So why has For Us, The Living never been published... until now?

Shortly before Heinlein's death, as he and his beloved wife, Virginia, were preparing for his final days, their copies of this unpublished manuscript were destroyed.

By now, having read the novel, longtime fans may have noticed that some of Heinlein's earliest stories (and a few of his later ones) were mined from For Us, The Living. In a way, much of this novel has indeed been published, as "If This Goes On—," "The Roads Must Roll," "Coventry," and Beyond This Horizon, the most obvious extractions. Perhaps Heinlein thought there was no point in publishing a novel that had already been stripped and resold ...but his fans know better. His entire Future History, published primarily in The Past Through Tomorrow, uses recurring characters and themes, and the later novels are often a constant blending from previous works. No, there must be another reason.

Robert Heinlein often spoke disparagingly of his writing, rejecting the idea that his work was anything more than just "stories." That posture was a good defense against both the fans who wanted him to be their guru and the few literary critics who chose to write negatively about him. Heinlein showed in The Number of the Beast that he had little love for literary critics—he isolated them in an inescapable room, wherein they might practice their vicious and cannibalistic art on one another until they could escape by actually reading the books they were criticizing. The few books published about Heinlein before his death did not give him much reason for respect, given their persistent factual errors and ax-grinding interpretations. So the Heinleins had few expectations that his work would ever receive acceptance outside of the science fiction readership.

Before her death in January 2003, Virginia "Ginny" Heinlein came to realize that her husband's work is now being treated in contexts wider than science fiction. Scholars are beginning to recognize the connections between Heinlein's writing and that of Voltaire, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Jerome K. Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, and James Branch Cabell, among others. She began to realize that the shroud of privacy surrounding their lives could finally be lifted, in order to help the literary reappraisal now taking hold. She authorized and collaborated on a full biography of Robert Heinlein, which is being written by William Patterson, the editor of the Heinlein Journal. She aided many other researchers, including Philip Owenby and Marie Ormes for their doctoral dissertations and me in my own research into the life of Leslyn Heinlein. Ginny helped found and support The Heinlein Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to furthering her husband's goals, including education, blood drives, space exploration, and eventually, publishing a scholarly edition of the Heinlein canon (you can join this noble cause at www.heinleinsociety.org).

In short, Ginny decided her husband's work and life should be treated openly and fully.

However, Ginny died before she knew that a single copy of For Us, The Living had survived. On Thanksgiving Day, 2002, weakened by a difficult recovery from pneumonia earlier that year, she broke her hip. She seemed to be recovering from her surgery and was to be released the week that I received a copy of For Us, The Living in the mail. I was looking forward to discussing my discovery with her when she suddenly passed away in January 2003.

Major writers often leave behind unpublished works. Heinlein himself had two unpublished nonfiction books released posthumously: How to Be a Politician (published as Take Back Your Government!) and Tramp Royale. Hemingway has had no fewer than four major books published after his death. Heinlein's favorite writer, Mark Twain, had several books published after his death, including the masterpiece The Mysterious Stranger. Literary scholars treat these works in their proper context, as pieces of the larger puzzle that comprise the writer's entire output.

As the first step in the fifty-year writing career of Robert Heinlein, For Us, The Living is like looking at Neil Armstrong's first footprint on the moon—a footprint Robert Heinlein played no small part in making possible, with his fiction glorifying space travel, and his work on Destination Moon.

And that is how I believe Ginny would have come to see it: as the beginning, deserving of preservation.

So how did this manuscript survive?

Shortly before his death, Robert Heinlein decided he wanted his biography to be written. Dr. Leon Stover, an expert on H. G. Wells, had written a book on Heinlein that, by and large, Heinlein liked. After his death, Ginny informed Dr. Stover that he was to be the authorized biographer. Dr. Stover immediately began contacting Heinlein's surviving friends with the estate's full approval. One of those friends was the highly decorated Admiral Caleb Laning, Heinlein's best friend at the Naval Academy and his coauthor on two post-World War II nonfiction essays. Cal Laning had kept fifty years' of correspondence with Heinlein intact, and he handed this treasure trove over to Dr. Stover for use in the authorized biography.

But Dr. Stover and Ginny Heinlein soon had a falling out, and she revoked his permission to write the biography.

For the next decade, nothing further happened.

Through my research and contacts with those who knew Leslyn Heinlein, I found myself in possession of a partial manuscript of Dr. Stover's unpublished biography. In the few pages I had, Dr. Stover mentioned his possession of the manuscript of For Us,The Living, apparently given to him by Cal Laning.

Attempts to contact Dr. Stover failed, but I had the name of his student assistant, Michael Hunter. Hunter was quite surprised that I had found him, but forthright in discussing his work with Dr. Stover. When Hunter was a senior, Dr. Stover had asked him to read the novel, make a synopsis for use in the biography, and use it in a student project connecting Heinlein's first novel to both H. G. Wells and to Heinlein's later writings. Hunter never did anything with his copy of the manuscript, under the assumption that Dr. Stover's biography would soon be published and Heinlein's first novel revealed to the world. Life went on, and he never heard from Dr. Stover again.

Hunter simply forgot he had a copy of For Us, The Living.

At my request, he went digging through his garage and found it, buried in boxes from his college years. He willingly sent me a copy.

After Ginny's unexpected death, I passed the manuscript on to the estate, which decided the novel was well worth publishing.

And now, Robert Heinlein's first and final achievement is in your hands.

"You must keep it on the market until sold." A clean sweep at last.

Robert James, Ph.D. Culver City, California July 2003

ROBERT ANSON HEINLEIN

July 7 , 1907-May 8, 1988

Robert Heinlein was born in Butler, Missouri, the third of seven children. He spent the majority of his youth in Kansas City, taking jobs at a young age to supplement his family's income. It was apparent early on that Heinlein was a child prodigy of the sort that sometimes appears in his fiction. He learned chess at the age of four and took an early and abiding interest in astronomy, reading voraciously on the subject and giving lectures as a young student. His 1924 high school yearbook photo caption read, "He thinks in terms of the Fifth dimension, never stopping at the Fourth."