My rating for this book will based on 3 criteria:
1) It's value as a Sci-fi novel
2) It's worth as a Heinlein novel
3) It's ranking as a "time travel" novel
Sad to say, Time Enough For Love fails on all three counts.
Prior to this, it had been fifty years, give or take, since I last read anything by Robert Heinlein. As a teen, I had read the three novels that many consider Heinlein's best - Stranger in a Strange Land , The Moon is a Harsh Mistress , and Starship Troopers . This book nowhere approaches the level of those three. Every character - and there are many - all have the same basic personality. Although they have different bodies, different genders and appear to be different people, Heinlein didn't waste much energy on character development. All conversations between the characters sound like the same person talking to himself.
Heinlein was obsessed with sex when he wrote this novel and no sexual act appears to have been off limits for Heinlein. Not even incest.
As a Sci-fi work, the book is below par. Sure, there's space travel, talking computers and assorted advancements in science, but in many parts of the book, it felt as if I were reading a Zane Grey shoot 'em up. Covered wagons and all.
I'm not sure why this was included in the list of the 23 Best Time Travel Science Fiction Books. Time travel seems to have been an after thought with this novel.Time travel doesn't even become part of the plot until the last 25% of the book. I suspect Heinlein used time travel as a way for his main character to have sex with his mother when they were both 35 years old.
Toward the very end of the book, it looked as if the protagonist was going to be killed. I've never looked forward to any character getting killed off as much as I did Lazarus Long. But, this was time travel, so his family managed to save him. According to wikipedia, Lazarus Long makes an appearance in a number of Heinlein's books. I'll be sure to skip those.
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