ROBERT A. HEINLEIN “All You Zombies –.” First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1959, after reportedly being rejected by Playboy after that magazine had requested a short work of adult fiction from the author. Collected in The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1959). Reprinted many time since, including The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Robert Silverberg (Arbor House, 1980) and Time Troopers, edited by Hank Davis & Christopher Ruocchio (Baen Books, 2022).

   A guy walks into a bar and eventually begins telling on the other side of the counter his life story. It’s a strange one. It turns out that he, so far, has had a very strange existence. He was born a girl but was stolen from his mother when he was born. He did have a child while still female…

   And from there it gets complicated. I think I have explained everything as best I can without telling you everything, but between you and me and a handy time travel machine, there is only one major character in the story. Only one.

   I loved this story when I first read it, I don’t remember where or when, was totally puzzled the second time. Third time, a couple of days ago, and I loved it again, the pieces all falling into place as smoothly as anyone could make it. If there were any flaws, but given the number of times it’s collected and reprinted, someone else would have found them by now.

   The title? That’s one the first things that comes to our protagonist’s mind once he comes to grips with his life in the world. Where (or how) do the rest of us come in?

   For the record, reading this yesterday and trying to keep the threads of the story straight, I was struck by how smooth a writer Robert Heinlein was when he was at his prime. He was one of the best.