What would you do if you could live forever?
Written: Aug 31 '01 (Updated Nov 24 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The society and adventures of the long-lived... fascinating read!
Cons: Usual Heinlein poor treatment of women, thinly drawn and weakly portrayed.
The Bottom Line: Read this book to explore the social consequences of greatly long-lived people, and to see them get into epic space-faring adventures with the help of their immortal mentor.
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| snpmurray's Full Review: Robert A. Heinlein - Methuselah's Children |
This is a book about the consequences of lengthening human lifespan dramatically. It is essentially in two parts…the story of the long-lived on earth, and the story of their later voyages through space. Written the as first of the two, it is the thoughtful prequel to “Time enough for love”, a later and longer work about the same characters.
The year is 2125. The Earth has been scorched by yet another world war, but mankind has survived, and society is going forward in a mostly healthy direction. Civil liberty is assured under the auspices of a covenant, a kind of 21st century version of a constitution, but this one is worldwide. Consolidation of the colonies of the solar system is well underway, and most people are mostly happy most of the time. Nice, eh?
Happier than most are a secretive group of 100 000 people known as “The Families”. Scattered all over the Earth, the families have for generations been involved in an experiment in selective breeding. They have good reason to be happy, as their breeding program has led to most of them doubling the length of their healthy lives. Over 200 years, each member of the group has been financially rewarded for choosing to marry and reproduce only with others of long lifespan. This has led to successive generations slowly increasing the natural lifespan of humans. Members of the families generally expect to live twice as long as “ephemerals”, the name they give to non-family humans. Clearly, they clean up on long term investments, they become the masters of whatever it is they choose to do in the world. To all intents and purposes they are the evolution of the human, able to outpace, out-perform, and outlast their short-lived cousins.
The very secretiveness which has always defined the group is now a cause of embarrassment to many of them. They live in an egalitarian society where honest and good moral fiber are seen as universal requirements. All the time, the family members are required to conceal their true identities, up ad move and make a new life every thirty or so years , and a thousand other deceptions, under the general heading of lying about ones’ age. This does not sit well with them, and they feel they are becoming what is worst in man because of it.
Quite naturally, there are also many in their number who believe that the rest of mankind is not ready to hear that the families are among them. What, they ask, would be the effect on the psyche of mankind, to discover that he is but a short-lived pantomime of a life by comparison to the families. How much stomach would he have for the competitive spirit, when he knows that should he strive his whole life, this is but the time a family member might spend in adolescence? Man, some argued, would be crushed, and feel so defeated that his only response could be one seen again and again through history in response to a sense of threat….a pogrom against the families.
And so a situation arises where some families are revealed, and others are hidden. At this point we enter the story. Unfortunately, those in favor of remaining hidden had judged accurately the response of the ephemerals, and daily pressure is mounting against the revealed families. Mankind cannot believe them to be what they are, merely through selective breeding, and believe that there is a “big secret” which the families are not telling. Like a spreading wildfire, an aggressive stance towards the families is growing geometrically in society. What is to be done? How can the spreading fire be quelled? How can the revealed families be saved from a coming holocaust?
Bring into this situation the foul mouthed, bad mannered, and infinitely prolonged man, Lazarus Long.
A.K.A Woodrow Wilson Smith, Lazarus is the longest lived human of all time. Although a member of the families, Lazarus associates with them only sporadically, preferring to spend his lifetime(s) adventuring on Earth and in space. Lazarus is a fluke even in the breeding program. He is a product of only its’ second generation, being born in the early years of the twentieth century. However, Lazarus has aged more slowly than any human, prior or subsequent. No member had heard from Lazarus for over a century when he strolls into their emergency meeting, and brings his pragmatic no-nonsense approach to saving them all. Organizing them through sheer force of his brusque but sensible arguments, Lazarus points the way to the future for the families. Through political dealings and good tactics and strategy, a huge ship is acquired, and the families escape to deep space, in search of a new home.
Here starts the second part of the book. It tells of their trials and tribulations as they seek a new home. Their ship is what has become known in science fiction as a generation ship….it is capable of carrying and supporting enough humans to form a viable colony whenever they may eventually discover somewhere worth colonizing. All 100 000 of them are aboard, and they traverse deep space for many years, eventually arriving on a world already colonized by other beings. They attempt to integrate themselves, both here, and on another world, but in both cases they discover that the human spirit is not well suited to the environs they have discovered. ..one world is comfortable, but under the control of unseen beings who would demand their obedience. The other world is comprised of beings who share mind between many individuals. Here they are subjected to genetic manipulation and dissolution of their separate identities.
Eventually, the families turn back to space, and contemplate a return to Earth….what has become of their shorter-lived kin whilst they have been away these uncounted years? Is society ready to integrate them now, or is mankind changed in other, unforeseen ways? They turn and head for home, bravely determined to face whatever may be there.
This book is a well written adventure, and is packed with thoughtful considerations. Heinlein gives a good treatment of the problems of immortality (or close to it). Heinlein was a keen thinker, ever the pragmatist, and his own personality may be seen fairly directly projected on the character of Lazarus Long. For Lazarus (and Heinlein), the exigencies of the moment should always temper the behavior of the individual. Lazarus in a master of thinking on his feet, using either politics or brute force as and when required, never been bound by a set of rules which may shorten his life or options merely for the sake of being “civilized”. And I warn you, civilized Lazarus often is not. Consider as case in point, Lazarus stands at one point in the story faced by a stubborn female, figuring how long it is since he has “slugged” a woman. Heinlein was never going to win any prizes for politically correct writing. Women in his books are often given a back seat to men, and their characterizations are often drawn vaguely, and are two dimensional. Ah well, nobody is perfect, but its good sense to warn you this stuff is in here.
This same pragmatic sense leads the story into fantastic realms, realistically portrayed. Heinlein was in fact an engineer by trade, and many of his machines, gadgets and spacecraft are more believably depicted as a result of it. He understood perfectly how to provide a plausible scenario, and yet leave enough material unfolded, for the readers imagination to chew on.
For me, this book was outstanding in two regards. Firstly, I was greatly impressed by the society of the families, as Heinlein forsees it. I found the structure, beliefs, and means of living of the families to be at once fascinating, believable and entertaining. Secondly, the character of Lazarus Long is one I have always been fond of. I enjoyed “Time enough for love” immensely, and was pleased to discover the existence of this prequel. Lazarus has a sharp wit, a “get it done” kind of personality which it is difficult not to find exciting. It stirs the nether-reaches of the imagination to explore the attitudes and opinions of a human who has lived longer than any other.
This book contains little in the way of actual physical violence, although it is often threatened (often as not by Lazarus himself), and I would not be worried to offer it as entertaining reading material for an early teen.
Some of my other science fiction book reviews:
Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Recommended:
Yes
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Location: Sedona, Arizona
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