Everything Old is New Again

There's a new Heinlein book coming out. Yes, Robert A. Heinlein. And yes, it's by Heinlein, not about Heinlein.

It's called For Us, the Living, and it was lost more than 60 years ago:

"For Us, the Living," was put aside, and eventually lost. The Heinleins apparently destroyed all copies they had. And because at the time it was written Heinlein was not a member of the science fiction community, no other sf writers knew about it. He had let one or two friends read it, and it is by a long trail through one of them that this rarest of treasures was located.

Is it any good? It's Heinlein's earliest work, predating Lifeline, but then Lifeline was already a damn good story. The half dozen lucky bastards people who have read it say that yes, it is good, though clearly a first novel.

So, who else has a long-forgotten novel hidden away? A few years ago a lost work by Fritz Leiber, The Dealings of Daniel Kesserich, was rediscovered and published. Tolkien's unpublished story Roverandom likewise languished for decades before reaching the public.

If you asked me to name the three authors I'd most like to see have a lost work rediscovered, those would be high - very high - on the list. Sometimes things do work out the way they should.

(via Slashdot)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:11 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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