"All You Zombies—"

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"All You Zombies—" is a science fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein, first published in the March 1959 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. The story develops the themes begun in the author's previous story "By His Bootstraps", published some 18 years previous, and involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel. Since its publication, "'—All You Zombies—'" has become one of the most famous science fiction stories about time travelling. In 1980 it was nominated for the Balrog Award for short fiction.^[1]

1 Plot
- 1.1 Narrative Order of Events
- 1.2 Chronological Order of Events
2 Trivia
3 Notes
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

"All You Zombies—" tells the story of a young "man" (later revealed as a hermaphrodite) who is taken back in time and tricked into impregnating his younger, female self (before he underwent a sex change), and who turns out to be the offspring of that very union, with the paradoxical result that he is both his own mother and father. In fact, as it turns out, all the major characters in the story are the same person, at different stages of her/his life.

[edit] Narrative Order of Events

The story involves an intricate series of time-travel journeys, making it difficult to describe the exact order of events. It begins with a young man speaking to an older one, the Bartender (and narrator), in 1970. The younger one is called the Unmarried Mother, because he writes "True Confessions" pieces for magazines about unmarried mothers.

Carefully cajoled by the Bartender, he tells how he understands the female viewpoint so well. He was born a girl, in 1945 and raised in an orphanage. When he was a fairly ugly teenager, in 1963 he (then she) was seduced and impregnated by an older man who then left her. During childbirth doctors discovered that she was a hermaphrodite: internally, she had both male and female sex organs. Complications in the birth forced them to give her a sex change; and the baby was later kidnapped and never seen again. The former girl was sent out to make his way as a man, despite being uneducated for any job. As a girl he/she had preferred etiquette lessons, hoping to join an organization dedicated to providing "comfort and companionship" to astronauts. Handicapped by this and the physical after-effects of the birth, he used his secretarial skills to type manuscripts, and eventually began writing for himself.

Professing sympathy, the Bartender offers to top his story. He guides him into a back room, and casts a net over the two of them. This is part of a time-machine. The young man is set loose in 1963 where he dates, falls for, seduces, impregnates, and leaves a young girl; at the same time the Bartender goes forward nine months, kidnaps a baby and takes it to an orphanage in 1945. He then returns to 1963, and picks up the Unmarried Mother, who is just beginning to realize what has happened. As the Bartender tells him "you can figure out who she was, who you are, who he was, who the baby is, and who I am."

The Bartender then drops the Unmarried Mother, actually his younger self, at an outpost of the Time Corps, a time-travelling secret police force that fixes events in history, such as making sure that a nuclear war is so bungled that it does not destroy humanity. He has just recruited himself.

Finally the Bartender returns to 1970, arriving a short time after he left the bar. He yells at a customer playing "I'm My Own Grandpa" on the jukebox. 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?", possibly meaning the rest of the human race. Here Heinlein is revisiting one of his trademark themes—solipsism.

[edit] Chronological Order of Events

On September 20, 1945, the Bartender—who wears a ring depicting the Ouroboros—drops off baby Jane at an orphanage. She grows up there. She dreams of joining one of the "comfort organizations" dedicated to providing R&R for spacemen.

Nearly 18 years later, the man who calls himself "Unmarried Mother" is dropped off at April 3, 1963, by the Bartender. He meets and after some weeks of dating seduces the 17-year-old hermaphrodite Jane. From Jane's point of view, he then disappears.

Jane becomes pregnant. After giving birth by C-section, she is found to be a "true hermaphrodite" who has been severely damaged by the pregnancy and birth, and so she has a "sex change" which reassigns her sex to male.

On March 10, 1964 the Bartender steals the baby and takes it back in time to the orphanage. Jane, now male, becomes a stenographer, and then a writer. When asked his occupation, he replies, somewhat truculently, "I'm an Unmarried Mother. At four cents a word. I write 'True Confessions' stories." He becomes a regular at the bar where the narrator, the Bartender, works.

On November 7, 1970 the Bartender meets Unmarried Mother, conducts him into the back office, and takes him back in time (1963) to "find" the man who got him pregnant. He returns to the bar, seconds after going into the back room, and yells at the customer playing "I'm My Own Grandpa". From his own point of view he has carried out his mission of ensuring his existence.

On August 12, 1985 the Bartender brings the Unmarried Mother to the Rockies base and enlists him in the Time Corps.

On January 12, 1993, the Bartender, who is also Jane/mother/father, arrives back at his base from 1970 to think about his life.

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 don’t take. I did it 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 anyone but me — Jane — here alone in the dark.

I miss you dreadfully!

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

Heinlein wrote this story in a single day, July 11, 1958. He originally submitted it to Playboy, but it was rejected.

This short is also noteworthy for an early reference to the Time Corps, which figures prominently in Heinlein's final two novels, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

The "comfort" organization the Unmarried Mother wanted to join is known at different times by elaborate names which serve to make the acronyms "W.E.N.C.H.E.S", "A.N.G.E.L.S" and finally "W.H.O.R.E.S".

Ouroboros:
- Is the name of a ring that the narrator in All You Zombies wears of "the World Snake that eats its own tail, forever without end. A symbol of the Great Paradox."
- Is also the name of an episode of Red Dwarf that has a suspiciously, similar plot. Dave Lister tells how, as a baby, he was found in a box under a pool table with "O rob or us" (phonetically) written on the side. He meets an alternate-universe version of his old girlfriend, Kristine Kochanski, who asks him to help her have a child by fertilizing an egg (in vitro) which is then incubated with the ship's medical equipment. When Lister sees the Ouroboros company logo on a piece of equipment and its meaning is explained to him, he then knows what he must do. When the baby is "born", Lister takes him back in time and leaves it under a pool table in a box with "Ouroboros" written on the side.

"All You Zombies" is also the title of a 1985 song by the rock group The Hooters. The group came up with the title independently while working on the lyrics. One of them had read the story as a teenager, but the song wasn't meant to refer to it.^[2]

"All You Zombies" is also the title of a chapter in the novel Millennium by John Varley. This time-travel story uses the titles of famous time-travel books and short stories as its own chapter titles.