In Robert A. Heinlein’s “Time Enough for Love,” the immortal protagonist is Lazarus Long.
Lazarus Long is the adopted name of Woodrow Wilson Smith, a central figure in Heinlein’s future-history fiction. In the novel, he is more than two thousand years old, having benefited from rejuvenation technology and his connection to the Howard Families, a selective-breeding program intended to extend human life.
The book opens with Lazarus exhausted by existence and ready to die. Ira Weatheral, a descendant and leader of the Howard Families, arranges for him to be rejuvenated and persuades him to remain alive by listening to stories from his extraordinary past. Those stories become a series of linked episodes involving exploration, settlement, family, time travel, and the recurring Heinlein themes of individual freedom and self-reliance.
Time Enough for Love was published in 1973 and is one of several novels featuring Lazarus. He also appears in “Methuselah’s Children,” “The Number of the Beast,” and “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.” Valentine Michael Smith belongs to “Stranger in a Strange Land,” while Mike and Jubal Harshaw are characters from that same novel.