All You Zombies

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"I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?"

"--All You Zombies--" (1959) is a short story by Robert A. Heinlein that presents to the reader an interesting time paradox. "The Unmarried Mother," as a bar patron calls himself, unloads his life story onto a willing barman. The barman, however, knows more about The Unmarried Mother than he could ever guess.

At roughly a dozen pages, "--All You Zombies--" provides a provocative story and incorporates many of Heinlein's favorite themes.

As the story contains a twist ending, it is recommended you read it for yourself before reading the associated tropes.

Tropes used in All You Zombies include:

• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep" - The narrator is only referred to as "the barman" until the end of the story when he reveals his real name: Jane.
• Foreshadowing - The barman becomes very annoyed at the song "My Own Grandpa."
• Fun with Acronyms - The same "elite military service corps" is referred to at various points in history as the Women's Emergency National Corps, Hospitality & Entertainment Section, the "Space Angels" or Auxiliary Nursing Group, Extraterrestrial Legions, and the Women's Hospitality Order Refortifying & Encouraging Spacemen.
  • No doubt inspired by the Real Life Women Airforce Service Pilots and their naval counterparts, Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service.
• Help Your Self in the Future
• Hermaphrodite
• Incest Is Relative - and how! See also One Degree of Separation below.
• Luke, You Are My Father / Luke, I Am Your Father - and mother.
• Most Writers Are Writers - The Unmarried Mother writes short stories for magazines.
• My Future Self and Me
• My Own Grandpa - In possibly the most convoluted, mind screwing way possible.
• Noodle Incident - The Mistake of '72.
• One Degree of Separation - The various characters are connected by zero degrees of separation.
• Ouroboros - The bartender, quite understandably, wears an Ourboros ring.
• Parental Incest - Again, all part of the story's Timey-Wimey Ball.
• Screw Yourself
• Stable Time Loop - The barman already knows the recruitment will work. After all, he remembers the other side of it.
• Tangled Family Tree - It's a very tangled family tree, considering that there's only one person in it.
• Take That: Jack Chalker claimed he wrote Downtiming the Night Side to address the questions this story raised but failed to answer.
• Time Paradox
• Time Travel
• Timey-Wimey Ball - Don't think too hard on the paradox of the story. You will start bleeding from the nose.
• Title Drop - In the closing lines.
• Twenty Minutes Into the Future - As with all Heinlein's works. The latest date given in the story is 1993.
• Wrong Genetic Sex: The protagonist starts out as an intersex female and...it gets complicated. Her actual degree of intersexualization approaches true hermaphrodism and isn't biologically possible, at least for normal humans. Then again, being a self-contained temporal-biological loop, it's unlikely that the protagonist is in any way related to "normal" humans.
• You Already Changed the Past