Thread: SF Tearjerkers
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Old 11-22-2010, 11:36 PM   #6
BenG
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Quote:
Originally Posted by snipenekkid View Post
For the life of me I cannot find a print edition of it but I swear that Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love" was, at one time, in print in a Volume 1 and Volume 2 because I owned them, or at least that is the way I remember it. My addled brain remembers reading Vol. 2 prior to Vol. 1 and that Vol 1 was by far my favorite of the two and had an ending that was just so painful yet a very wonderful observation about life and what a pointless thing this existence of ours may or may not be.

But all I can find reference to is a single title which would be about the right number of pages if the two volumes were combined. But given that I also have it in my memory that Vol. 2 was printed prior to Vol. 1, sort of an odd thing but if I am not misremembering, it could have just been the editions I owned were different eras is all.

Anyway, I don't know the order of the current volume. Meaning if what I remember as Volume 1 is in the book as the first part or the 2nd part, I feel it would be a travesty for that to be true as the reading order of Vol. 2 followed by Vol 1 was something I felt was perfect. Plus Vol. 2 did not have that emotionally complex ending.

No matter, as a whole, the stories, the meat of the whole Lazarus Long story line (Heinlein's Future History) do stretch limits of various subjects which are certainly not for those with strong moral beliefs and taboos. So, I recommend it, at least in part, as a book that evokes quite a strong and complex set of emotions.
I read 'Time Enough For Love" when it first came out in the 70s. It was published as one large book at that time, though Lazarus Long was a character in the earlier "Methuselah's Children" and Heinlein followed it up with 'The Notebooks of Lazarus Long." It was one of my favorite books in high school.

Connie Willis' "The Doomsday Book" is another tearjerker and not just a couple of sniffles. The book is devastating. It's about an Oxford historian sent back in time to medieval England. She is sent to the wrong time and arrives in the middle of the Black Death.
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