For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs

by Robert A. Heinlein

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074325998X
• ISBN13: 9780743259989
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 263 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

One of my all time favorite time traveling fictions!

I read and reread this story. Of a future still ahead of us but written in 1939. Many things to like in that future! Sadly, most visions of the future are very bleak. So this one is phenomenal. I am buying more copies to share with friends and grandchildren.

A Heinlein Outline

I miss Robert Anson Heinlein. The first science fiction book I ever read was "Time for the Stars." From that point forward I was hooked on science fiction and my favorite author became and remains Robert A. Heinlein. I purchased this book shortly after it came out, with more than a little trepidation. For better or worse, I agree with the majority of the reviews. This book is not a book as such. It is more an outline of grander stories that required much more development. In this book you can see many of the seminal ideas that Heinlein used in his later books. In a few cases this story could easily have served as an introduction or part of a collection of Heinlein's works, especially for his future history series. Thus, for Heinlein fans, and perhaps, more appropriately, to use the original source of the term "fan," Heinlein fanatics, this book is a treasure of thoughts and concepts. From a writing viewpoint the book is quite dated, and well away from the polish that Heinlein would apply to his later books. The lead character, Perry Nelson, is gawky and uncomfortable, and it is difficult for us to relate to him. Perry lived too far in our past, and even too far in Heinlein's past. Technology has provided us with a perspective that makes this book a story of another era. And yet, it has charm for those of us who grew up with Heinlein and bought every new book as it was published. Heinlein was always an interesting writer, even if you disagreed with his philosophy or with his predictions. Heinlein has said himself that the views of his characters are not always his views, which leads me to believe that often his lead characters were philosophical foils, promulgating an idea just to see how it would play out. Though the results were sometimes uneven, and many stories come across as preachy, once upon a time many of the stories he told could only be told and sold as a science fiction story. Heinlein was a great fan of the future. He believed in traveling to the moon and beyond. He believed that ultimately mankind will raise itself out of the muck to create something greater and grander. He frequently pointed out and predicted that we have and would stumble along the way, but he was perpetually optimistic that we have a great and glorious future, if we will only reach out and touch it. This book is the fuse that started it all; a beginning, and it contains no ends. For the ends you have to read the rest of his books. For those of you who do not know Heinlein, I beg you not to buy this book. You will not understand it, you will not like it. You will wonder why you didn't spend your money on something more valuable, like mulch for your garden. If you loved Heinlein's books, and you have read all or most of those 40+ books, then I recommend this book to you. You will grok it in fullness. I miss Robert Anson Heinlein.

Heinlein in a nut shell

For somenone who though he had read everything there was to read from R. A. Heinlein, this book was certainly a surprise. Reading it helped me put Heinlein's work in perspective: I liked his books because they are utopias, using fiction to elaborate on how things could or should be. The fact that Heilein's primary intention was lecturing everybody on his views of the world is obvious in this book- the thinness of the plot is made very clear in the excelent Preface. This book was written 30 years before I was born but I found myself in agreement with the basic life philosophy exposed in it. Can I separate ideology from literature? Perhaps. But what for?

A Heinlein Outline

I miss Robert Anson Heinlein. The first science fiction book I ever read was "Time for the Stars." From that point forward I was hooked on science fiction and my favorite author became and remains Robert A. Heinlein. I purchased this book shortly after it came out, with more than a little trepidation. For better or worse, I agree with the majority of the reviews.This book is not a book as such. It is more an outline of grander stories that required much more development. In this book you can see many of the seminal ideas that Heinlein used in many of his later books. In a few cases this story could easily have served as an introduction or part of the collection of Heinlein's works, especially for his future history series. Thus, for Heinlein fans, and perhaps, more appropriately, to use the original source of the term "fan," Heinlein fanatics, this book is a treasure of thoughts and concepts.From a writing viewpoint the book is quite dated, and well away from the polish that Heinlein would apply to his later books. The lead character, Perry Nelson, is gawky and uncomfortable, and it is difficult for us to relate to him. Perry lived too far in our past, and even too far in Heinlein's past. Technology has provided us with a perspective that makes this book a story of another era. And yet, it has charm for those of us who grew up with Heinlein and bought every new book as it was published.Heinlein was always an interesting writer, even if you disagreed with his philosophy or with his predictions. Heinlein has said himself that the views of his characters are not always his views, which leads me to believe that often his lead characters were philosophical foils, promulgating an idea just to see how it would play out. Though the results were sometimes uneven, and many stories come across as preachy, once upon a time many of the stories he told could only be told and sold as a science fiction story.Heinlein was a great fan of the future. He believed in traveling to the moon and beyond. He believed that ultimately mankind will raise itself out of the muck to create something greater and grander. He frequently pointed out and predicted that we have and would stumble along the way, but he was perpetually optimistic that we have a great and glorious future, if we will only reach out and touch it. This book is the fuse that started it all; a beginning, and it contains no ends. For the ends you have to read the rest of his books.For those of you who do not know Heinlein, I beg you not to buy this book. You will not understand it, you will not like it. You will wonder why you didn't spend your money on something more valuable, like mulch for your garden. If you loved Heinlein's books, and you have read all or most of those 40+ books, then I recommend this book to you. You will grok it in fullness. I miss Robert Anson Heinlein.

Heinlein Brings up Many Original Ideas

Time-traveling books have always been a fascination of mine. In Heinein's tale, the lead character, Perry Nelson, leaves his present FDR-period of 1939 for 2086. It is always wise to consider that one's vision of the future is plagued by some of the events of the time period. That is, even a book about the future is tied intrinsically to the period in which it was written. I'm sure Mr. Nelson could never have imagined the internet, for instance, and it is not brought up. However, Mr. Heinen does bring up a number of interesting points that appear to have rung true over time: he believes that the state should not involve itself at all with "private" matters such as sexual relations or even the definition of marriage. (Twenty years after he wrote this book, in the 1960s, a generation actually made sure his message became true). Heinen also explores the idea that people will correct the difficult spelling used in many English words. We'll write words exactly as we hear them. It's interesting that Mr. Heinlein thinks it would take so long to bring man to outerspace -- roughly 151 years into his future. It's quite surprising that he did not think it may have happened sooner. It is true as many have said that there is not a lot of plot to this book, and there isn't. However, it offers a rare glimpse into the mind of someone writing in that time period and conjures up some radical ideas.Michael Gordon

For Heinlein's Children

That's what the book's dedication says, and it's accurate. You won't agree with my five-star rating unless you're in the publisher's target audience, so be warned: my rating is _not_ based on 'literary quality' and your mileage will _definitely_ vary. Strictly, I have to count myself one of those 'Children'. I was born in 1963, learned to read very young, and cut my literary-intellectual teeth on _Stranger_ and _Mistress_; moreover, this fact is so significant in my personal development that it's something you _must_ know if you want to grok the way my mind works even today, some forty years later. (Spider Robinson remarks somewhere that RAH was the one who took his 'literary virginity'. Same here.) So whatever issues I may happen to have with the Old Man -- and believe me, I do have some -- I'm most definitely one of the readers at whom this book is aimed. And I highly recommend it to any of Heinlein's _other_ Children out there. To the rest of you, it will be at most of historical interest, so wait for the paperback. If you're reading this page, you already know what the book is: it's Heinlein's first novel-length writing (though Robinson's introduction suggests that it may not be a 'novel' proper). You've probably already read the comparisons with Edward Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ and H.G. Wells's _When the Sleeper Wakes_. Here I'll simply confirm that those comparisons are apt; Heinlein's unpublished 1939 work, a look at the 'past' from an imagined future, is essentially a sociopolitical tract wrapped up in a bit of story to make the medicine go down a little more easily. The protagonist, Perry Nelson (whose double-admiral name is presumably a two-gun salute to a couple of Heinlein's naval forebears, though neither the MS nor the commentary explicitly makes this connection), is basically a cardboard figure, and so is his companion-of-the-future Diana. _As_ a tract, it's pretty interesting. As a story, it's not very, and although there are occasional hints of the writer Heinlein was to become, you wouldn't notice them if you weren't familiar with his later work. What's _really_ interesting is something that will appeal only to those 'Children' of his. I've thought through my entire shelf of Heinlein novels and I can't think of a _single one_ that doesn't have _some_ roots in the ideas set forth in this manuscript. Why, there are a few elements here that don't resurface until _Stranger_. Most of us have long suspected (hell, known) that the Old Man was deliberately lecturing us in those books of his, no matter how many times he swore up and down that his sole purpose was to entertain. (And no matter how many times his most zealous defenders insisted we couldn't infer anything about Heinlein's own opinions from those of his characters.) But until this MS was published, we didn't have much direct evidence that Heinlein himself accepted and wanted to propagate the ideas set forth by, say, Col. Baslim, Col. DuBois, Jubal Harshaw, Professor