For us, the living: a comedy of customs

✍ Scribed by Robert A. Heinlein

• Publisher: Pocket;Scribner
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 156 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0743491548

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Heinlein fans can rejoice-the SF master's lost first novel, composed between 1938 and 1939, has been found! In 1939, Perry Nelson suffers a bad car accident, but when he wakes up, it's 2086. A beautiful girl, Diana, takes the confused man under her wing, and naturally, they fall in love, but when Diana's ex shows up and flirts with her, Perry hauls off and hits him. Next thing Perry knows, he's being deprogrammed to get rid of his irrational sexual possession and jealousy. As Perry learns about the new world around him, he receives lectures about economic systems, aircars, rockets, U.S. history, religion and more-and these, of course, are the point of the story. Heinlein creates a utopian world of unparalleled prosperity and personal freedom and sketches out, through Perry's teachers, exactly why it all works. Since Heinlein mined ideas from this novel for all his other works, much is familiar, from the frankly free sexual mores to the active role of women to the rolling roads. Although this book can't stand alone on its own merits as a novel, it's a harbinger of later themes, best read critically and in conjunction with Heinlein's more mature fiction.
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From Booklist

Heinlein's later novels were often accused of sermonizing rather than storytelling. His previously unpublished first novel shows that he started out preaching, too. It's a utopia, however; hence, it belongs to a didactic genre with roots in Plato's dialogues, especially The Republic. A young army flyer blacks out in a car crash in 1939 and starts coming to in 2086. A lovely young woman finds and brings him home to recuperate. When he fully awakens, he discovers just how lovely she is, for clothing is optional in 2086. The taboo on nudity, and also sexual fidelity, blue laws, unemployment, poverty, victimless crimes, and political campaigning as 1939 knows it no longer exist. Much of the text is spent explaining how Depression America became a utopia, and if the history lesson is intriguing, the economic one, based on C. A. Douglas' Social Credit system (Ezra Pound's hobbyhorse in the Cantos), is soporific. Heinlein is clearly no Plato, but the future he depicts is no Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, either. A neat discovery for Heinlein and utopia fans. Ray Olson
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