If this were really a novel in the same sense as any of Robert's other long works, one would be forced to call at least its fictional aspect deficient, for many of its characters—quite uncharacteristically—achieve little depth and behave oddly. Even in his most exotic settings, Robert's characters—even, or perhaps especially, his aliens—were always, always real. And in real life, the standard response to a man who tells you he was born 150 years ago in a different body is not, we may as well admit, simply to nod and begin explaining to him how keen everything is nowadays, as do all the people that Perry Nelson meets in 2086.

If one supposes, however, that none of these characters was ever intended—or needed—to be any more real than their colleague Mr. A Square of Flatland, then one cannot help but be struck by how surprisingly much humanity, personality, and appeal they do manage to acquire for us, without ever shirking their lecturing duties. There is no question that by book's end, Perry and his Diana are as real and alive as any other Heinlein couple, if more lightly sketched.

Nonetheless, I submit that there was never a day in his life when Robert Anson Heinlein the fiction writer would have written a two-page footnote—and certainly not to introduce character development. To me, that detail alone is sufficient proof that he simply was not thinking in story terms when he sat down to compose For Us, The Living.

That is why I say that it is so immensely much more than just his first novel. It is all of them, dormant.

It seems clear to me, as he himself admitted, that Robert began this book with the perfectly honorable artistic intention of lying through his teeth: of disguising a series of lectures as fiction, purely in order to bring them to the attention of those who, finding the implication of their own imperfection upsetting, would not knowingly consent to be lectured.