For Us, the Living Read online

  From Grandmaster Robert A. Heinlein comes a long-lost first novel, written in 1939 and never before published, introducing ideas and themes that would shape his career and define the genre that is synonymous with his name.

  JULY 12,1339

  Perry Nelson is driving along the palisades when suddenly another vehicle swerves into his lane, a tire blows out, and his car careens off the road and over a bluff. The last thing he sees before his head connects with the boulders below is a girl in a green bathing suit, prancing along the shore…

  When he wakes, the girl in green is a woman dressed in furs and the sun-drenched shore has transformed into snowcapped mountains. The woman, Diana, rescues Perry from the bitter cold and takes him inside her home to rest and recuperate.

  Later they debate the cause of the accident, for Diana is unfamiliar with the concept of a tire blowout and Perry cannot comprehend snowfall in mid-July. Then Diana shares with him a vital piece of information: The date is now January 7. The year…2086.

  When his shock subsides, Perry begins an exhaustive study of global evolution over the past 150 years. He learns, among other things, that a United Europe was formed and led by Edward, Duke of Windsor; former New York City mayor LaGuardia served two terms as president of the United States; the military draft was completely reconceived; banks became publicly owned and operated; and in the year 2003, two helicopters destroyed the island of Manhattan in a galvanizing act of war. This education in the ways of the modern world emboldens Perry to assimilate to life in the twenty-first century.

  But education brings with it inescapable truths—the economic and legal systems, the government, and even the dynamic between men and women remain alien to Perry, the customs of the new day continually testing his mental and emotional resolve.

  Yet it is precisely his knowledge of a bygone era that will serve Perry best, as the man from 1939 seems destined to lead his newfound peers even further into the future than they could have imagined.

  A classic example of the future history that Robert Heinlein popularized during his career, For Us, The Living marks both the beginning and the end of an extraordinary arc of political, social, and literary crusading that comprises his legacy. Heinlein could not have known in 1939 how the world would change over the course of one and a half centuries, but we have our own true world history to compare with his brilliant imaginings, rendering For Us, The Living not merely a novel, but a time capsule view into our past, our present, and perhaps our future.

  The novel is presented here with an introduction by acclaimed science fiction writer Spider Robinson and an afterward by Professor Robert James of the Heinlein Society.

  SPIDER ROBINSON was born in New York and holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York. He has won three Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, among many others. Spider lives with his wife, Jeanne, in British Columbia, where they raise and exhibit hopes.

  ROBERT JAMES received his doctorate from UCLA in 1995. A veteran teacher, he lives in Los Angeles, California, with his two children and enough books to keep all three of them happy. He has published a number of articles on Robert Heinlein.

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  Heinlein

  Society

  If you are a fan of Robert Heinlein’s work, join the Heinlein Society at www.heinleinsociety.org

  Also by Robert A. Heinlein

  ROCKET SHIP GALILEO

  BEYOND THIS HORIZON

  SPACE CADET

  RED PLANET

  SIXTH COLUMN

  FARMER IN THE SKY

  THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON

  WALDO AND MAGIC, INC.

  BETWEEN PLANETS

  THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH

  THE PUPPET MASTERS

  THE ROLLING STONES

  ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY

  REVOLT IN 2100M

  STARMAN JONES

  THE STAR BEAST

  TUNNEL IN THE SKY

  DOUBLE STAR

  TIME FOR THE STARS

  CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY

  THE DOOR INTO SUMMER

  HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL

  METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN

  THE MENACE FROM EARTH

  STARSHIP TROOPERS

  THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION

  OF JONATHAN HOAG AND

  OTHER STORIES

  STRANGER

  IN A STRANGE LAND

  GLORY ROAD

  PODKAYNE OF MARS

  FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD

  ORPHANS OF THE SKY

  THE MOON

  IS A HARSH MISTRESS

  THE PAST

  THROUGH TOMORROW

  I WILL FEAR NO EVIL

  TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE

  THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

  EXPANDED UNIVERSE

  FRIDAY

  JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE

  THE CAT WHO WALKS

  THROUGH WALLS

  TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET

  TAKE BACK

  YOUR GOVERNMENT!

  TRAMP ROYALE

  GRUMBLES FROM THE GRAVE

  REQUIEM: NEW COLLECTED

  WORKS BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  AND TRIBUTES TO

  THE GRAND MASTER

  THE FANTASIES

  OF ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

  THE NOTEBOOKS

  OF LAZARUS LONG

  SCRIBNER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 2004 by The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Trust

  Introduction copyright © 2004 by Spider Robinson

  Afterword copyright © 2004 by Robert James, Ph.D.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SCRIBNER and design are trademarks of Macmillan Library Reference USA, Inc., used under license by Simon & Schuster, the publisher of this work.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales:

  1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

  DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBING

  Text set in Janson

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Heinlein, Robert A. (Robert Anson), date.

  For us, the living: a comedy of customs/by Robert A. Heinlein.

  p. cm.

  1. Traffic accident victims—Fiction.

  2. Twenty-first century—Fiction.

  3. Time travel—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3515.E288F67 2004

  813'.54—dc22

  2003065682

  ISBN 0-7432-5998-X

  for Heinlein’s Children

  “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…”

  —Lincoln at Gettysburg

  CONTENTS

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  INTRODUCTION

  FOR US, THE LIVING

  chapter I

  chapter II

  chapter III

  chapter IV

  chapter V

  chapter VI

  chapter VII

  chapter VIII

  chapter IX

  chapter X

  chapter XI

  chapter XII

  chapter XIII

  chapter XIV

  chapter XV

  APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IXr />
  AFTERWORD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  This novel was written by Robert Heinlein between 1938 and 1939 and was never edited while Heinlein was alive. While the novel is presented in its original form, minor editorial changes have been made for clarity and style.

  INTRODUCTION

  RAH DNA

  “Any map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.”

  —OSCAR WILDE

  Most authorities are calling this book Robert A. Heinlein’s first novel. I avoid arguing with authorities—it’s usually simpler to shoot them—but I think it is something far more important than that, myself, and infinitely more interesting.

  But my disagreement is respectful, and I’m not prepared to dispute the point with sidearms, or even ripe fruit. Robert himself called For Us, The Living a novel, repudiating that label only once that I know of, in private correspondence, and the book clearly has at least as much right to be called a novel as, say, H. G. Wells’s When the Sleeper Wakes (Robert’s favorite novel, he once told me) or The Shape of Things to Come.

  But no more right. And those two volumes are from the last stage of Wells’s illustrious career, at the point when, in Theodore Sturgeon’s memorable phrase, the master had “sold his birthright for a pot of message.” They are not the books to give to a reader unfamiliar with H. G. Wells, and this is not the book to give to the hypothetical blind Martian hermit unfamiliar with Robert A. Heinlein’s work. Like the Wells titles, or Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, this book is essentially a series of Utopian lectures, whose fictional component is a lovely but thin and translucent negligee, only half-concealing an urgent desire to seduce. At age thirty-two, Robert was already trying to save the world—and perfectly aware that the world was largely disinclined to be saved.

  If this were really a novel in the same sense as any of Robert’s other long works, one would be forced to call at least its fictional aspect deficient, for many of its characters—quite uncharacteristically—achieve little depth and behave oddly. Even in his most exotic settings, Robert’s characters—even, or perhaps especially, his aliens—were always, always real. And in real life, the standard response to a man who tells you he was born 150 years ago in a different body is not, we may as well admit, simply to nod and begin explaining to him how keen everything is nowadays, as do all the people that Perry Nelson meets in 2086.

  If one supposes, however, that none of these characters was ever intended—or needed—to be any more real than their colleague Mr. A Square of Flatland, then one cannot help but be struck by how surprisingly much humanity, personality, and appeal they do manage to acquire for us, without ever shirking their lecturing duties. There is no question that by book’s end, Perry and his Diana are as real and alive as any other Heinlein couple, if more lightly sketched.

  Nonetheless, I submit that there was never a day in his life when Robert Anson Heinlein the fiction writer would have written a two-page footnote—and certainly not to introduce character development. To me, that detail alone is sufficient proof that he simply was not thinking in story terms when he sat down to compose For Us, The Living.

  That is why I say that it is so immensely much more than just his first novel. It is all of them, dormant.

  It seems clear to me, as he himself admitted, that Robert began this book with the perfectly honorable artistic intention of lying through his teeth: of disguising a series of lectures as fiction, purely in order to bring them to the attention of those who, finding the implication of their own imperfection upsetting, would not knowingly consent to be lectured. He succeeded brilliantly; one may agree or disagree with any of the theories and ideas he puts forth here, but one will most certainly and emphatically do one or the other: I defy anyone to lose interest in the middle of the argument—this despite the extreme complexity and, in some cases, sheer profundity of the ideas discussed. Perry is easily as good at his job as Mr. A Square, and does it at much greater length and (ahem) depth.

  As thinly fictionalized lecture series, the book failed, for much the same reasons Robert himself had failed of election the previous year: in 1939, most of his ideas were—one is quite unsurprised to learn—wildly ahead of their time, radical, and opposed by powerful societal institutions. Nonetheless, though unpublishable then, its completion was an event of almost inexpressible importance in twentieth century English letters.

  Because here, I think, is what happened:

  On some unknown day in the first four months of 1939, Robert Anson Heinlein sat looking gloomily at a carbon of the manuscript that had just been rejected a second time and found himself thinking back over the whole long, painful period of its creation—the endless hours hunched over a typewriter, staring at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood formed on his forehead. And as he did so, two revelations came to him, in this order:

  First, he realized, with surprise and warm pleasure, that the most enjoyable, almost effortless part of the entire experience had not been the world-saving he’d set out to accomplish, not the logical theories, mathematical proofs, or clever arguments of which he was so proud…but the storytelling part, that he had intended only as a come-on for the crowd. All at once, I think, it came to him that the lecturer must remain standing in the square, on a rickety soapbox, and speak at the top of his lungs, and be heckled by boobs…but the storyteller sits in cross-legged comfort in the shade, and his listeners crowd round to hear him whisper, offering beer for his sore throat. And when he is done, they give him money, without him even asking.

  Second, he looked back over the lengthy and detailed imaginary future he had just thrown together as a set decoration, and saw the ideas stacked all round its empty stage…and realized it offered him a canvas so broad that, given enough time, he might contrive to spend all the rest of his working days in the sheer joy of telling stories, creating friends and heroes out of nothing, leaping across galaxies and inside hearts—and still end up putting across every insight and opinion he felt the world needed to hear.

  In that moment, he understood for the first time that he wanted to be a storyteller. That he wanted to be a science fiction writer. No, I’m wrong: he realized that he was a science fiction writer—and accepted his doom. In the terminology of Roger Zelazny’s immortal novel Lord of Light, he took on his Aspect, and raised up his Attribute, and was born a god. In that moment, he ceased being Bob Heinlein, shipwrecked sailor and unemployed engineer, and became RAH, the Dean of Modern Science Fiction—the Man Who Sold The Moon—Lazarus Long, who cannot die. In my dreams, I can almost imagine what it must have felt like.

  When he was good and ready, he announced the news to the rest of us, by sitting down in April and producing, first crack out of the box, one of the most unforgettable pieces of short fiction in the English language, “Lifeline.” Two years later, he was the Pro Writer Guest of Honor at Denvention, the Third World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, and everyone in that banquet hall already knew he owned the field. Five months after he gave his famous Guest of Honor speech on time-binding, “The Discovery of the Future,” Japan blindsided Pearl Harbor. But once that pesky distraction had been dispensed with, Robert turned his attention to the non-science fiction literary world, and conquered that, too, with an ease, elegance, and speed that Hitler and Tojo could have learned from.

  But everything began on that unknown day or night sometime in early 1939, when Robert had his own personal equivalent of the blinding flash in which Nikola Tesla suddenly saw in his head a complete 3-D working model of the first-ever AC electric motor, correctly tuned and broken in, ready to be manufactured without delay for testing.

  The seeds of many of Robert’s major novels are clearly visible, here, needing only room and time to grow. The essential core of his entire career is implicit as DNA code buried in the pages of For Us, The Living: it constitutes an overflowing treasure chest of themes, ideas, theories, concepts, characters, and preoccupations he would draw on
again and again for the next half century to inform his stories. Time travel; multiple identity; transcendence of physical death; personal privacy; personal liberty; personal and political pragmatism; using good technology for personal hedonistic comfort; balancing of privilege and responsibility; the arts, and especially new future artforms like dance in variable gravity; the metric system; rolling roads; then-unconventional loathing of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism; Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics; alternate histories; the nature of sexual love; alternatives to monogamy and conventional marriage; spirituality; the pseudospirituality of the loathsome Nehemiah Cheney—excuse me, Scudder; The Crazy Years; space travel, the Moon, and Diaspora to the stars…it’s all here, nascent, in thumbnail view. So is that splendid, unmistakable voice.

  Robert’s ideas and opinions certainly evolved over time, particularly after he met his last wife, and this book is far from his last word on Utopia. But the differences themselves are fascinating and illuminating to any serious student of his work. It’s clear that, from the moment it finally dawned on him he was a storyteller, all Robert Heinlein really needed to produce that towering body of work that changed the world and put footprints on the Moon was time, typing paper, Virginia Gerstenfeld Heinlein, and a series of publishers’ royalty checks sufficient to keep them both smiling. He may not have consciously known, himself, just where his work would take him, in anything like the kind of detail this book prefigures. I rather hope not. But the work already knew.

  And now, thanks to Robert James—may he be as lucky in love as Lazarus, for as Long!—and thanks to Michael Hunter, Eleanor Wood, and Sarah Knight, we all do.

  We are deeply in their debt.

  This may not (or may—I repeat: I won’t argue) be a novel in the classic sense, but to me it’s something more interesting. It’s a career in a box…a freeze-dried feast…a lifetime, latent in a raindrop…a lifework seed, waiting to be watered by our tears and laughter—RAH’s literary DNA…

  …or half of it, at any rate. It’s worth remembering that this is one of the very few examples we’ll ever see of the writing of one of the century’s great lovers, the man who literally defined the word 1…before he met the love of his life. The difference is palpable; I’m not trying to offer a Zen koan when I say that it is in her very absence in this book that Ginny is perhaps even more present than in any other. One senses him yearning for her, straining to imagine her. The Portuguese word for “the presence of absence,” saudade, is the heart of fado—reading this book was an emotional as well as intellectual experience for me, is all I’m trying to say: I kept hearing Django play a bittersweet guitar as I turned the pages. To read this book is to know both Robert Heinlein and the late Virginia Heinlein much better—and that is something I’ve wanted to do all my adult life.