SlashNOT

Matthew writes: For Us the Living is the hitherto unpublished first novel of the late Robert Heinlein, 2nd greatest SciFi author of all time (after Isaac Asimov and before Ray Bradbury).

The book absolutely sucks, which is why I love it!

See, in the seven years since I started writing my first novel, “About a Transgenic Fish: A Love Story”, I’ve been having a really hard time figuring out how to complete the story. I just can’t seem to write a realistic scene wherein a mutant surgeonfish manages to roll his fishbowl down an art-deco handrail, knock the henchmen of an evil U.S. President unconscious, and then crash through the 87th story window of the rebuilt World Trade Center to a waiting helicopter gunship belonging to the Reformation Brotherhood of Mennonites, which in the year 2023 will control more than half of the U.S.

But For Us the Living shows me that I don’t have to! All I need to do is set this book aside and become famous for my as yet unwritten masterpieces, content in the knowledge that “About a Transgenic Fish” will be published after my death and purchased by my devout followers as a nearly lost example of my early, crappy writing. This book is just another example of why Robert Heinlein continues to break new ground in SciFi and the publishing world in general, even post mortem. It’s truly a masterpiece of early 20th Century unpublishable fiction.