“—All You Zombies—”
- by Robert A. Heinlein
- Short Story
- Science Fiction
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- “‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959.
A 25-year-old man, originally born as an orphan girl named Jane, tells his story to a 55-year-old bartender who then recruits him for a time-travel adventure.
—Michael Main
When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.
Tags
(23)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1940 to 1949: the orphanage
- Circa AD 1960 to 1969: 17-year-old Jane and her visitors
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: Pop’s Place and the base in the Rockies
- Timeline Models
- Single Consistent Timeline: the quintessential story of a single static timeline
- Time Travel Methods
- Luggable Time Machine: a USFF Coordinates Transformer Field Kit, series 1992, Mod. II—a beauty, no moving parts, weight twenty-three kilos fully charged and shaped to pass as a suitcase
- Themes
- Acting on Knowledge from a Self-Visitation
- Bootstrap Paradox: Jane spawns her/himself twice over.
- Ex Nihilo Obects and People: There is no origin to Baby Jane’s DNA. It comes from no one but her two older selves: her 17-year-old mother and her 25-year-old father, both of whom got it from Baby Jane.
- I’m My Own Grandpaw: both the song and Jane’s ancestry
- Self-Visitation
- Selves-Visitation: On 24 April 1963,[/i] old Jane sees the two younger Janes walking together.
- Time Corps: Temporal Bureau
- Groupings
- Bifrost
- Cited in Paradoxes of Time Travel by Rayn Wasserrman
- Cited in Worlds Enough and Time, edited by Gary Westfahl
- Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders
- Fiction (France)
- Galaxy’s Edge
- The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
- Sirius
- Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin
- Urania
- Zoetrope: All-Story
Variants
(8)
- “‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959.
- “‘All You Zombies . . .’” by Robert A. Heinlein, in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, December 1959) [We use the December publication date from the book’s copyright assignment because it appeared after the story appeared in the March 1959 issue of F&SF.].
- “‘All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, in 6xH (Pyramid Books, August 1961).
- “—All You Zombies—” by Robert A. Heinlein, in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Dennis Dobson, 1964).
- “All You Zombies—” by Robert A. Heinlein, in 6xH (Pyramid Books, May 1971).
- audio reading with alternative title.“All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein, Escape Pod #200, 2 July 2009 [podcast] [Attempted access on 26 April 2022, but the podcast is no longer available because of license limitations.].
- audio reading.“‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Blackstone Audio, December 2009) [audio] [We haven't seen the title printed, so we don’t know which variant is used in this audiobook.].
- audio reading.“‘—All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein, in “All You Zombies—”: Five Classic Stories (Blackstone Audio, January 2014) [audio].
Translations
(14)
- Croatian.
“Tko ste vi drugi?” [Who are you others?], as by Robert Anson Heinlein, Sirius #60, June 1981.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by Robert Anson Heinlein - French.
“La mère célibataire” [The single mother] by Robert A. Heinlein, Fiction #108, November 1962 [translator credit from nooSFere]. - French: alternative title of Deutsch’s 1962 translation.“Vous les zombies . . .” [You zombies . . .] by Robert A. Heinlein, in Histoires de voyages dans le temps, edited by Jacques Goimard, Demètre Ioakimidis, and Gérard Klein (Le Livre de Poche, 1975).
- French.
“Vous les zombies” [You zombies . . .] by Robert A. Heinlein, in Conférence, edited by Oliver Rey (unknown publisher, 2005) [citation data from nooSfere]. - French: alternative title of Rey’s 2005 translation.“Vous les zombies . . .” [You zombies . . .], as by Robert Heinlein, Bifrost #57, January 2010.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by Robert Heinlein
- German.
“Wer bin ich?” [Who am I?] by Robert A. Heinlein, in 16 Science Fiction-Stories, edited by Anthony Boucher (Heyne, 1964). - German.
“Entführung in die Zukunft” [Kidnapping in the future] by Robert A. Heinlein, in Entführung in die Zukunft (Heyne, February 1971). - Italian.
“O tempora, o sexus!” by Robert A. Heinlein, in Fantasesso, edited by Alex Vairo (Feltrinelli, June 1967) [An English literal title is intentionally omitted.]. - Italian.
“Tutti voi zombie” [All you zombies] by Robert A. Heinlein, Urania #1456, 1 January 2003. - Japanese.
“輪廻の蛇” [Reincarnation snake], as by ロバート・A・ハインライン, S-Fマガジン [S-F magazine] #3, April 1960.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by ロバート・A・ハインライン - Persian.
“همهی شما زامبیها” [All you zombies], as by رابرت ای هاینلاین (لوکوبوک, 2017) [e-book] [citation data from Goodreads[/url[/d]].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by رابرت ای هاینلاین - Russian.
“«Все вы зомби . . .»” [You are all zombies . . .], as by Роберт Хайнлайн, in Миры роберта хайнлайн (Полярис, 1994) [citation data is from CoolLib].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by Роберт Хайнлайн - Russian.
“Уроборос: Все вы, зомби” [Ouroboros: All you zombies], as by Роберт Хайнлайн, in Вне всяких сомнений (Эксмо, 2007) [citation data is from CoolLib].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by Роберт Хайнлайн. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . narrated by Павел Александрович Вязников - Spanish.
“Todos ustedes, zombies” [All you, zombies], as by Robert Heinlein, Minotaur: Fantasia y ciencia-ficción #4, March 1965 [citation data from Alconet].. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Robert A. Heinlein as by Robert Heinlein
Derived Works
(1)
- Predestination, written and directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig (8 March 2014).
Indexer Notes
(2)
- Handle—From the many possible titles, we selected “—All You Zombies—” as the canonical handle because it reflects the title being a quote from the middle of a sentence taken from the story.
- Alternate Title—At least one publication, the anthology Survival Printout (1973), uses the title “All You Zombies--” on the title page, but we treat a double hyphen as typographically the same as an em-dash, so this is not a new variant.