All You Zombies

This article is about the short story by Robert A. Heinlein. For the song by The Hooters, see All You Zombies (song).
"'—All You Zombies—'"
Author Robert A. Heinlein
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Science fiction
Published in Fantasy and Science Fiction
Publication date 1959

"'—All You Zombies—'" is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein. It was written in one day, July 11, 1958, and first published in the March 1959 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine after being rejected by Playboy.

The story involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel. In 1980, it was nominated for the Balrog Award for short fiction.[1]

"'—All You Zombies—'" further develops themes explored by the author in a previous work: "By His Bootstraps", published some 18 years earlier. Some of the same elements also appear later in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985), including the Circle of Ouroboros and the Temporal Corps.

Plot

"'—All You Zombies—'" chronicles a young man (later revealed to be intersex) taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent sexual reassignment surgery); he thus turns out to be the offspring of that union, with the paradoxical result that he is his own mother and father. As the story unfolds, all the major characters are revealed to be the same person, at different stages of her/his life.

Narrative order of events

The story involves an intricate series of time-travel journeys. It begins with a young man speaking to the narrator, the Bartender, in 1970. The young man is called the Unmarried Mother, because he writes stories for confession magazines, many of them presumably from the point of view of an unmarried mother.

Cajoled by the Bartender, the Unmarried Mother explains why he understands the female viewpoint so well: he was born a girl, in 1945, and raised in an orphanage. While a fairly ugly teenager in 1963, she was seduced, impregnated, and abandoned by an older man. During the delivery of her child, doctors discovered she was intersex, with internalized male sex organs as well as female sex organs. Complications during delivery forced them to give her a gender reassignment. The baby was kidnapped by a mysterious older gentleman, and not seen again. The Unmarried Mother then had to adjust to life as a man, despite an upbringing which left him unqualified for "men's" jobs; he had planned to get into space as a sex worker for male workers and colonists. Instead he used his secretarial skills to type manuscripts, and eventually began writing.

Professing sympathy, the Bartender offers to take him to the abandoning seducer, whom the Unmarried Mother wishes revenge on. He guides him into a back room, where he uses a time machine to take them to 1963, and sets the young man loose. The bartender goes forward eleven months, kidnaps a newborn baby and takes it to 1945, leaving it in an orphanage. He returns to 1963 and picks up the Unmarried Mother, who was instinctively attracted to his younger female self and has seduced and impregnated her. The Bartender nudges him to connect the dots, and realize that the seducer, the young woman, the baby, and the time traveler are all him.

The Bartender then drops the Unmarried Mother at an outpost of the Temporal Bureau, a time-traveling secret police force that manipulates events in history, to protect the human race. He has just created and recruited himself.

Finally the Bartender returns to 1970, arriving a short time after he left the bar. He allows a customer to play "I'm My Own Grandpa" on the jukebox, having yelled at the customer for playing the song before he left. Closing the bar, he time travels again to his home base. As he beds down for a much deserved rest, he contemplates the scar left over from the Caesarean section performed when he gave birth to his daughter, father, mother, and entire history. He thinks, "I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?"

Title

The title of the story, which includes both the quotation marks and dashes,[2] is actually a quotation from a sentence near the end of the story itself (taken from the middle of the sentence, hence the dashes indicating edited text before and after the title).

Chronological order of events

As the story is told as a disjointed point of view reference by several other points thereafter, this is the actual chronological history of "Jane" according to the story, although the story itself is still a classic example of a time paradox.

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully!

Reception

Philosopher David Lewis considers " '—All You Zombies—' " and "By His Bootstraps" to be examples of "perfectly consistent" time travel stories.[3]

Film adaptation

Main article: Predestination (film)

The Spierig brothers directed the Australian science fiction film, Predestination (2014), based on the story and starring Ethan Hawke and Sarah Snook[4]

See also

Other stories about being descended from oneself
In television

Notes

References

External links

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