Specialization is for insects. Back to Jim's Den Woodrow Wilson Smith, aka, Lazarus Long
His exact (natural) life span is never determined. In his introduction at the beginning of Methuselah's Children he guesses his age to be 213 years old. Approximately 75 years pass during the course of the novel, which ends with the first form of rejuvenation being developed. However, due to the fact that large amounts of this time are spent traveling interstellar distances at speeds approaching that of light, the 75-year measurement is an expression of the time elapsed in his absence rather than how much time passed from his perspective. At one point, he estimates his natural life span to be around 250 years, but this figure is not expressed with certainty. Heinlein acknowledged that such a long life span should not be expected as a result of a mere three generations of selective breeding, but offers no alternative explanation except for letting a character declare, "A mutation, of course—which simply says that we don't know". In one scene in Methuselah's Children, Long says that he visited Hugo Pinero, the scientist in Heinlein's first published story. Pinero possessed a machine that was capable of measuring how long a human would live. When Pinero measures Long, he does not provide an answer; he simply advises Long that the machine is broken. The story does not explicitly state whether Pinero's reading was simply so high as to defy belief, Lazarus' later travels in time made a reading impossible, or the reading indicates that Long will never die, though Lazarus seems to believe the last explanation. He is actually told, at the end of Time Enough For Love, that he cannot die (although it is implied that this was probably said to comfort him rather than based on any actual evidence). The promotional copy on the back of Time Enough For Love, the second book featuring the character of Lazarus Long, states that Lazarus was "so in love with time that he became his own ancestor," but this never happens in any of the published books and is almost certainly a misunderstanding on the part of the copywriter (such back copy is rarely written by the author of the work it appears on). In the book, Lazarus does at one point travel back in time and have sex with his mother, but this affair happens after the birth of Lazarus. Heinlein did, however, use a similar plot in the short story "All You Zombies—" in which a character does become his own ancestor. A rugged individualist with a distrust of authority, Lazarus drifts from colony world to colony world, settling down for a few years or a few decades and leaving when things get too regimented for his taste—often just before the angry mob arrives. The Lazarus Long set of books involve time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, consensual incest, and a concept that Heinlein named pantheistic solipsism—the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them so that somewhere the Land of Oz is real.
AppearancesNovels featuring Lazarus include:
The Lives of Lazarus Long
The general public of Earth, once faced with the inescapable reality, believes incorrectly that the Howard's have discovered some sort of anti-aging process that they are choosing to conceal, despite the fact that the truth has been made public. Public resentment of this process builds slowly, until it reaches a boiling point. Civil liberties, as applied to the Howard's, are suspended, and the entire membership of the Howard Families is detained, with the exception of Lazarus himself. With the aid of the elected head of the world government, Slayton Ford, Lazarus hijacks the New Frontiers, a very large starship designed to travel to distant stars, and then liberates the Howard's. While the New Frontiers was designed to sustain a colony in travel at speeds significantly below the speed of light, a Howard named Andrew Jackson "Slipstick" Libby has developed a way to boost the ship to speeds just under that of light itself. With the ship so modified, the Howard Families, under the leadership of Lazarus Long, escape the solar system in search of a planet of their own. The first planet they encounter is populated by the Jockaira, who turn out to be little more than domesticated animals for an unnamed species they see as gods. When it becomes clear to the latter that humans cannot be domesticated, all of the humans are forcefully removed from the planet and placed in their ship, which is then pushed to another star system and planet. The technology used for this is so advanced that it is not observable by the humans. This second planet is populated by a diminutive furry species called "The Little People," who are a very advanced collective intelligence. They are very accommodating to the humans, and in fact their world is pleasant enough to be considered a paradise. After many years, Mary Sperling—a close friend of Lazarus and the second-oldest of the Howard Families—joins the collective intelligence in order to escape her persistent fear of death. Lazarus (and many other Howards) are so disturbed by this that the decision is made to return to Earth. Around twelve thousand remain behind, but the rest return to Earth with the aid of even further advanced technology learned from the Little People. Upon their return to Earth, the Howard's learn that a rejuvenation treatment has been developed based on new blood grown in vitro. This is believed to be the secret to eternal life the Howard's had taken with them when they departed. The political pressure to learn that secret has been so powerful as to force this technique to be discovered independently. Lazarus, who has been expecting death at any time due to extreme old age, now has a new lease on life.
Lazarus led the Howard Families on another exodus, this time to a planet he had discovered called Secundus. Lazarus himself, however, was not content to remain on Secundus, and headed back out to pioneer several more planets. One of the stories told in Time Enough For Love begins with his return to Blessed, a theocratic planet with a state-sponsored slave trade. Lazarus himself had been a slave on this planet several generations prior, but declines to give details. He had returned to Blessed for commercial reasons, but his experience as a slave there makes him unable to ignore a high priced closed-bid slave auction for what appears to be two ordinary slaves. The slave merchant advises him that these slaves (Joseph and Estrellita) are, through genetic manipulation, both brother and sister (twins, in fact) and a perfect breeding pair. When he sees that the girl is in a chastity belt, he is so outraged that he purchases the pair and immediately frees them. He takes the pair with him and teaches them how to support themselves as free people, as well as giving them the general education that they had not been given as slaves. Because of their upbringing, they consider themselves to be a mating couple, and 'Llita becomes pregnant. Lazarus, as ship's captain, performs their wedding ceremony, and eventually assists them in setting up a small restaurant, and then later a larger one. After a number of years have passed, the "twins" realize that they are not aging as much as they would expect, and Lazarus infers that they are probably his descendants. (It is suggested in the introduction of Time Enough For Love that by the time of that book's opening, a vast majority of the human race (and almost all of the Howard Families) are descended from him.)
Centuries later, Lazarus—now over two thousand years old—has grown weary of life and decides that it is time for him to die. He returns to Secundus, unaware that Ira Weatheral, Chairman Pro Tempore of the Howard Families, has been searching for him. (The title of "Chairman Pro Tempore" is a formality—under the traditional rules, Lazarus is the Chairman because of his status as "The Senior".) Just before he dies, he is grabbed by the police and subjected to rejuvenation. Ira explains to a very irate Lazarus that he has done so because he needs him. He believes that the society and culture of Secundus is in its death throes, and wants to do as Lazarus did—lead the families on a migration to a new planet, named Tertius. He wants Lazarus to impart as much wisdom as possible to assist him in the process. (This is where Time Enough for Love begins.) Lazarus finally agrees, through a deal where Ira agrees to show up for "a thousand nights and a night" to listen to Lazarus' tales. If Ira fails to show up (with reasonable exceptions), Lazarus will commit suicide—what they refer to as a "Reverse Scheherazade gambit". Additionally, Ira orders a search to find what Lazarus desperately wants—something new. This search, using a "Zwicky Box", is performed by an artificial intelligence named Minerva. She handles most of the computer functions of the planetary government, is in love with Ira, and becomes friends with Lazarus. During one conversation, Lazarus refers to a "mythical time machine," and Minerva asks why he calls it "mythical." She notes that the current method of space travel could be modified for time travel. When Lazarus asks why she has not mentioned this as part of the search, she responds that she was looking for something new. While Lazarus is going through the rejuvenation treatments, his caretakers, Hamadryad and Ishtar, both give birth to female clones of him, their Y chromosome being replaced by an identical copy of the X chromosome. The "daughters" are named Lapis Lazuli and Lorelei Lee. Lazarus assists Ira in the migration to Tertius (although it is done as a private expedition rather than as a function of the Howard Foundation), and then plans a trip to Earth, circa 1919-1929. Due to a miscalculation, he arrives in 1916. He makes plans to avoid World War I by leaving the country, but continues his study of the time period. He looks up his first family, and manages to insinuate himself into that household under the name of "Ted Bronson." Due to his obvious family resemblance (and careful lies), his grandfather Ira says that he may be an illegitimate child of Ira's brother. (We later learn Ira suspects "Ted" is his own illegitimate son.) Ira, the grumpy and very dominant grandfather, bears a strong resemblance to "The Old Man" from Heinlein's much earlier The Puppet Masters. Long discovers, to his surprise and (initial) shame that he is overwhelmingly attracted to his own mother, Maureen. Since Lazarus had not anticipated arriving this early, he had not researched the First World War in detail, and as a result the entry into it of the United States on April 6, 1917 catches him unawares. When his "adopted" family learns that he is not planning on joining the army to help in the fight, they spurn him. To regain their approval (and particularly that of Maureen), he enlists, although he intends to arrange it so that he is not sent into a combat zone by functioning as a drill sergeant. The family is enthusiastic. His father, Brian Smith—who is also in the Army as an officer—makes arrangements for him to go overseas, thinking he is doing "Ted" a favor. As part of his final leave before deployment, Lazarus visits his family one more time, whereupon he learns that Maureen is as attracted to him as he is to her. She explains that her husband does not insist on fidelity, although she is careful not to become pregnant by any man but Brian. Since she is newly pregnant, that danger is gone, and she takes Lazarus discreetly to bed. (A previous attempt to get "Ted" alone for such purpose is (inadvertently and most frustratingly) interrupted by Maureen's son, Woody—who is of course Lazarus at five years old.) Once overseas, Lazarus is mortally wounded in combat, but is rescued and healed by his family arriving just in time from the future. In The Number of the Beast, the main characters discover a way to travel to fictional worlds, and in the course of their explorations, visit the world of Lazarus Long. Using the technology of these characters' ship (which can teleport through space and time), Lazarus snatches his mother out of the time stream at the end of her life and replaces her with a dead clone. Lazarus also appears as a minor character in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and plays a role in Heinlein's last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, which is the life story of Maureen. In the latter novel, Maureen as narrator tells a somewhat different version of Lazarus' visit to Earth in 1916-8 and provides considerable detail on Lazarus' home timeline, including the fact that Lazarus (as Woodrow "Bill" Smith) was the backup pilot on the first Moon expedition. Maureen Johnson Smith Long
Early life and marriage Maureen was born in Missouri on July 4, 1882, the daughter of Doctor Ira Johnson, a member of the Howard Families. As a young teenager, Maureen discovers this fact from her very frank father who encourages her to seek a husband from among the accepted list of family candidates. She marries Brian Smith and they settle in Kansas City and have several children, all subsidized by the Howard Families foundation. Children The most famous of her children is Woodrow Wilson Smith, born November 11, 1912. Woodrow will eventually be known by many names in his long life, the most famous being "Lazarus Long." Time Enough for Love recounts how, during 1916, Maureen and her father are visited by a mysterious man who calls himself Theodore Bronson. Bronson and Maureen are mentally and physically attracted to one another, and even go on a date and attempt to have sex, but are thwarted by young "Woody," who sneaks along, hidden in the back of the car. Ted Bronson eventually goes off to fight in the war, and is presumed killed. "Bronson" was eventually revealed to Maureen to be her time-traveling son, Woodrow, aka "Lazarus." Post-Divorce Business Career and "Death"
On June 20, 1982, Maureen, just short of her one hundredth birthday, is crossing a street when a truck barrels down on her. She has no time for regrets as she is scooped up in a rescue mission from the future by her son Lazarus. Rejuvenation and Time Corps Career She is rejuvenated, offered a job as an agent of the Time Corps (often accompanied by Pixel, the titular "Cat Who Walks Through Walls"), and eventually rescues her own father from certain death during the Battle of Britain. Maureen is united with her descendants in a massive group marriage in the settlement of Boondock on the planet Tertius Tellus. Her last words in To Sail Beyond the Sunset are: "So we all joined hands in the presence of our children (of course Pixel was there!) and we pledged ourselves to love and cherish our children--those around us, those still to come, worlds without end. "And we all lived happily ever after." Sources: Time Enough for Love, Heinlein, Robert A., 1973, G. P. Putnam's Sons The Number of the Beast, Heinlein, Robert A., 1980, Fawcett The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Heinlein, Robert A., 1985, G. P. Putnam's Sons To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Heinlein, Robert A., 1987, G. P. Putnam's Sons Robert A. Heinlein
Within the framework of his science fiction stories Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, speculated about unorthodox family relationships, and the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His iconoclastic approach to these themes led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works and attempts to place mutually contradictory labels on his work. For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was widely viewed as an advocacy of militarism and even to contain some elements of fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of pied piper to the sexual revolution and the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory, or responsible nonmonogamy. Heinlein won four Hugo Awards for his novels. In addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos" — awards given retrospectively for years in which no Hugo's had been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for lifetime achievement. After his death, his wife Virginia Heinlein (Ginny Heinlein died, January 18, 2003) issued a compilation of Heinlein's correspondence and notes into a somewhat autobiographical examination of his career, published in 1989 under the title Grumbles from the Grave. In his fiction, Heinlein coined words that have become part of the English language, including "grok", "TANSTAAFL" and "waldo."
Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), which is generally considered to advance very liberal themes and in fact became the unofficial "bible of the hippie movement" in the late 1960's. The Heinlein juveniles, novels for young adults, may turn out to be the most important work he ever did, building an audience of scientifically and socially aware adults. He had used topical materials throughout his series, but in 1959, his Starship Troopers was regarded by the Scribner's editorial staff as too controversial for their prestige line and was rejected summarily. Heinlein felt himself released from the constraints of writing for children and began to write "my own stuff, my own way," and came out with a series of challenging books that redrew the boundaries of science fiction, including his best-known work, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966). It appears that Heinlein attempted to live in a manner consistent with his books, even in the 1930s, and had an open relationship in his marriage to his second wife, Leslyn. He was also a nudist; nudism and body taboos are frequently discussed in his work. At the height of the cold war, he built a bomb shelter under his house, like the one featured in Farnham's Freehold. After For Us, The Living, Heinlein began selling (to magazines) first short stories, then novels, set in a Future History, complete with a time line of significant political, cultural, and technological changes. A chart of the future history was published in the May 1941 issue of Astounding. Over time, Heinlein wrote many novels and short stories that deviated freely from the Future History on some points, while maintaining consistency in some other areas. The Future History was also eventually overtaken by actual events. These discrepancies were explained, after a fashion, in his later World as Myth stories. Heinlein's first novel published as a book, Rocket Ship Galileo, was initially rejected because going to the moon was considered too far out, but he soon found a publisher, Scribner's, that began publishing a Heinlein juvenile once a year for the Christmas season. Eight of these books were illustrated by Clifford Geary in a distinctive white-on-black scratchboard style. Some representative novels of this type are Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Farmer in the Sky, and Starman Jones. Many of these were first published in serial form under other titles, e.g., Farmer in the Sky was published as "Satellite Scout" in the Boy Scout magazine Boys' Life. There has been speculation that Heinlein's intense obsession with his privacy[20] was due at least in part to the apparent contradiction between his unconventional private life and his career as an author of books for children, but For Us, The Living also explicitly discusses the political importance Heinlein attached to privacy as a matter of principle. Heinlein decisively ended his juvenile novels with likely the most controversial work in science fiction, the 1959 Starship Troopers, his personal riposte to leftist calls to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 to stop nuclear testing. From about 1961 (Stranger in a Strange Land) to 1973 (Time Enough for Love), Heinlein wrote some of his more libertarian novels (in terms of sexual mores). His work during this period explored his most important themes, such as individualism, libertarianism, and free expression of physical and emotional love. To some extent, the apparent discrepancy between these works and the more naïve themes of his earlier novels can be attributed to his own perception, which was probably correct, that readers and publishers in the 1950s were not yet ready for some of his more radical ideas. He did not publish Stranger in a Strange Land until some time after it was written, and the themes of free love and radical individualism are prominently featured in his long-unpublished first novel, For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tells of a war of independence of Lunar colonies, with significant commentary regarding the threat posed by any government — including a republic — to individual freedom. Although Heinlein had previously written a few short stories in the fantasy genre, during this period he wrote his first fantasy novel, Glory Road, and in Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil, he began to mix hard science with fantasy, mysticism, and satire of organized religion. Critics William H. Patterson, Jr., and Andrew Thornton believe that this is simply an expression of Heinlein's longstanding philosophical opposition to positivism. Heinlein stated that he was influenced by James Branch Cabell in taking this new literary direction. The next-to-last novel of this period, I Will Fear No Evil, is according to critic James Gifford "almost universally regarded as a literary failure," and he attributes its shortcomings to Heinlein's near-death from peritonitis. After a seven-year hiatus brought on by poor health, Heinlein produced five new novels in the period from 1980 (The Number of the Beast) to 1987 (To Sail Beyond the Sunset). These books have a thread of common characters and time and place. They most explicitly communicated Heinlein's philosophies and beliefs, and many long, didactic passages of dialog and exposition deal with government, sex, and religion. These novels are controversial among his readers, and some critics have written about them very negatively. Heinlein's four Hugo awards were all for books written before this period. Some of these books, such as The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, start out as tightly constructed adventure stories, but transform into philosophical fantasias at the end. It is a matter of opinion whether this demonstrates a lack of attention to craftsmanship or a conscious effort to expand the boundaries of science fiction into a kind of magical realism, continuing the process of literary exploration that he had begun with Stranger in a Strange Land. Most of the novels from this period are recognized by critics as forming an offshoot from the Future History series, and referred to by the term World as Myth. The tendency toward authorial self-reference begun in Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough For Love becomes even more evident in novels such as The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, whose first-person protagonist is a disabled military veteran who becomes a writer, and finds love with a female character who, like all of Heinlein's strong female characters, appears to be based closely on his wife Ginny. The 1982 novel Friday, a more conventional adventure story (borrowing a character and backstory from the earlier short story "Gulf") continued a Heinlein theme of expecting what he saw as the continued disintegration of Earth's society, to the point where the title character is strongly encouraged to seek a new life off-planet. It concludes with a traditional Heinlein note, as in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" or "Time Enough for Love" that freedom is to be found on the frontiers. The 1984 novel Job: A Comedy of Justice is a sharp satire of organized religion. Heinlein's writing may appear to oscillate wildly across the political spectrum. His first novel, For Us, The Living, consists largely of speeches advocating the Social Credit system, and the early story "Misfit" deals with an organization that seems to be Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps translated into outer space. While Stranger in a Strange Land was embraced by the hippie counterculture, and Glory Road can be read as an antiwar piece, some have deemed Starship Troopers militaristic, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, published during the Reagan administration, stridently right-wing. There are, however, certain threads in Heinlein's political thought that remain constant. A strong current of libertarianism runs through his work, as expressed most clearly in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His early juvenile novels often contain a surprisingly strong anti-authority message, as in his first published novel Rocket Ship Galileo, which has a group of boys blasting off in a rocket ship in defiance of a court order. A similar defiance of a court order to take a moon trip takes place in the short story "Requiem". In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the unjust Lunar Authority that controls the lunar colony is usually referred to simply as "Authority" which points to a clear interpretation of the book as a parable for the evils of authority in general, rather than the evils of one particular authority. Heinlein was opposed to any encroachment of religion into government; he pilloried organized religion in Job: A Comedy of Justice, and, with more subtlety and ambivalence, in Stranger in a Strange Land. His future history includes a period called the Interregnum, in which a backwoods revivalist becomes dictator of the United States; Revolt in 2100 depicts a revolutionary underground overthrowing that religious dictatorship. Positive descriptions of the military (Between Planets, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Red Planet, Starship Troopers) tend to emphasize the individual actions of volunteers in the spirit of the Minutemen of colonial America. Conscription and the military as an extension of the government are portrayed in Time Enough for Love, Glory Road, and Starship Troopers as being poor substitutes for the volunteers who, ideally, should be defending a free society. To those on the right, Heinlein's ardent anti-communism during the Cold War era might appear to contradict his earlier efforts in the socialist EPIC and Social Credit movements; however, it should be noted that both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were very active during the 1930s, and the distinction between socialism and Soviet communism was well understood by those on the left. Heinlein spelled out his strong concerns regarding communism in a number of non-fiction pieces, including "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?", an anti-communist polemic published as a newspaper advertisement in 1958; and articles such as "Pravda Means Truth" and "Inside Intourist," in which he recounted his visit to the USSR and advised Western readers on how to evade official supervision on such a trip. Many of Heinlein's stories explicitly spell out a view of history that could be compared to Marx's: social structures are dictated by the materialistic environment. Heinlein would perhaps have been more comfortable with a comparison with Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis. In Red Planet, Doctor MacRae links attempts at gun control to the increase in population density on Mars. (This discussion was edited out of the original version of the book at the insistence of the publisher.) In Farmer in the Sky, overpopulation of Earth has led to hunger, and emigration to Ganymede provides a "life insurance policy" for the species as a whole; Heinlein puts a lecture in the mouth of one of his characters toward the end of the book in which it is explained that the mathematical logic of Malthusianism can lead only to disaster for the home planet. A subplot in Time Enough for Love involves demands by farmers upon Lazarus Long's bank, which Heinlein portrays as the inevitable tendency of a pioneer society evolving into a more dense (and, by implication, more decadent and less free) society. This episode is an interesting example of Heinlein's tendency (in opposition to Marx) to view history as cyclical rather than progressive. Heinlein grew up in the era of racial segregation in the United States and wrote some of his most influential fiction at the height of the US civil rights movement. His early juveniles were very much ahead of their time both in their explicit rejection of racism and in their inclusion of non-white protagonists — in the context of science fiction before the 1960s, the mere existence of dark-skinned characters was a remarkable novelty, with green occurring more often than brown. For example, his second juvenile, the 1948 Space Cadet, explicitly uses aliens as a metaphor for human racial minorities: "That's just race prejudice. A Venerian is easier to like than a man." "...that's not fair ... Matt hasn't got any race prejudice. .. Take Lieutenant Peters — did it make any difference to us that he's as black as the ace of spades?" In this example, as in books written throughout his career, Heinlein challenges his readers' possible racial stereotypes by introducing a strong, sympathetic character, only to reveal much later that he is of African descent. This also occurs in, e.g., The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and Tunnel in the Sky; in several cases, the covers of the books show characters as being light-skinned, when in fact the text states, or at least implies, that they are dark-skinned or of African descent. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Podkayne of Mars both contain incidents of racial prejudice or injustice against their protagonists.Heinlein repeatedly denounced racism in his non-fiction works, including numerous examples in Expanded Universe. Race was a central theme in some of Heinlein's fiction. The most prominent example is Farnham's Freehold, which casts a white family into a future in which white people are the slaves of black rulers. In the 1941 novel Sixth Column (also known as The Day After Tomorrow), a resistance movement defends itself against an invasion by an Asian fascist state (the "Pan-Asians") using a "super-science" technology that allows ray weapons to be tuned to specific races. The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success"; the reslanting may have been another instance of Heinlein’s subtle inclusion of non-white sympathetic characters. Sixth Column concentrates more on the Japanese, and was first serialized in 1941, the year of the Pearl Harbor attack, although it was not published in book form until 1949, the year of the revolution in China. Tunnel in the Sky and Farmer in the Sky were both written after the revolution. The protagonist in Starship Troopers is Filipino, and "Tiger" Kondo in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a cameo appearance by Yoji Kondo, a NASA scientist of Heinlein's acquaintance who also edited the tribute volume Requiem. The protagonist in Between Planets is assisted by a Chinese restaurant owner, a major character in the book. In The Star Beast, a harried African bureaucrat is sympathetically portrayed as the behind-the-scenes master of the world government's foreign policy, while several other (presumably white) officials are portrayed variously as misguided, foolish, or well-meaning but parochial and prejudiced. Some of the alien species in Heinlein's fiction can be interpreted in terms of an allegorical representation of human ethnic groups. Double Star, Red Planet, and Stranger in a Strange Land all deal with tolerance and understanding between humans and Martians. Several of his stories, such as "Jerry Was a Man," The Star Beast, and Red Planet, involve the idea of non-humans who are incorrectly judged as being less than human. Although it has been suggested that the strongly hierarchical and anti-individualistic "bugs" in Starship Troopers were meant to represent the Chinese or Japanese, Heinlein wrote the book in response to the unilateral ending of nuclear testing by the U.S., so it is more likely that they were intended to represent communism. Indeed, Heinlein suggests in the book that the bugs are a good example of communism being something that humans cannot adhere successfully to, since humans are of individual minds, whereas the bugs, being a collective, can all contribute to the whole without consideration of individual desire. The slugs in The Puppet Masters are likewise explicitly and repeatedly identified as metaphors for communism. A problem with interpreting aliens as stand-ins for races of Homo sapiens is that Heinlein's aliens generally occupy an entirely different mental world than humans. For example, an alien race depicted in Methuselah's Children, the Jockaira, are sentient domesticated animals ruled by a second, godlike species. In his early juvenile fiction, the Martians and Venerians are usually depicted as ancient, wise races who seldom deign to interfere in human affairs. Individualism and self-determination Many of Heinlein's novels are stories of revolts against political oppression. Heinlein believed that individualism did not go hand-in-hand with ignorance. He believed that an appropriate level of adult competence was achieved through a wide-ranging education, whether this occurred in a classroom or not (as in Citizen of the Galaxy). In his juvenile novels, more than once a character looks with disdain at a student's choice of classwork, saying "Why didn't you study something useful?" In Time Enough For Love, Lazarus Long gives a long list of capabilities that anyone should have, concluding, "Specialization is for insects." The ability of the individual to create himself is explored deeply in stories such as I Will Fear No Evil, "All You Zombies—," and "By His Bootstraps." We are invited to wonder, what would humanity be if we shaped customs to benefit us, and not the other way around? In Heinlein's view, as outlined in For Us, The Living, humanity would not only be happier, but perceptually, behaviorally, and morally aligned with reality. Sexual liberation For Heinlein, personal liberation included sexual liberation, and free love was a major subject of his writing starting from the 1939 For Us, The Living. Beyond This Horizon (1942) cleverly subverts traditional gender roles in a scene in which the protagonist demonstrates his archaic gunpowder gun for his friend and discusses how useful it would be in dueling — after which the discussion turns to the shade of his nail polish. "All You Zombies—" (1959) is the story of a person who undergoes sex reassignment therapy, goes back in time, has sex with herself, and gives birth to herself. Sexual freedom and the elimination of sexual jealousy are a major theme of Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which the progressive minded yet culturally canalized reporter, Ben Caxton, acts as a dramatic foil for the less parochial characters, Jubal Harshaw and Mike. Paralleling Ben's gradual philosophical awakening, the nurse Gillian Boardman learns to embrace her innate tendency toward exhibitionism and to be more accepting of other people's sexuality (e.g., Duke's fondness for pornography). Stranger's treatment of homosexuality is ambiguous. As discussed in more detail in the book's Wikipedia article, two negative references to homosexuality have been interpreted by some readers as being homophobic, but both deal with Jill's hang-ups, and one is a discussion of Jill's thoughts. It is therefore unclear if they reflect Heinlein's own point of view. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, homosexuality is ill-regarded, but accepted as necessary, in an overwhelmingly male society, by the book's point-of-view character. In contrast, homosexuality is regarded with approval — even gusto — in books such as 1970s I Will Fear No Evil, which posits the social recognition of six innate genders, consisting of all possible combinations of male and female, with straight, gay, and bisexual. In The Number of the Beast, a male character discusses unsuccessful homosexual experimentation as a teenager, eventually stating that, while his previous experimentation had failed, if his friend and son-in-law Zeb Carter was to display a sexual interest in him, he would do his best to enjoy the experience and make Zeb feel as if he had desired it all along. In later books, Heinlein dealt with incest and the sexual nature of children. In Time Enough For Love, Lazarus Long uses genetic arguments to initially dissuade a brother and sister he has adopted from sexual experimentation with each other, but he later arranges for them to be married, having discovered that they (in an extremely rare but scientifically possible circumstance) are not brother and sister on a genetic level; he also consummates his strong sexual attraction to his own mother, whom he goes back in time to see again. In some of Heinlein's books, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, for instance, sexual urges between daughters and fathers are exemplified and briefly discussed on several occasions. Later in the same book, the protagonist/narrator (Maureen Johnson) discovers that her two youngest children are engaged in heterosexual incest. After failing to dissuade them from the relationship, she forcibly returns the two to their father, and never mentions them again. The protagonist of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls recalls a homosexual experience with a Boy Scouts leader, which he didn't find unpleasant. In Heinlein's treatment of the possibility of sex between adults and adolescents, some readers may feel that he dodges many of the valid reasons for the taboo by portraying the sexual attractions or actual sex as taking place only between Nietzschean supermen, who are so enlightened that they can avoid all the ethical and emotional pitfalls. Arguably, Heinlein's treatment of female characters provides an example of a sexually liberated attitude, working against generally accepted stereotypes. Beginning with For Us, the Living, Heinlein's female characters of all ages were generally competent, intelligent, courageous, powerful, and in control of their lives and situations to the extent circumstances permitted. Those few of his female characters who are weak or helpless are held in contempt by other characters (including other females). Yet even the strongest of these characters (the title characters in Friday and Podkayne of Mars and Star in Glory Road are examples) nonetheless are happy to submit to physical punishment or control from stronger male figures. In other characters, Heinlein also incorporated elements of the mid-twentieth century female stereotype in certain characters. In Double Star, for example, the secretary, Penny, while smart and competent, allows her emotions to affect her work — and eventually fulfills the dream of many Fifties secretaries by marrying her boss. Elspeth, in Starman Jones, pretends to be less intelligent than she is and permits Max to "teach" her three-dimensional chess (of which she is a champion) in order to have a better chance to catch his romantic interest. A character in Citizen of the Galaxy similarly allows Thorby to "teach" her mathematics for a similar purpose. However, many of the juveniles feature intelligent young women who help save the day (from The Star Beast to Between Planets) — and are romantically inclined towards the protagonist, though not all such relationships end in marriage. Heinlein is usually identified, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, as one of the three masters of science fiction to arise in the so-called Golden Age of science fiction, associated with John W. Campbell and his magazine Astounding. However, in the 1950s he was a leader in bringing science fiction out of the low-paying and less prestigious pulp ghetto. Most of his works, including short stories, have been continuously in print in many languages since their initial appearance and are still available as new paperbacks years after his death. Heinlein was also a guest commentator for Walter Cronkite during Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 moon landing. There is an active campaign to persuade the Secretary of the Navy to name the new Zumwalt class destroyer DDG-1001 the USS Robert A. Heinlein.
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Lazarus Long is a fictional character featured in a number of science fiction 
When the character of Lazarus Long is introduced in 
Some details of the next two thousand years of his life are covered in 
Another story picks up a short time after the colonization of a planet called New Beginnings. Lazarus adopts a young girl named Dora Brandon whose parents are killed in a fire. He raises her as her foster uncle, and when she reaches adulthood, prepares to leave the planet. Dora, in the meantime, has realized that he is a member of the Howard families (although she does not quite comprehend what that means), and asks him to give her a child by him before he leaves. Lazarus decides (by his own admission, rather coldly) that his own sense of self-love will not permit him to father, then abandon, a child, so instead he convinces Dora to marry him. A normal human lifetime, by this point, is a brief time for him, and he feels he can sacrifice that much time to make Dora happy. Because Lazarus cannot afford being recognized as a Howard, the two leave the settlement where they have been and pioneer a new settlement. They live alone with their children for a number of years before more settlers come along, and during this time and the years that follow, Lazarus discovers that he is truly in love with Dora—an emotion he has not experienced before. He remains with her for her entire life and is devastated when she dies.
Maureen first appears as a secondary character in the 1973 novel Time Enough For Love. She appears briefly in The Number of the Beast (1980), The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985) and recounts her own life story, and sometimes contradictory versions of events recorded in other Heinlein stories, in 1987's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. 
When Brian Smith divorces Maureen to marry their daughter-in-law, Maureen strikes out on her own, becomes a board member of Harriman Enterprises, the first company to put a man on the moon in Heinlein's central universe (The Man Who Sold the Moon). She also witnesses the introduction of the "rolling roads" (The Roads Must Roll).
Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907–May 8, 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction". He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first writer to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.
Ginny undoubtedly served as a model for many of his intelligent, fiercely independent female characters. In 1953–1954, the Heinlein's voyaged around the world (mostly via ocean liner), which Heinlein described in Tramp Royale, and which also provided background material for science fiction novels set aboard spaceships, such as Podkayne of Mars. She acted as the first reader of his manuscripts, and was reputed to be a better engineer than Heinlein himself.
