|
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 Ira Howard Foundation, Lazarus (birth name Woodrow Wilson Smith) becomes unusually long-lived, living well over two thousand years with the aid of occasional rejuvenation treatments. Heinlein "patterned" Long on science fiction writer Edward E. Smith, mixed with Jack Williamson's fictional Giles Habibula.〔William H. Patterson, ''Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century'', volume 1, Tor Books, 2011, p.273〕 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".〔Justin Foote the 45th in the (in-fiction) Introduction in ''Time Enough for Love'', p. xvi〕 In ''Methuselah's Children'', Long mentions visiting Hugo Pinero, the scientist appearing in Heinlein's first published story "Life-Line", who had invented a machine that precisely measured lifespan, but who refused to reveal the results of the machine in Lazarus's case and gave Lazarus his money back. The promotional copy on the back of ''Time Enough for Love'', the second book featuring Lazarus Long, states that Lazarus was "so in love with time that he became his own ancestor," but this never happens in any of the published books. In the book, Lazarus does travel back in time and is seduced by his mother; but this happens after his own birth. Heinlein did use a similar plot in the short story "—All You Zombies—", in which a character becomes both of his own parents. A rugged individualist with a distrust of authority, Lazarus drifts from world to world, settling down periodically and leaving when the situation becomes too regimented for his taste—often just before an angry mob arrives to capture him. The Lazarus Long set of books involve time travel, parallel dimensions, free love, individualism, and a concept that Heinlein named World as Myth—the theory that universes are created by the act of imagining them, such that even fictional worlds are real. ==Appearances== Novels featuring Lazarus include: *''Methuselah's Children'' (1941) (serialized magazine version) *''Methuselah's Children'' (1958) (rewritten novel version) *''Time Enough for Love'' (1973) *''The Number of the Beast'' (1980) *''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls'' (1985) *''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' (1987) ''The Notebooks of Lazarus Long'', a book containing sayings of the character Lazarus Long largely taken from ''Time Enough for Love'', was published in 1978. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lazarus Long」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|