Lazarus Long

Lazarus Long is a fictional character featured in a number of science fiction novels by Robert A. Heinlein. Born in 1912 in the third generation of a long-life selective breeding experiment run by the Howard Families trust, Lazarus (whose "real" name is Woodrow Wilson Smith, he changed it later into Lazarus Long, and into many others when needed) turns out to be unusually long-lived indeed, living well over two thousand years with the aid of occasional rejuvenation treatments.

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, voluntary incest, and a concept that Heinlein named pantheistic solipsism - the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them so that somewhere Oz is real.

Opinion is divided among science fiction fans as to whether these late Heinlein novels are brilliant, creative and original, or simply the wish-fulfillment of a man in his second childhood.

Novels featuring Lazarus include:

• Methuselah's Children (1941)
• Time Enough for Love (1973)
• The Number of the Beast (1980)
• The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
• To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)