Free Men
short story by Robert A. Heinlein
"Free Men" (1966) is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It is his last known published short story, succeeding "All You Zombies" (1959). It first appeared in his collection The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein (1966) and was later collected in Expanded Universe. It is copyrighted by Heinlein in 1966, but was probably written between 1947 and 1950, judging from the foreword in Expanded Universe, which mentions that it was written after Rocket Ship Galileo.
In the story, America has been invaded and occupied after the "20 Minute War". There is a dramatic change in the situation of Barclay Free Company, a small band of resisters.
The story is action-filled, but does pause at moments for a few polemics, the main thrust of which is that free people are free within themselves regardless of outward circumstances.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5499925. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1959, 1947 and 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “Free Men” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.