For Us, The Living, by Robert A. Heinlein 348
| For Us, The LIving | |
| author | Robert A. Heinlein |
| pages | 288 pages |
| publisher | Scribner |
| rating | 3 |
| reviewer | Seth Bokelman |
| ISBN | 074325998X |
| summary | Great piece for die-hard Heinlein fans, not for newbies. |
The book starts with an excellent foreword from Spider Robinson, a friend of Heinlein's as well as a fan, and an excellent Sci-Fi writer in his own right. Spider lays it all out for you in the foreword: this book isn't strong on stories, it's strong on ideas. People who found Heinlein's later works too preachy should steer clear, as this book is probably his preachiest. Robinson speculates that Heinlein really wanted to convey his radical ideas, having just lost a political race, and spent too much of the book standing on the proverbial soapbox, and not enough telling a good story. He says that Heinlein learned from this, and went on to become a master storyteller, learning that people are much more likely to sit still for the lecture if it's embedded in a gripping story.
And that leads me to exactly what's wrong with For Us, The Living. There's very little story in it. There is a plot, and it goes like this. Perry, our hero, (n reality a thinly veiled version of Heinlein himself), is involved in a car accident in 1939, and wakes up in the year 2086 in the body of someone who looks very much like himself, but the original inhabitant of the body chose to end his life (shades of Stranger in a Strange Land here). Our Hero was discovered in the snowy Nevada mountains by a woman named Diana, who is a professional dancer and lives in the mountains. She takes him back to her place to recover, and they're lounging around her house naked by the second page of the book.
From then on, the rest of the book is primarily spent following our hero as he is lectured (literally at times) on the ways of the future, covering topics such as polygamy/polyamory, nudism, the stupidity of jealousy, economics, religion, and the treatment of criminals as patients who need to be cured, rather than miscreants who need to be punished. Many of the ideas that turn up later in Heinlein's books, especially his later books, appear here for the first time. The book is very much, as Spider calls it in the foreword, Heinlein's literary DNA. This is the primordial ooze from which the later books, (Time Enough For Love, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and dozens more) are formed.
I found Heinlein's predictions of the future very interesting. Since the book was written in 1938-1939, the world hadn't witnessed World War II yet, though Heinlein predicts it. In his version, the U.S. stays out of the War, and Europe eventually self-destructs. Heinlein gets quite a bit of the future right, and quite a bit of it wrong. For instance, in 2086, they still haven't landed a man on the moon, though they're working on it. And, while in the future everyone has terminals (seen in later Heinlein novels) from which they can access live video and audio, information is still printed on paper and transported physically via pneumatic (and magnetic) tubes. But, given that it was written before the atomic age, those things are forgiven, and they're part of what makes the book interesting to read.
It's very obvious why this book wasn't published in 1939 -- it's not very good. Also, much of the subject matter is so controversial and sexual to this day that no major publisher would have dared print it then. The book is a bit rough, and a bit "off" in places. For instance, Heinlein uses a two-page footnote(!) to give us Diana's life story, rather than weave it into the story or the dialogue, something he'd never do in his later work, and the story only starts to get compelling in the last 50 pages or so, once the bulk of the lectures are past us.
So do I recommend this book? Yes and no. If you're a Heinlein fan, and you've read most, if not all, of his other work, then you'll love this book, and you should get a copy right now. It's a great snapshot of Heinlein's writing while he was still struggling to define it himself. If you've never read a Heinlein book, don't start here, pick up Starship Troopers, or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. If you've read a few Heinlein books, read a few more before you try this one, especially Time Enough For Love, and his later works. I've read everything he ever published, and was sad when I finished off The Menace From Earth, as I'd run out of Heinlein to read. This book provided me with one more thrill, and it made me appreciate how strongly Heinlein held his convictions, and how far he came as a writer, from this, his first attempt.
Now that Bob & Ginny Heinlein have passed on, however, this is almost certainly the last significant piece of Heinlein's writing left unpublished, and for us, the living, it's fun to have something new from the Grand Master to curl up with on a cold winter night.
You can purchase For Us, The Living from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
He is one SF author I reallly miss. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please tell me you're trolling.
Taking the hook: Robert Heinlein was a science fiction writer who wrote a large number of books, most famously Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land. He was a libertarian who infused his books with political and social theory. His "Future History" stories 1939-1950 ("If This Goes On", "Methuselah's Children," "The Man Who Sold The Moon," etc.) trace the development of American and world culture from the aftermath of the "Crazy Years" (basically the sixties on steroids) through the early interplanetary age to a short-lived totalitarian theocracy and into a an age of world government, near-immortality, and interstellar flight.
The other famous novels (not really in the Future History series) are The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Job.
Heinlein had a good reputation as a guy who tried to help out struggling SF writers (one example: PKD) in trouble.
His book is on the front page of slashdot because SF is one of the core elements of what slashdot considers to be nerdism.
By the way, on social credit: one major proponent of social credit was the poet Ezra Pound, who ended up following that line of thought unfortunately into support for the Mussolini regime, treasonous radio broadcasts during WWII, and a long stay in St. Elizabeth's mental hospital outside DC to avoid a conviction on treason charges. Not the direction Heinlein went in, obviously, but an interesting comparandum.
Grok (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who? (Score:4, Interesting)
grok:
1. To understand, usually in a global sense. Connotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge.
2. Used of programs, may connote merely sufficient understanding. "Almost all C compilers grok the "void" type these days."
Raging paranoia necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, we're already at the stage where Douglas Adams had an unfinished book recovered from his hard drive and published.
If you want to be safe, use a word processor on a computer that never connects to a network (could recover data on the network), restrict your copies to removable disk to those you would be happy being published or are able to destroy, and at some stage physically destroy the hard drive beyond any possible recovery.
In fact, do the same to *any* part of the computer that might (even temporarily) have held your data, including the monitor.
Paranoid? Well, I'm trying to second-guess information recovery in 20-30 years time, and I defy anyone to say that this will never happen.
Of course, the radiation from your monitor probably induced microscopic interference in the TV signal your VCR is recording nearby, and with advanced signal-processing and pattern-recognition, your great lost tome is recovered from an episode of Dawson's Creek you taped back in 2003.
Yuk.
Slightly off topic.... (Score:1, Interesting)
He's the one scifi author I have yet to read.
"We, the Living?" (Score:3, Interesting)
And we all know that Heinlien was notorious as a raving libertarian looney. Hell, he's practically slashdot's patron saint.
Re:Slightly off topic.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Then go back aways to his earlier books: "Revolt in 2100," "Waldo & Magic, Inc.," and "The Man Who Sold the Moon," and for an introduction to his long-lived repeat protagonist Lazarus Long read "Methuselah's Children." Then check out his juvenile works, "Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel," "The Star Beast," and "Podkayne of Mars," are all good, simple fun from the days of wide-eyed adventure SF.
Then, stop at anything past "Glory Road" (1963) with only two exceptions -- the aforementioned "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and "Job: A Comedy of Justice," which is very different from most of his works. Starting with "Farnham's Freehold," the quality of Heinlein's writing starts to decline, in my opinion. Preachiness and an obsession with polyamory starts to just take over. Many of Heinlein's later books feature the character Lazarus Long, who is an interesting guy trapped in a terrible plot for all of the books after his first.
Avoid the following overhyped Heinlein books: "Stranger in a Strange Land," "Time Enough For Love," and "Friday." (The first two have some redeeming merits, but "Friday" is just dull.) Also avoid the following deservedly not overhyped Heinlein books: "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls" and "Number of the Beast." Both have very weak plots, and the latter is a nigh-impenetrable mishmash of all his previous books timelines.
Do not let the last part of Heinlein's career deter you from reading the earlier parts. He is definitively part of the Golden Age of SF for a reason.
The Menace from Earth (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I don't wanna see Jeff in a trenchcoat and Holly in black PVC. I wanna see Ariel falling in bullet time with Holly chasing her. And I want the soundtrack to be QUIET while they are doing it.
stuff to avoid. (Score:3, Interesting)
Stuff I recommend you avoid unless you find out you really like Hienlein is "The Cat who walks through walls" "Time enough for Love" and defintely "I will fear no Evil". Frankly I think all his Lazurus Long books except 'Moon' are trash.
"A Door into Summer" is a favourite of mine, and Its not one of the ones people talk about much. I wouldn't say 'Friday' is dull, its just mostly fluff.
Check out this site www.iblist.com for good reveiws of his work.
Re:At least he did not start his own religion!!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thanks, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is the prototypical Heinlein book. It starts with a basic premise about something that's different from reality, and explores the consequences of it.
Not as juvenile as the movie, this book will challenge a young adult and their beliefs about citizenship, the military, and life. I think it had a profound influence on my decision to join the Marine Corps and to stick it out.
The word "grok". 'Nuff said. (This was my first Heinlein book)
This book is premised on an inventor who creates the first domestic robot, something like a Roomba but a little smarter. The times we're living in now remind me of this book.
It was the work in progress when he died, and it's not what his other work was. It did give me the line, "Did the universe just shift again?"
Re:Short stories, too! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Grand Master? (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed.
I write, too, and I find that, the more I write, the less I can take Heinlein's later work for that very reason. His "Golden Age" was very much in line with the genre's. For my money, you won't find a tighter, better yarn than Double Star.
But to see him, in later years, unable to break away...it's sad.
In general, I don't think I agree with you about the geneology of the template (Stevenson and Verne's works were much more travelogue-ish, in my opinion), but I think I get where you're coming from, and I dig it.
I'm still at a loss to explain Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice. My favorite novel -- and one of his last -- that breaks much of his schtick. Of course, everyone is naked, they all want to have sex with Heinle -- er, Alex -- and the ending is, literally, deus ex machina...eh, maybe it's the same package in different wrapping, too.
Thanks for the thought to chew on. Good luck with your writing: I hope you see it published.
Wrong lesson (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting to note how the quality of Heinlein's work declined starting in the late 60s. First his plots started to get a little disorganized, then a lot disorganized, until finally most of his books were little more than meandering rants. He was still basically a good writer, but he slipped into a lot of bad habits. I think he always basically an undisciplined writer, but when he was a struggling pulp writer, he had to accept correction from his editors. Once he became The Grand Old Man, he could escape that, and the result was often horrendous. Like early editions of Time Enough for Love, which weren't even checked for proper punctuation!
The Annapolis speech also mentions the only class he considered to have taught him anything about writing. It wasn't an English or Lit class. It was a command in giving orders, the motto of which was "Any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood." Student of the origins of Murphy's Law take note!
I find your lack of faith disturbing... (Score:3, Interesting)
As the anonymous poster said, it is regulation that permits a monopoly to be created, not the absense of regulation.
Let's look at the ever popular hypothetical "widget" market:
Is WidgetCo now a monopoly? I say no.
If, in the absence of competition, WidgetCo begins raising it's prices, or begins building inferior quality widgets, in an unregulated market, someone can start a new company, UltraWidge.
If UltraWidge can offer the same quality widgets at a lower price, they will be successful, perhaps so much so that WidgeCo will have to alter their pricing.
If UltraWidge can offer a higher quality widget at the same price as those offerred by WidgeCo, then again, they will be successful, perhaps so much so that WidgeCo will have to improve the quality of their own widgets.
Let's add some regulation:
Now, when WidgeCo starts raising the prices on it's widgets, or letting the quality of it's widgets slip, what happens?
Nothing. You and I, the consumers, get the shaft.
No new start-up widgetmaker will emerge, because the cost of building a certified widget manufacturing plant is too expensive (Not expensive for WidgeCo, which is a well established company, with enormous capital reserves), and the cost of the mandatory insurance exceeds the means of most humble entrapeneurs.
No new start-up widgetmaker will emerge because the United States is a closed market. Only WidgeCo is authorized to manufacture and sell widgets to the good people of the United States.
There is no such thing as a naturally occuring monopoly (Not a true monopoly). In a free market, the sole supplier of a good or service must always be concerned that a new competitor will emerge and put them out of business.
When they take advantage of their market position, by raising prices, or cutting corners on quality, consumers seek alternatives, and some other capitalist will see this weakness, and exploit it by entering into that market.
Competition drives prices down, and drive quality up. In a free market, there will always be competition, or at a minimum, the threat of competition.
Now, invariably, on Slashdot, whenever someone talks about free markets and/or monopoly, Bill Gates and Microsoft rears their ugly heads.
Contrary to what many belive, Microsoft is not a monopoly. There are alternatives to Microsoft's operating systems. There are alternatives to Microsoft's suite of business applications. There are alternatives to every product in Microsoft's catalog.
What Microsoft has become is not a monopoly... It has become a "de facto standard," and that's a completely different animal.
Re:Heinlein Published Just One Novel (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, considering Starship Troopers, you really, really need a better pair of reading glasses, since you seem to have confused it with some other work. The "problem" in Starship Troopers is political. How does a society decide who is sufficiently responsible to particpate in the political process. The answer Heinlein offered was not one he necessarily advocated. Heinlein appears to say that only those willing to serve society in some capacity, e.g. soldier, mailman, government scientist, experiment-test subject should be allowed to vote. Corporate big-wigs like Rico's father sneer at wasting time in politics and prefer to ignore the process until the bombs start falling.
When I say "appears" that is precisely the slight of hand Heinlein uses. He is not exposing you to his own opinion. During one of the courses Rico has to take, the question is raised as to how the characters in the story know this "present" state is politically right. The answer Heinlein's instructor advances is that they don't know it's right, just that it works well enough for society to function. The implication is that societies work as long as a majority of its citizens are satisfied with the status quo, and if the individual members find it intolerable then they need to work change it. It is actually a fair insight into how any society works and why it's members are often reluctant to change. About the only unequivocal assertion Heinlein makes in the book is that war is always founded in economics, even putative religious wars. Job or Stranger may have been closer to Heinlein's ideals than Starship Troopers was.
The sciences that Heinlein really tackles in his fiction are anthropology and sociology and [grimace] political "science." A good and explicit example of this is his novel "Citizen of the Galaxy," which has been trivialized by critics fairly often. Heinlein uses technological fiction as a backbone to expose the central character to different societies and values. Among other things one of the central character's discoveries is that you shouldn't mistake the fact that any society can contain worthwhile people with the idea that the society itself is worthwhile. This is both implicit and explicitly dealt with in the book through the experience and characters the central character is exposed to.
Probably one of his most chilling and creepily accurate predictions is in the novel Between Planets. If you doubt that he predicted someting like this, reread it and then consider the course the present administration is taking regarding Homeland "Security" and particularly the so-called Patriot Act. The weakening of civil and individual rights is there. The excuse of security is there. The implication that the "need" for stronger security may be due to the arrogance and intolerance of the "Federal" government is lurking there as well. Even the suggestion that far from learning from our own history, we are engaged in repeating it is there. These ideas also lurk in Stranger in a Strange Land as well.
Heinlein is writer on a par with Kipling. Both have been accused of an enormous amount of political incorrectness. Yet their work contradicts every attempt at some simple minded generalization about them, and even contains examples where they examine issues and even show clear sympathy for views and ideas their critics accuse t