Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) is a key figure in the development of American science fiction. What makes his contribution so unique is his emphasis on philosophical speculation. In ‘-All You Zombies-’ published in 1959 he wrote the classic solipsism story. This short time travel story appeared 18 years after ‘By His Bootstraps’ which it resembles in many ways but in this iteration the causal loop or predestination paradox is far more convoluted and complex. This is considered by many to be the ultimate in time travel stories because of its highly unique plot and for the philosophical problems it further teases us with. It was made into a highly regarded film ‘Predestination’ (2014) starring Ethan Hawke.
A young man who appears to be feeling very sorry for himself tells his life history to a bartender. He started out life as a homely girl, growing up in an orphanage and vowing never to have children out of wedlock and abandon them as she had been. In spite of her good intentions when she grows up she succumbs to seduction by a young man waving around $100 dollar bills and who promptly leaves her behind afterwards. Unfortunately, she has become pregnant and in due course gives birth to a baby girl.
The baby is kidnapped and disappears forever or so she thinks. To compound her problems, the doctors who delivered her baby find out that she has both sets of reproductive equipment, the female parts of which have been pretty well ruined by the pregnancy and so they remove these and turn her into a man. The man becomes a writer of women’s confession stories and some years later finds himself in this bar where he tells his story to the bartender. The bartender is more than he appears to be. He is an agent of a time traveling service and is there to recruit this young man into the same service. He baits him by offering to find for him the man who had been the cause of his/her “ruination”. He gives the man money, and takes him back in time leaving him there to find his quarry. The bartender then goes ahead a number of months and kidnaps that same month-old baby. He takes her back 19 or so years and leaves her on the doorstep of an orphanage.
The baby, of course, subsequently grows up to be the girl/man of the later story. The bartender then returns to where he left the young man and finds him to pick him up. The young man is in a state of shock basically since he now knows that not only that “he” was the man who had seduced himself when he was a girl, but that the bartender is also a much later version of himself. The bartender then takes him into the future where he is left to be recruited into the organization. The bartender returns to his own base and reflects on all of the events in his life.
As in a number of Heinlein’s works, he toys with the idea of solipsism and ends the story with the thoughts of the rather unique bartender:
The philosophy that the only thing we can be sure of, is our own existence, is called solipsism and it fascinated Robert A. Heinlein. It is a theme which asserts itself again and again in science fiction and I think it no coincidence that these serious existential questions were again being asked at a time when computers and automation were entering the public consciousness. The ways in which we become aware of and receive information about the outside world, mainly through the senses, are together called perception.
Philosophers are deeply split as to whether our perceptions of the outside world actually correspond to an existing reality or whether they are merely hypotheses and intellectual paradigms which give us only a partial vision of exterior reality or whether external reality (and the philosophical zombies who inhabit it?) are nothing more than a mental construct (solipsism) as in Heinlein’s famous line.
If there is one thing I can be sure of is that I am now writing this and thinking of the next word to write. As Descartes noted there is of one thing we can be certain: I think therefore I am (Cogito ergo sum). So OK, I am thinking, but are you? Of that I can never be certain. You could all be zombies just acting in imitation of a human being, conditioned to act in the appropriate way. It is possible. For me in the context of Heinlein’s story it would seem that at the end of the story we are meant to share the view that the main character is the only real character. For the temporal agent wears a ring in the shape of the Ouroboros which is an ancient symbol depicting a dragon or serpent eating its own tail. A circular or looped representation relevant for both the closed loop that the temporal agent is encompassed within and for the more esoteric symbolism of immortality where the Ouroboros kills himself then brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself.
The Ouroboros archetype is the Predestination paradox imaginatively retold by Heinlein in ‘-All You Zombies-.’ You are everything you need. You are self-sufficient, self-made, self-creating. Anything outside of this perfect feed-back loop is inessential to your existence. Inessential and therefore unnecessary. So here we are right back where we started. Heinlein is clear. For him metaphysical solipsism is clearly evidenced by the contingency of the inessential characters that populate the bartender’s world of deterministic certainty and predetermined outcome.
But for me the idea of the self-created man/women that is central to the whole story goes much deeper, into the very psyche of American consciousness itself. A manifestation created by American history and its insatiable Frontier mythos and the ineluctable drive of The American Dream. When I read the line ‘I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?’ it struck me as the exact thing that Jay Gatsby could have said to his guests at any one of those frivolous parties that F.Scott Fitzgerald describes in ‘The Great Gatsby’ (1925).
There are many resonances in this undoubted Great American Novel, like the time-hauntedness of the whole narrative and the courageous but ultimately futile attempt by Gatsby to reconnect an earlier timeline to the present and create his own closed loop: ‘Can’t repeat the past?’ he cried incredulously. ‘Why of course you can!’ But there is one central theme of ‘The Great Gatsby’ which is strikingly similar to Heinlein’s evocation of self-creation and the Ouroboros motif: Jay Gatsby as the self-created man and archetype of American identity.
The transformation of James Gatz into Jay Gatsby begins with another myth. As a young boy his desire for something more had been influenced by a popular fictionalised version of the frontiersman – Hopalong Cassidy – the lone cowboy who rides the range meting out justice (Heinlein’s temporal agent?) Gatsby is aligned here with a number of historical figures who gained a deep hold on the American imagination and who contributed to The American Dream of success through individual effort and enterprise.
So much has been written about the Frontier recently ( I reference it myself in my previous review of ‘The End of Eternity’ ) as a major theme of American history and as a myth of the endless opportunities offered to those willing to brave this once New World and its application to the conquest of another new frontier-Space- and, I would add, its relevance to the conquest of Time. A myth which has operated as a powerful stimulus to the American imagination and reaches its apotheosis with the fully self-sustaining and self-reliant individual in Heinlein’s story.
However, The ‘Great Gatsby’ of course ends in tragedy. Jay Gatsby is murdered. His quest to turn back time and be reunited with his lost love, Daisy, is thwarted by events and by the acts of others (philosophical zombies?) Yet in ‘-All You Zombies-‘ there is a strong sense of the exact same tragic loss but this time her name is not Daisy, it is Jane. It is perhaps a loss greater than Gatsby’s as it will keep happening and happening for all eternity and there is nothing that can change this outcome.
Marc Barham
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