The novel “For Us, The Living” by Robert A. Heinlein was published for the first time in 2003.

Perry Nelson is driving his car when he has a blowout and goes off the road falling over a cliff. When he wakes up is rescued by Diana begins but for him a lot of confusion starts because the girl tells him that it’s January 7, 2086 me he had the accident on July 12, 1939.

In a century and a half, the American society changed enormously and sometimes for Perry Nelson it’s really difficult to adapt to new customs. To him, to get used to the new situation will mean above all to question his old beliefs. Social changes will be the most difficult for him to understand and accept.

“For Us, The Living” is the first novel written by Robert A. Heinlein. At the time it was rejected by a couple of publishers, the author abandoned hopes to publish it and it was forgotten for several decades. Luckyly, the last remaining copy of the typescript was found after Heinlein’s death and the novel was published.

Technically, “For Us, The Living” is a novel but the plot is very thin, an excuse to put together a series of social, political and economic lectures about a utopian future. The basis of this novel were already unoriginal at the time as Robert A. Heinlein was inspired by previous authors.

Edward Bellamy published “Looking Backward: 2000-1887” in 1888. In this novel, the protagonist falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in 2000. H.G. Wells had published “When the Sleeper Wakes” for the first time in 1898-1899 and in a new version in 1910. In this novel, the protagonist falls asleep in 1897 and wakes up more than two centuries later.

Robert A. Heinlein used a narrative structure similar to that of Bellamy and Wells gettins inspirations from other works for other elements. In his novel, he talk about the culture shock suffered by Perry Nelson and his gradual discovery of the USA of 2086. During his career, sometimes the author preached his thesis instead of telling his stories. Reading “For Us, The Living” you’d think that later he contained himself.

Don’t get me wrong, the lectures in this novel are far from trivial and if we think that it was written in 1938-1939 the ideas are really ahead of their time. In some cases, the social and economic elements are currently still very important and if Robert A. Heinlein was still alive today it would be interesting to know what he’d think of the current situation in the USA.

For example, in “For Us, The Living” he addressed the problem of the influence of corporations on politics. The banks are referred to as one of the major problems in the economy. Organized religions are considered negatively because they seek to impose on everybody their narrow moral vision.

The structure of “For Us, The Living” doesn’t make it exactly a smooth reading so I wonder if the novel was rejected not only because the ideas were too radical for the time. Today it can be interesting to read it, especially Robert A. Heinlein’s fans or for anyone someway interested in this author.

Reading “For Us, The Living” doesn’t mean only to discover a literary experiment from the beginning of the career of one of the greatest writers in the history of science fiction. This novel contains ideas that in the course of his career he developed in many of his works, including some of the most famous ones.

If you have already read various works of Robert A. Heinlein, recognizing the seeds contained in this novel can be a kind of game. This shows that Heinlein starting mulling over these ideas already in the ’30s. In the case of those related to morals and sex it took decades before he could express them in his works.

In the end, “For Us, The Living” may be interesting as an essay that describes a possible future utopia. Probably, you will love in proportion to this author so if you don’t like him you’ll find this novel boring but if you’re his fan this work is a must-have.