After Class Writing: Heinlein’s “All You Zombies–“

Before our class on Monday next week, write a summary of your reading of Robert A. Heinlein’s “All You Zombies–” and the lecture notes from today’s class. Post your summaries to a comment on this blog entry.

16 thoughts on “After Class Writing: Heinlein’s “All You Zombies–“

  1. Tommy Lin

    The story “All You Zombies–“ written by Robert Anson Heinlein and published in 1959 begins telling us of an “Unmarried Mother,” who turns out to be a 25 year old man. The Unmarried Mother enters the bar and begins to chat with the bartender. The story is being told by the bartender’s point of view. The mother begins to tell the bartender about his childhood and they have something in common, they both have parents and family that never married. The mother tells the bartender about his pregnancy. After the birth of his daughter, the doctor tells him that he isn’t just a woman, but a man too. Four weeks after the birth, his daughter was kidnapped from the hospital nursery. After several more months in the hospital, he started growing a beard and had no doubt that he is indeed a man. He starts to go on about how much he hated the man who impregnated her because he ruined his life. The bartender tells him that he knows the man that impregnated her and knows where he is. The bartender leads him to the storeroom to show him a time machine. They kidnapped a baby named Jane and dropped her off at an orphanage. The mother then figures out who the bartender was and he starts to realize who he was himself and who the baby was.

    In this class lecture, we mainly talked about Robert Anson Heinlein, born in 1907 and died in 1988. He studied physics at University of California, Los Angeles. In 1939, he began publishing SF in John W. Campbell Jr.’s Astounding. Heinlein is the first grandmaster of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). He also won 4 Hugo awards for best novels. There are 6 characteristics of Heinlein’s work that worked into works of others: 1. Future history. 2. Hard SF. 3. Self-assured writing style. 4. Didactic father figure. 5. Politics. 6. Often have some sexuality components – sex.

  2. mpaar

    Mike Paar
    After Class Summery
    3/16/16

    Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies-” is an interesting tale, needless to say. The is told from the perspective of a time agent of sorts, talking to who is referred as the “Unmarried Mother.” Though the story from the get go throws you for a loop as it reveals that the unmarried mother is a man. The mother begins to tell the agent, posing as a bartender, his life story. Originally an orphan girl, the mother grew up and had a fling with an unknown man. The man disappeared one day, at which point the mother discovered that she was pregnant. She gave birth by C-section where doctors found that she actually had both female and male genitalia. The pregnancy destroyed her female organs so much that they then made her a man. While recovering, the baby was taken from the hospital by, it was assumed, the man that the unmarried mother was involved with.

    The agent offered the mother the chance to take revenge on the man that stole his baby, which he quickly agreed to. Taking him into the back room, the agent took the mother back in time several years, then pointing out a room that the mother would find the person that wronged her. The mother entered the room and without hesitation the agent jumped forward to the following year. He stole the baby from the hospital, jumped back in time and dropped the baby off at the orphanage then jumped forward to catch the mother having the fling with his former, female self. Upon realizing the truth of the matter, the two jumped forward in time where the mother was recruited as the newest agent for the travelers agency. It is revealed at the end that the agent was the unmarried mother all along, thus ensuring his own birth and recruitment into the agency.

    For class we discussed the works of Robert Anson Heinlein, who was noted for establishing a concise time line in which all of his works were to fit into in someway. He was known for his self assured writing style and often incorporated sex or politics into his writings. This noted style ended up winning him four Hugo awards, one for being Stranger in a Strange Land. He was also the first Grand Master for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The class concluded with a deeper look at “All You Zombies,” and a discussion of the philosophy behind it, mainly Solipsism and the idea of the Ouroboros.

  3. John Darius

    John Darius
    ENG2420
    Chapter Summary: “-All You Zombies-”
    “-All You Zombies-” was a short story written and published by Robert Heinlein in 1959. “-All You Zombies-” tells the story of the narrator who travels through time. Throughout the story the narrator ends up meeting a woman named Jane who he ends up falling in love with later on in the story . The narrator ends up getting the girl pregnant in the story. Later on throughout the story, when Jane finally gives birth to her child, she is told by the doctors that she was born a hermaphrodite and had male organs and female organs in her. This all meant that Jane was actually a man. Later on we find out that the baby is kidnapped, and Jane begins to think to herself that the father kidnapped the child. Later Jane becomes more comfortable with the fact that he is a man and becomes known as “the Unmarried Mother.” Jane later meets a bartender that sends him back in time to find the man that got him pregnant. Jane later finds out that the girl that was pregnant from the past is actually him the whole time.
    In class we talked about Robert Anson Heinlein who lived from 1907-1988. We talked about how “-All You Zombies-” was his last short story until he began to write only novels. Robert Anson Heinlein was also known as the first grandmaster of Science Fiction Fantasy of America. Robert Anson Heinlein won 4 hugo awards for best novel. Robert Heinlein also influenced the science fiction genre with his writing.

  4. Gabriel Vega

    Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies is a short story about a weird paradox time traveling story where a 25 year old mother who is unmarried turns out to be a man in reality later on and goes into a local bar and tells his/her story to a bartender whose telling the same story to himself and the reader but doesn’t know it yet. The mother aka the begins to tell the bartender about his/her childhood story and it turns out that they both share similarities such as both of their parents have never been married before. Afterwards she tells the bartender about his/her pregnancy, the man that got her pregnant who she hates, and what news she found out from the doctor, as she had the baby was that she isn’t just a woman, but a man also. She explain why she hates the man and why he is the main reason for her life is in ruins and it turns out that the four weeks after she gave birth, her baby was taken from the hospital nursery from really herself. He starts to go on about how much he hated the man who impregnated her because he ruined his or her life; but as the mother tells this to the bartender and going back to what I mentioned before in the beginning was the mother is the orphaned baby that was stolen and she also the bartender who is being told the same story about his life story; which was all done by a time machine located in the storage room. It’s a confusion weird short story taken from the twilight zone or something? All you zombies written by Robert Heinlein as discussed in class is short story with characteristics of intersex individuals and sexual aspects like making oneself born by having sex with himself in order to be born.

  5. Alan Zhu

    The story “All You Zombies-” by Robert Anson Heinlein talk about a man named “Unmarried Mother”. The story gives quite and mind blowing experience. It started off where the Unmarried Mother is talking about his life story to a bartender. He talk about his childhood where he was a girl when he was a child and being impregnated when he was older. When the child is birth, the doctor told him that he was a man with the organs of a woman. After he started growing a beard, he had no doubt that he was a man. The child that was given birth was kidnapped by a man claim to be the child’s uncle with similar features as the Unmarried Mother. The bartender tells him that he know who and where the child is; the bartender leads the Unmarried Mother to a storage room showing him a time machine. They kidnapped a baby from the hospital named Jane and was dropped off at the orphanage. At that moment, the Unmarried Mother figured out who the baby was really was.
    At class, we also talk about the author of “All You Zombies-“, Robert Anson Heinlein. He was born in 1907 and died in 1988. He began publishing his science fiction works in John W. Campbell Jr’s “Astounding Stories” in 1939. He won four Hugo awards from his works. He has six characteristic in his writing that make him so wonderful: 1. Future History, 2. Hard SF, 3. Self-assured writing style, 4. Didactic father figure, 5. Politics, and 6. sex

  6. alejandra

    The short story All you zombies by Robert Asoman Heintein is about a man that travels over time, this manwas named unmarried mother and it was confassing or telling his story to a bartender. As they shared their stories and point of view with one and other, they found that they have so many thinks in commun like both of them got parents that will never married with one and another. Later on jane get pregnant and while she gave birth to her child, the doctor come up with a news like this child that was born had two sexuals organts not fully develop, this symbrom has the name of an hermaphrodite. While this news was discovered there was a huge and bad situation for her. Her kid was been raped from the hospital. When the bartender hears this tryed to give her a solution by showing her the timing machine that could return her to the pass and there she will know more details about the person who rapped the baby and where the baby was.
    During the class talked about R.A background and some characteristics of the same like, future history, politics, sexual components and more. We also went throught some of his books, the mood is a hursh mister this book
    was publish in 1966, another book is waldos.

  7. Edwin Ortega

    All you zombies by Robert A. Heinlein is a story about a time traveler who is basically insuring his own birth. The twist however is that he is both his own mother and father. He does so by taking himself from one era, when he is older and is a man (he is intersex), back in time to when he was a girl and couples himself off. He then travels to the point of his birth and kidnaps himself and sends himself off to an orphanage. He then takes his male self away from his female self back to his era to enlist as a time agent setting into motion his own existence once more. This act alone is a huge paradox. A great story that wraps up everything nicely besides the paradox. Things discussed in class were of Heinlein himself and how he was the first grand master of science fiction writing. He was discharged from the navy after five years after contracting tuberculosis. He won four Hugo awards for his novels. Like all influential writers Heinlein possessed characteristics in his stories that would influence all writers after him. Six characteristics are future history, the act of creating a road map for your potential series, hard science fiction, which focused more on the science, a self assured writing style where he had confidence of his readers knowledge, didactic father figures, politics, and sex. While his story of star ship troopers isn’t all that related to the film adaptation is was nice to learn who inspired it.

  8. mz0050

    “–All You Zombies–“written by Robert Anson Heinlein was published in 1959. It is a story that makes heavy use of nonlinear story telling. So, the Unmarried Mother walks into a bar. This Unmarried Mother is revealed to be a pen name of a man. He begins to drink heavily in front of the bartender. Unknown to the Unmarried Mother, the bartender is on a mission to recruit this man into the agency. The Unmarried Mother reveals that he was once raised as a woman known as Jane and got pregnant by an unknown man. During child birth it is revealed Jane was born a hermaphrodite. Due to complications with the child birth the doctors performed sexual reassignment on Jane. However, the child was taken by an unknown man. The bartender hearing this offers to Jane the opportunity to meet the man who got her pregnant and left her. Thirsting with vengeance Jane agrees, and the bartender sends Jane back in time. It is revealed that Jane as the Unmarried Mother impregnated the younger Jane when he was sent back in time. The bartender was the one that abducted Jane’s child to bring the child back in time to an orphanage. The bartender then jumps forward in time to when Jane is recruited as a member of a temporal police force. As one of his missions he has to recruit himself into the police force by posing as a bartender.
    Robert Anson Heinlein was known for his self-assure writing style and often included sex or politics of his time into his writing. Heinlein was also award four Hugo rewards. Heinlein also has six characteristic in his: 1. Future History 2. Hard SF 3. Self-assured writing style 4. Didactic father figure 5. Politics 6. sex

  9. Mauricio

    “All You Zombies-“ by Robert Anson Heilein, starts on November 7, 1970. A bartender meets an unmarried mother (in this society, it is considered to be of lower class to be an unmarried mother). The unmarried mother infuriated by the wrong that was done to her. The bartender asks her about what she has been through. After a bet, she begins to tell him about her life. She states that she is an orphan. As child, she was mocked at for having manly features. Therefore she dreamed of being in a government agency called the W.E.N.C.H.E.S. There the agency would educate and give her etiquette classes. And what she was most interested in was a surgery that would make her look like a woman. But at 18, she met a man and fell in love with him instantly. They had sex and he left right after. She became pregnant and had the baby through a C-section. The doctors found that she was a hermaphrodite. They could not save her female organs therefore she became a man. She now could not get into the government agency and was an unmarried mother. Also her baby was stolen from the hospital. She stated that if she finds him, she would kill him. The bartender says he knows him and can take her to him. They go to the back of the bar where there is a time machine. He takes her back to 1963 where he steals the baby. Then he takes the baby back to 1945 to an orphanage. Proceeds to 1963 where he impregnates himself then 1970 where he talks to himself. Finally to the 1993 where he and she are saluted.
    Robert Anson Heinlein lived from 1907 to 1988 went to University of Missouri. Then went to the Navy but was discharged due to him having tuberculosis. In 1939, he published stories in Astounding. There after he received the honor of First Grand Master of the SFWA and 4 Hugo Awards for best novel. 6 Characteristics of writing his writing are future history is planned out the future elaborately on books of his career, hard Science Fiction, self assured writing style like blended slang, casualness, jargon to make writing seem real, didactic, politics, and sex.

  10. RaBbe AhMed

    “–All You Zombies–” by Robert Heinlein it’s about an “Unmarried mother” who is going to be 25 years old man in this story. Basically in this story the narrator is travels through time so somehow the narrator ended up meting a girl name Jane. After that, the narrator had a relationship with her by having relation with the narrator made her pregnant in this story. Later, Jane gave birth to her child but there was problem which is that she is not women, she was born as a hermaphrodite. It’s mean she has both male and female organs in her body. So we could actually see that she was man not a woman. Later on in the story the child she gave birth was kidnapped. She realized that she was kidnapped by her father. Therefore, Jane became for comfortable with the fact that she is man known “Unmarried Woman”. Finally, Jane was sent back to in time to find out the man that got him pregnant. But miracle happened its means that she found out that the girl was pregnant from the past it was him all the time.
    In this class lecture, we talked about Robert Anson Heinlein, born in 1907 and died in 1988. He studied physics at University of California, Los Angeles. He was 1st master of grand mission in USA. He also won 4 Hugo awards for best novels. There are 6 characteristics of Heinlein’s work that worked into works of others: 1. Future history. 2. Hard Science Fiction. 3. Self assured writing style. 4. Didactic father figure. 5. Politics. 6. Often have sex.

  11. Kevin A. Gaul

    ENG 2420
    Kevin A. Gaul
    03/21/16
    After-Class Summary: All You Zombies

    The story, “All You Zombies” by Robert A. Heinlein is an excellent example of a confusing time travel story that requires more than one read-through to understand. It follows the protagonist’s mission to recruit his younger self, the unmarried woman, who is also his son, in this continuous time loop. It starts with the protagonist, a Temporal Agent whose job is to travel through time, working as a barkeep. He spots his target, a twenty-five-year-old man known as “The Unmarried Mother”, walking into the bar. The protagonist’s mission is to recruit The Unmarried Mother to the Temporal Agents. He sparks up a conversation with his target by pouring him an alcoholic beverage and asking him about his work as a confession writer. Eventually, the Unmarried Mother explains his life story, starting with the fact that he was born as a female and orphaned, unable to get adopted due to lacking any feminine features, deciding to join the Women’s Emergency National Corps Hospitality & Entertainment Section (W.E.N.C.H.E.S.) during her young adult years. She started as a “Mother’s Helper” as she needed to be 21 years of age to enlist as a member of the W.E.N.C.H.E.S.

    He then mentions how she met, fell in love with, and was impregnated by a man, who is later revealed to be the protagonist, who traveled back to that point in time in the Unmarried Mother’s story. Her pregnancy causes her to get kicked out of the orphanage, and after giving birth to the child, who is later revealed to be the Unmarried Mother herself and is sent back to the date the Unmarried Mother was taken into the orphanage, she is told by the doctors that she contained both male and female reproductive organs and that the female ones were removed after the birth of the baby, making her a man from that day forward, even more so in the future with the help of male hormones supplied by the doctors. The baby was then kidnapped (by the protagonist aka an older Unmarried Mother as well as the father). The Protagonist then makes a deal with the Unmarried Mother, promising him to help track down the man who stole her child (herself) if he would join the Temporal Agents afterward.

    This quest manages to introduce and explain how the protagonist became his mother, father, and grandfather. He takes the Unmarried Mother (his younger self) back to the date where his younger female self met her child’s father, who is revealed to be the 25-year-old male Unmarried Mother. The Protagonist then travels forward 11 months to the birth of the child of his 25-year-old self and his 18-year-old female self and kidnaps the child. He then travels to the date he was accepted into the orphanage and leaves the baby there, as the baby is revealed to be him, his 25-year-old self, his 18-year-old female self and their kid.

    Today’s lecture was about the author of “All You Zombies-”, Robert A. Heinlein, who was educated at the University of Missouri and served in the navy for five years until contracting tuberculosis. He then studied physics at UCLA and became a SF writer in 1939 for Astounding Mag, being the oldest SF writer among his peers at the time at 30-years-old. He was also a decorated SF writer with 4 HUGO awards for best novel, as well as a Science Fiction Writers Award recipient. His notable works include “Waldo” (1942), “Starship Troopers” (1959), “Stranger in a Strange Land” (1961), and “All You Zombies-” (1959), among others.

  12. Hermann Sterling

    Robert Heinlein “—All You Zombies— ” is about a young man and his journey back in time, where he is tricked into impregnating his younger female self before he underwent sexual reassignment surgery. He finds out later that his current self was the product of this sexual encounter. She realizes he is his own mother and his own father. The story follows a chronological time line of his life. The story begins with a unmarried mother which is actually a man. He enters a bar, told in the point of view of the bartender, the mother tells the bartender of his childhood. He tells the bartender of that she had a fling with an unknown man and later became pregnant. When her baby was born, it being a C-section birth, the doctor brought to her attention that she had both male and female genitalia and after giving birth her female organs were destroyed leaving her just as a man. Four weeks after she gave birth her baby was stolen from a man who claimed to be the child’s Uncle. Now she is left angry with the man who has done this to her. To her surprise the bartender tells her that her know the man who took her baby and the baby is. The bartender leads her to a room where a time machine is. She later finds out who her baby is and the person who took him.

    In class we talked about the scientific writer Robert Anson Heinlein. We talked about the 6 characteristics In his writing the first being future history, the second being hard science fiction, the third being self assured writing style, the fourth being didactic father figures, the fifth being politics and sixth being sex.

  13. Dolly

    Soshana

    This story is about a time traveling hermaphrodite who gives birth to himself. This is a wild circle of what the fuck for lack of a better description. We listen in on a story told to a male bartender by another seemingly different male. The story being told is about the customer saying he is an unmarried mother. This is the first wtf moment though I realize what might be happening and decide to let it go.He goes on to tell of his lover who impregnated him when she was still had….working lady parts. The guy disappears, she gives birth, has gender reassignment surgery without her permission, and the baby is stolen by some guy claiming to be the uncle. She vents and says she’s pissed that the baby was stolen and the bartender offers to help. He tells her he can take her to the man who left her and brings her downstairs to a time machine where he brings her to a time in her life where the man was still with her. then he leaves to another point in time and steals the baby from the hospital. Then its revealed e is the father, the mother, and the baby. Gosh what the absolute hell happened in this story?

    Robert Anson Heinlein was born in 1907 and died in 1988 he wrote “All You Zombies” and was published in Astounding Stories in 1939. He went to University of Missouri, and won 4 Hugo awards for various stories. We went over his 6 story characteristics.

  14. Darius

    Darius Freeman
    Prof. Ellis
    ENG2420
    After Class Summary

    After Class Summary: “All You Zombies”

    “All You Zombies” begins simply with a man walking into a bar and having a chat with the bartender. The man calls himself “Unmarried Mother”, and is a writer. The bartender bets the man a bottle to tell him an incredible story. The Unmarried Mother then begins what is sure to be the single most incredible story any bartender has ever heard. That is…if he hadn’t lived it. He starts the story by saying “when I was a little girl”. This throws the bartender off a little bit but not really. The Unmarried mother tells the bartender all about his troubling childhood as an orphan, his adolescent dreams of charm school and marrying a Space Man. He continues with how he met a man who got him pregnant the disappeared. Now that he was pregnant the family he worked for ignored it as long as he could still work but as soon as the baby was ready, he was kicked out. He wakes up on the operating table and a doctor tells him that having the baby destroyed his female reproductive system but it so happens that he also had an underdeveloped male reproductive system which could be made to develop normally with surgery and therapy. Now that he was a male in every sense of the word, he gave up his dream of marrying a Space man and decided to try his hand at becoming on instead. However, they took one look as the scars on his stomach and turned him away. He then decided to learn everything he could about writing confessions and became a writer.
    The Bartender gives him the bottle he won and then offers him a job. The most important job in his opinion and it pays very well he says. The man follows the bartender to the back room of the bar. The bartender then transports the both of them through time for the man to be recruited. The story continues to jump through time. During this we find out that both the Unmarried Mother and the Bartender are one in the same. The man actually travels through time, gets himself pregnant, becomes a man, steals the baby, leaves the baby at an orphanage, gives birth to himself (or a slightly different version of himself) and later recruits himself as a protector of time, starting the process all over again. At the very end of the story he says “I know where I come from- but where did all you zombies come from. This shows that the man is only truly aware of his own consciousness as he created and recreates himself constantly and not of anyone else’s consciousness.
    In the lecture we talked about Robert Heinlein. He has a very self-assured writing style as he assumes his audience will understand what he is trying to say. His writing usually involves politics, anarchy and social Darwinism. A lot of his works also have some elements dealing with varying degrees of sexuality and in this particular short story, that is being intersex.

  15. Angela

    Angela Teeraj

    “All You Zombies –”

    This short story starts off in “Pop’s Place” on November 7, 1970. We are introduced to the bartender who reveals he is also a Temporal agent, on a mission to recruit a young man by the name of “The Unmarried Mother”. The bartender begins prying into the Unmarried Mother’s life by asking him questions about his writing. He succeeds and the young man begins to tell the bartender his history.

    The young man reveals he grew up as a bastard, abandoned in an orphanage in 1945. He also reveals that he was born a female. The Unmarried Mother meets a man around age 21 who impregnates him and never contacts him again. It was not after the birth of his baby that he was informed of the truth about his body. The doctor informed him that his baby was born healthy and well. However, they found that he had been born with both sets of glandular organs. After the birth of the baby the doctors found that the female set of organs could no longer be of any use. So they decided to put the new mother under a sex change and rearranged things so that he would develop into a man.

    While recovering from the surgery, his baby was kidnapped from the hospital. He left the hospital a year later after undergoing three operations. The Unmarried Mother was no longer a woman and couldn’t understand how to be a man. It was shortly after this that he moves to New York where he begins writing stories from a woman’s angle. The Unmarried Mother becomes enraged at the thought of the man who impregnated him. He swears to the bartender that if he ever saw him again he would kill him. The bartender tells the Unmarried Mother that he knows where the man is and where he can find him. He begins to reveal intimate details about the young man’s life, baffling him that the bartender could know so much. The two end up striking a deal that if the bartender brings forward the man who impregnated him, the unmarried mother would in return take the bartender’s job.

    The two rush out of the bar where the bartender reveals to him a time machine in the form of a brief case. Before the Unmarried mother knew what was going on they were transported to April 3, 1963. The bartender told him he could find the man he was looking for outside. After shoving a wad of hundred dollar bills at him, he told him he’d pick him up after he’d settled his business with the man. The bartender took off to March 10, 1964 where he would swipe the baby from the hospital that the Unmarried Mother had just given birth to. The bartender then carried baby Jane to September 1945 where he left the baby at the orphanage. He then returned once again to 1963 where he picked up the Unmarried Mother. The two transported to the Sub Rockies Base in 1985 where the Unmarried Mother was to hold up his end of the bargain and take over the bartender’s job. The bartender, satisfied with his accomplishments returned back to his quarters at the Sub Rockies in the year 1993. He gazed down at his cesarean scar on his belly where he had given birth to baby Jane and crawled into bed.

    Our class discussion today was on science fiction writer Robert Anson Heinlein. He is known for his concise timeline-style writing on which his work is based off of. Heinlein is famous for being the first Grand Master for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Along with his many achievements, Heinlein managed to win four Hugo awards. We were also able to analyze “All You Zombies –” and discuss Heinlein’s use of Solipsism.

  16. Vayne

    Mathew Tackett
    5.24.2016

    “All You Zombies” is a confusing time paradox story that may manage to give you a headache. Written by Robert Heinlein this story is about a man who time travels to insure his own conception by conceiving himself. He travels through time to bring himself when he was a male (the main character is intersex) back into the past to hook himself up with his then female self. The ensuing child is then stolen by away by himself from the future, so that he would grow up in an orphanage and complete the time paradox. During the lecture after the story explanation we learned about Robert Heinlein’s life and achievements. He was the first grandmaster for science fiction writing and he was in the navy but was discharged after he discovered he had tuberculosis. He has won over 4 Hugo Awards for his novels and like every other science fiction writer he has a set pattern in his works. He always has a future history in his stories, his stories are more hard science fiction, and didactic father figures, politics and sex are all involved.

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