The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein's famous Future History, Time Enough For Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.
The story of one of the worlds richest and most powerful men, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, who is on the verge of death and whose only hope is in finding a new body in which to live, and upon surviving the radical surgical procedures involved, finds himself faced with enormous ethical and philosophical dilemas.
Heinlein's 1951 novel offers a ship drifting through the currents of space as a microcosm of society, complete with class struggles, politics (including war between inhabitants of different decks), and love and family. Protagonist Hugh Hoyland fights to understand it all and to bring unity to the crew.
The Howard Families were the product of a genetic experiment, an interbreeding programme which had produced one hundred thousand people with an average life expectancy of a century and a half. Now, at last, their existence was known on earth, and the entire world demanded to share the "secret" of eternal youth. "It is contrary to our customs to permit scientific knowledge to be held as a monopoly for the few" was what the expert said and it wasn't long before members of the Howard Families were the victims of vicious crime.