For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs
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For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs is a 1939 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, published for the first time on November 28, 2003. Heinlein admirer and science fiction author Spider Robinson entitled his introductory essay "RAH DNA", referring to Robert Anson Heinlein's initials and DNA; as he believes this first, unpublished novel formed the DNA of Heinlein's philosophy.
For Us, the Living contains an afterword by Robert James, Ph.D., Heinlein Society member and Heinlein scholar.
In it, Perry Nelson, a normal 1939 engineer, is driving his automobile when he has a blowout, skids over a cliff, and wakes up after the car accident in the year 2086. Though he apparently was killed in the summer he is saved from the freezing cold by a fur-clad woman named Diana (after the Roman goddess).
Spider Robinson said that this book is something in between a novel and an essay. The character Diana's background is clarified in a footnote from the author. The future society has a Social Credit -- something which may come as a surprise to those who were not acquainted with his early leftist leanings.
The title comes from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and appears to have no relation to Ayn Rand's similarly titled We The Living (published in 1936). Earnings from the novel will be going to the advancement of human exploration of space.
For Us, the Living contains eerie foreshadowings of Heinlein's later writings. There is even a Door Into Summer.
Editions
- January 2004, Scribner Book Company, ISBN 5551285855
- January 2004, Scribner Book Company, ISBN 5551285863
- January 6, 2004, Scribner, hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN 074325998X
- December 1, 2004, Pocket, paperback, 352 pages, ISBN 0743491548
External links
- Heinlein For Us, the Living (http://www.heinleinsociety.org/news/newsFUTL.html)