SOJALS rating:

Superb (5/5)

I first read this in 1974 and most recently in January 2001

Woodrow Wilson Smith, the oldest man in the universe, is still alive, but old and bored and trying to die. Obviously his family and friends don't want this to happen (and neither do we) so they rejuvenate him and do their sly best to get him interested once again in life. This works and after numerous interludes, the book gets going just after half way through. The last hundred pages just rock, relatively-speaking

What's it got? Space and time travel, intimations of immortality, Heinlein's normal Libertarianism, loose women and lots of sex, rage against war, heroic behaviour. Great character-forming stuff - my parents would have hated it.

This was one of my top ten in the '70s. It's something of a sequel of Methusulah's Children, so I bought it without hesitation and it blew me away. It's got liberating ideas without the hypocrisy that disturbed me in "I Will Fear No Evil" and a good argument against suicide - everything I need for a Sunday afternoon. Plus, in this book unlike some of Heinlein's later works, stuff happens.

Those last few pages, especially the newspaper cutting, almost bought tears to my eyes.