6 Lazarus Long Quotes

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"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 selective breeding experiment run by the Howard families/Ira Howard Foundation, Lazarus becomes unusually long-lived, living well over two thousand years with the aid of occasional Rejuvenation (aging)/rejuvenation treatments. Heinlein "patterned" Long on science fiction writer Edward E. Smith, mixed with Jack Williamson's fictional Giles Habibula.

His exact (natural) life span is never determined. In his introduction at the beginning of Methuselah's Children, he admits he is 213 years old. Approximately 75 years pass during the course of the novel; but because large amounts of this time are spent traveling interstellar distances at speeds approaching the speed of light, the 75-year measurement is an expression of the time elapsed in his absence rather than time seen 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. He acknowledges 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 by having a character declare, "A mutation, of course—which simply says that we don't know".