Time Enough For Love

This is a tedious book that spends long periods rambling about Heinlein's "hippy libertarian" philosophy. Sometimes, he just decides to spits out his personal aphorisms, while at other times, he seems he is just going pseudo-autobiographical.

The book centers around a character who was born in the early 1900s, and is now a few thousand years old, thanks to breeded longevity and rejuvenation. We get some stories of his life, including past marriages and experiences with others. Finally in the end, he travels back in time to view his own early upbringing and attempt to have an affair with his own mother. (While he as a child is hidden away in the back seat of the car.) The time travel here is "immutable". Everything already happened, so time travel can't really change anything - because if it did, it would already have been changed.

The personal relationships in the book represent the Heinlein ideal. Breading is the most important goal. Institutions such as marriage are set up to help protect women and children. Women are demeaned when they seek "equality" with men. Inbreeding and incest or perfectly fine as long as the genetic issues are taken care of. (And he spends plenty of time going over genetic analysis.) We also get multiple partners and breading with clones of oneself. People have become so "enlightened" that they run these breeding experiments on themselves.

While the novel goes off on tangents and explores parts of a futuristic society, it ends conventionally, with the protagonist living with his "family" in the midwest, and going off to serve in World War I. In the end he gets shot. But then gets taken back to the future.

There are bits of good story here. There are also bits of interesting science fiction conjecture. Together that would make a great short novella. Unfortunately, this is one long book with way too much blather.