unnecessarily, or are they worth reading in their own right?

  6. “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long”: pretentious, pseudo-Nietzchian twaddle, or a good read?

  7. Women. If you’ve read the books you know what I’m talking about, so I’ll leave the specifics to you guys.

  8. And, as always, if you were me, only smarter, what questions would you have added to this list?

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I’ve been a Heinlein fan for better than 40 years. I have mixed feelings about Lazarus. He’s a great character, but RAH went to the well too often with him. It just got too easy to add a few features, slap on a new paint-job and call it a new novel. But every one of the books has some redeeming features. I read them in the order they were published.

MC is still the best of the lot. Innovative, insightful, exploratory…this one has it all. A cracking good read all the way. TCWWTW is my least favorite. It seems slapped together, there is no real unifying narrative. RAH just tosses in every character he can think of and tries to rewrite some of his older novels to make them fit his new Universe. It doesn’t work. Mike should have been left dead.

As for the sex, it really didn’t bother me one way or another. A couple of hot girl-girl scenes would have been nice, but I’d rather write them myself or visit the Slash forums, because they do it better than RAH ever could.

Personally, I love the technical minutiae. That’s one of the things I liked about Tom Clancy, too. As long as the narrative gets there eventually, I don’t mind a few pages of tech talk. Of course, I liked Moby Dick for that too.

The Notebooks were a marketing gimmick. Sell a few more books to suckers who think the bon-mots inside were profound observations on the state of Mankind. Spider Robinson did the same thing, and did it better with Off The Wall At Callahan’s. For that matter, James Michener did it in The Drifters.

If we start arguing about Heinlein’s women, we’ll start a riot. Let’s just say that they are all idealized versions of Ginny and leave it at that.
Next!

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  1. Why DID he start the “mix in all the old stories and characters” thing? I’ve been thinking to write a story where all his characters are at a conference table and Rambo come in and guns them all down.

  2. Why do so many of his male characters have some very obvious non-normal characteristic?
    Just off the top of my head–
    Lazarus: virtually infinite lifespan
    Libby: math watchamacallit
    John Carter: Danger procognition
    DT Burroughs: Time sense and math watchamacallit (waitaminit, she’s a female character)
    Richard Ames: missing foot
    Manny: missing arm
    And there are many others in the non-Lazarus novels.

  3. Speaking of Libby, did RAH do a sex-change on him to create a female character that wasn’t Ginny?

Re: #3 (the sex)
This has always bothered me as well. In Stranger and Harsh Mistress, it seemed that he was tweaking all the conservative noses in the US, but after that it just got silly. It would appear from his writing, particularly in the Lazarus novels, that in his opinion, rational humans could

a) know immediately who was OK and who was not and
b) start boffing them without causing stress with any of the previously boffed “rational” humans

Rather at variance with what I’ve seen in the real world!

Re: #4 (Mary Sue)
Spider writes that he met RAH and found that “Surprise! He’s not Lazarus Long!”

Re: #7 (the women)

A friend wrote to Ginny, knowing that RAH was too busy to answer (back before he shuffled off this mortal coil). The last question in that letter was “is it true all his female characters are based on you?” GH wrote a lovely reply, including “As to your last question, modesty forbids.”

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It’s not just his male characters, as you point out; it’s most of his protagonists. (Though I don’t think Richard Ames’s artificial leg is the same as the others you name; it’s in now way advantageous. unlike Manny’s artificial arm.) RAH gave his characters such skills & talents because he didn’t care to write hum-drum, slice-of-life stories; he wanted adventure, romance (in the older sense), exotica.

I think he wanted to titillate the reader with the possibility of a Deety making love with her identical twin. Because you KNOW Deety was thinking about it; Libby got her motor running. :wink: That, and perhaps he wanted to retread I Will Fear No Evil a trifle more competently.

(By the way, and not to be smutty, but does anyone think that Deety and Jake eventually had a child together, baked the natural way?)

I’m glad someone else agrees. I find that many people abuse the term “Mary Sue” so that the term loses its meaning, and RAH mocks Lazarus too much, I think, for LL to be a true Mary Sue.

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Except the red-haired Ginny-clones. They’re just wonderful, intelligent and horny. :slight_smile:

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Yeah, but their nipples go ‘sprung!’ a lot. I swear, Deety must have had nipples of iron after the workout they get.