Warning! Truth in advertising requires me to tell you that this volume contains THE WORLDS OF ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, published 1966. But this new volume is about three times as long. It contains fiction stories that have never before appeared in book form, nonfiction articles not available elsewhere, a 30 - year updating on my 1950 prognostications (as well as the 15 - year updating that appeared in THE WORLDS OF R.A.H.), with the usual weasel - worded excuses as to why I guessed wrong - and (ruffles & flourishes) not one but two scenarios for the year 2000, one for people who like happy endings and another for people who can take bad news without a quiver - as long as it happens to somebody else.

On these I will do a really free - swinging job as the probability (by a formula I just now derived) that either I or this soi-disant civilization will be extinct by 2000 A.D. approaches 99.92+%. This makes it unlikely that I will again have to explain my mistakes.

But do not assume that I will be the one extinct. My great - great - great - grandfather Lawrence Heinlein died prematurely at the age of ninety - seven, through having carelessly left his cabin one winter morning without his gun - and found a buck deer on the ice of his pond. Lack of his gun did not stop my triple - great - grandfather; this skinful of meat must not be allowed to escape. He went out on the ice and bulldogged the buck, quite successfully.

But in throwing the deer my ancestor slipped on the ice, went down, and a point of the buck's rack stabbed between his ribs and pierced his heart.

No doubt it taught him a lesson - it certainly taught me one. So far I've beaten the odds three times: continued to live when the official prognosis called for something less active. So I intend to be careful - not chopped down in my prime the way my ancestor was. I shan't bulldog any buck deer, or cross against the lights, or reach barehanded into dark places favored by black widow spiders, or - most especially! - leave my quarters without being adequately armed.