Robert Heinlein - For Us, The Living

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Major writers often leave behind unpublished works. Heinlein himself had two unpublished nonfiction books released posthumously: How to Be a Politician (published as Take Back Your Government!)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."

After high school, Heinlein applied to Annapolis—submitting one hundred letters of recommendation to his state senator—and graduated in 1929, twentieth in his class, with the rank of ensign. He was married shortly after graduation, though little is known of that union, which ended after approximately one year. In 1932 he married Leslyn MacDonald, an intelligent and politically radical woman who inspired many of his female characters.

Later that year, while serving aboard the destroyer Roper, Heinlein contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and was hospitalized. By 1934, his continual bouts with the disease rendered him disabled and forced his retirement from the military. He went on to study mathematics and physics at the graduate school of the University of California, though recurring illness forced his early withdrawal, and he campaigned unsuccessfully for a district assembly seat in Hollywood.

In 1939, after a failed naval career and a humbling defeat in his political endeavors, Heinlein turned to writing as a way to earn a living. This third career choice proved lucrative. By the early 1940s, he had paid off a large mortgage and was by all accounts a successful writer, having won the respect and admiration of the science fiction community. His first novel, Rocket Ship Galileo, was published by Scribner in 1947, and over the next twelve years, he wrote one book a year for Scribner, creating a highly respected and award-winning series of juveniles. During that time, Heinlein also wrote and published short stories, adult novels, and the script for Destination Moon, widely considered to be the first science fiction film. The movie was nominated for three Academy Awards and won in the category of Special Effects. During this time he was also divorced from Leslyn and married Virginia "Ginny" Gerstenfeld, a friend and colleague from his Navy days.

The Heinleins spent their marriage traveling, writing, entertaining, and working on behalf of many charitable causes—particularly blood drives, a tradition which is carried on by the Heinlein Society. In 1956 Heinlein won his first Hugo Award, for Double Star, and went on to win an unprecedented four Hugos, three Retro Hugos, and in 1975 received the first Grand Master Nebula Award for lifetime achievement from the Science Fiction Writers of America. He earned wide acclaim for novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and The Puppet Masters. Robert Heinlein continued writing, participating in political debate, and championing the cause of space travel well into the 1980's, when he retired to Carmel, California, with Ginny. His last novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, was published in 1987, one year before his death.