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All You Zombies
- hprotagonist 5y agosamizdat: https://gist.github.com/defunkt/759182/ad44c6135d168ae54503a281bb7e1a24c6c2ea0c https://gist.github.com/defunkt/759182/ad44c6135d168ae54503a...
- PaulHoule 5y agoThere are similar time-loops and incestuous themes in this Heinlein novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_for_Love which is popular among poly people but is one of the very Heinlein books I didn't read when I was a kid, maybe because being the story of a 2000-year old man it's crazy long. (It doesn't help that Heinlein had serious health problems after he wrote "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and that everything he wrote after that had quality problems)
- miki_tyler 5y ago> There are similar time-loops and incestuous themes in this Heinlein novel Let's not forget "The Door into Summer".
- PaulHoule 5y agoEven more so... Plus "Door into Summer" is unambiguously a good read. (Actually though I tell people who like Heinlein that Joe Haldeman set out to out-Heinlein Heinlein and was successful with "The Forever War" and "Worlds")
- is0tope 5y agoI know this is a side note, but I had never heard of worlds and I quite liked "forever war". Is it worth reading?
- PaulHoule 5y agoI think so. ;-) Just like "The Forever War" is a reply to "Starship Troopers", "Worlds" is a reply to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". I would put "Worlds" in a category like Pohl's "Gateway" (but not the sequels to Gateway) in that it reads more like literature than genre fiction. The copy of Worlds that I have has a false copyright date (I think 1954) and I was thinking "... they didn't have lasers in 1954" and "... they sure didn't have O'Neill colonies in 1954". I think the fake date was no accident but part of the homage. Personally I think you should beam yourself into the past and tell your former self to read Worlds... It's that good.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- the_af 5y ago> Pohl's "Gateway" (but not the sequels to Gateway) Side note: am I the only one who loved "Gateway", when the Heechee and their ships and artifacts were mysterious and almost unknowable -- the whole "we think ships of size 5 or 1 are dangerous. Also these colors are probably good, and we think these are bad" -- but was disappointed when the Heechee finally made their appearance and lost some of their mystery?
- gerikson 5y agoI never read the sequels to Gateway and now I'm glad I didn't. Gateway is such a great novel, but it's unsurprising Pohl wanted to investigate more of the universe.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoGateway was wonderful. Skip the sequels.
- natechols 5y agoI obviously need to read "Worlds", but one thing I've wondered for a long time is whether LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" was also partially written in response to "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?
- KerrAvon 5y agoIf we're doing recommendations, I'd say Double Star is Heinlein's best work of the 1950's, although it contains neither time travel nor implied incest.
- hpcjoe 5y agoI think 'To sail beyond the Sunset' was quite wild. Read that in college.
- KerrAvon 5y agoIt's not quite that simple; after he had an operation things got much more coherent. Friday is arguably a return to form. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is also worthwhile. The thing about his works after Moon, both with brain problems and repaired-brain is that he clearly decided he was done with avoiding explicit sex and that he would write about it the way he wanted to write about it.
- PaulHoule 5y agoThe first few chapters of 'The Number of The Beast' are some of the most amazing chapters ever written but then the book degenerates into senselessness which is really too bad.
- carapace 5y agoIt's been a long time since I read it but I feel like that was part of the point, eh? Like the title points to the degeneration into senselessness as the strictures of space and time and literary form and convention dissolve...
- ghaff 5y agoI actually really like Time Enough for Love (though not as much as Moon). That said, it's more a series of linked stories than a conventional novel. (And you should probably read the prequel short first.)
- oddeyed 5y agoThis sounds great, I will try and read it. I recently read a science-fiction novel with similarly strongly-consistent timelines which was very enjoyable (if a bit slow to start). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Time_Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Time_Travel
- softwarebeware 5y agoThe movie "Predestination" with Ethan Hawke is based on this story.
- donatj 5y agoPredestination was a trip, I recommend it for anyone looking for an interesting weird movie. I had no idea it was based on a Heinlein story.
- wedn3sday 5y agoAzimov.
- Jtsummers 5y ago"-All You Zombies-" (the basis of Predestination) was written by Heinlein, it's the subject of the linked Wikipedia article.
- stavros 5y agoIf you want to read the story: https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmSiaEmhLvFdzzvkBmJKtRDmZRNDpDt2USzy3zRbsqeYdh/stories/all-you-zombies/ https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmSiaEmhLvFdzzvkBmJKtRDmZRNDpDt...
- dcdc123 5y agoI didn't realize it either. As I was reading the wikipedia article I kept thinking this sounded familiar then started to remember bits of the movie.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Lambdanaut 5y agoI like the idea that we're all the same entity, experiencing itself backwards and forwards through time, eternally forgetting and re-remembering who we really are. That's a fun one. Maybe next time I'll be the individual reading this comment.
- nlh 5y agoYou sound like a proper Eggist ;) http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
- pixl97 5y agoThe Egg- Kurzgesagt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
- jdlshore 5y agoanimated by Kurzgesagt, but written by Andy Weir (of "The Martian" fame)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- psyc 5y ago“Today a young man on acid realized…”
- Trasmatta 5y agoOr perhaps even the same, singular electron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe Probably not, but it's a fun idea
- throwaway378037 5y agoI always loved Ram Dass’ occasional light-hearted remarks about this concept. Sometimes he would address his audience and say something like “I mean come on, there’s only three of us after all…”
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- SonOfLilit 5y agoPretty sure the Wikipedia article is longer than the story itself, so just go read it :)
- xutopia 5y agoHeinlein's work is amazing. If you get a chance to read Stranger in a Strange Land I highly recommend it.
- ghaff 5y agoAlthough, at least at one time, that was his book that was probably best known to a mainstream audience that was far from my favorite of his. But I guess it did plug into the attitudes of a certain time. There are probably a good half dozen of his books I prefer though.
- YesThatTom2 5y agoOooohhh! I thought you meant to song by The Hooters: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LE0KpcP05I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2LE0KpcP05I
- pugworthy 5y agoDriveshaft's "You All Everybody" sort of fits the story, at least the song name.
- eddiecalzone 5y agoAlso "Now Everybody's Me" by Dead Milkmen. https://youtu.be/by970PgeHk8 https://youtu.be/by970PgeHk8
- adamc 5y agoHe wrote a lot of stories I loved. And then, early 1970s or so onwards, everything he wrote was awful.
- RappingBoomer 5y agoyeah, as far as i am concerned, his juveniles were by far his best...and nothing after those came close
- adamc 5y agoThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress is pretty good. Stranger in a Strange Land is decent. Neither is a juvenile...
- jadbox 5y agoIn my view, there is no 'going back' with time travel. Rather, you appear in realty A+B where A is a similar state of the world at that moment in time that now has B applied to it by having present self placed in it. This solves all paradoxes with time travel as you never change the past, but rather, you are creating/finding forks of reality that appear backwards/forwards in time. Each time you 'travel in time', you are mearly moving between possible states of the universe. In this lens, nothing you do in 'the past' when affect you in the present because you're never actually in the past, but rather a fork of that time/space with you in it. That's just how I've always imagined it.
- jessriedel 5y ago> In my view, there is no 'going back' with time travel. There are many distinct models of time travel, some self-consistent and some not. You are describing one you like, but this does not tell us much about how time travel works in the actual universe, if it occurs at all.
- state_less 5y agoWhat about the future affecting the past? Rather than A+B, there is A. In this scenario, you don’t go to the past, you were/are already there. In other words, there never was a past without you in it. You never could go back and kill your mother/father since it would break a causal loop. You may think you have the agency to do so, but try as you might, you won’t/don’t.
- justinpombrio 5y agoWhat this means is that the universe is solving a fixpoint equation: find a history that is self-consistent. The question this raises is, which one does it pick? There are infinitely many to choose from, and no clear criteria that I know of. You can have a fixpoint where someone is their own parent, but what chose this fixpoint over any other? I don't mean "woah man, who get's to decide?", I mean "this description of physics is incomplete; to complete it you need to specify the method of selecting which fixpoint gets chosen".
- ghaff 5y agoOdd entry to hit the front page but when I was putting together a list of favorite shorts/novellas from a list of SF authors a while back, this was my Heinlein pick in spite of him having a lot of great ones. (As the article notes his older By His Bootstraps is pretty good too in a similar vein.)