Released in 1973, Time Enough for Love is a massive work by SF grandmaster Robert Heinlein in which he combined two fairly different goals: a novel that covered much of the temporal territory of his Future History series and that also served as a forum to make clear his politics and morality. Especially the latter, which mainly says that all politics is about power over others, all religion is based on fear of the Great Void or, again, power over others, and that any and all sexuality is good as long as the interpersonal aspects are based on friendship and love (as opposed to, yes, power over others).
Though not as highly regarded or widely read as his 1960 modern messiah masterpiece Stranger in a Strange Land, this novel would be my preference between the two. The protagonist is Lazarus Long (I admit their might be some unavoidable bias due to the name), a man over 2300 years old as the story begins, and the book basically covers some biographical stories that allow Heinlein to indulge his sweet tooth in some transplanted Westerns and rebellions against authority. The last part of Time is a novella in which Heinlein apparently tries to relive his childhood with his mother as lover and inserts a time travel mechanism into his fictional multiverse. The connective tissue is how Long’s compadres renew his desire to live.
Heinlein continued exploring this basic character set in most of his books written subsequent to Love: the sequels include The Number of the Beast, The Cat who Walks through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset. M.E. Cowan put together a very complete Heinlein Concordance, hosted by the Heinlein Society, including an entry for TEfL.
surely recommended
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