'All You Zombies'

Five Classic Stories

By: Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by: Spider Robinson

Featuring "All You Zombies", the basis for the movie Predestination

This collection from grand master Robert A. Heinlein includes five short stories sure to please science fiction fans everywhere. The title story tells the tale of a young man who meets a time-traveling bartender whose origins - and relation to the young man - are more complex and stranger than the Ouroboros ring on the barkeep's finger. In The Man Who Traveled in Elephants - one of both Heinlein and Spider Robinson's all-time favorite stories - we join a former traveling salesman on a bus. The man and his wife had once traveled with a host of imaginary animals searching for places to sell elephants.

"They" takes listeners inside a mental institution, where a man suffering from delusions has been confined. In "Our Fair City", a parking attendant named Pappy, a sentient whirlwind named Kitten, and a crusading reporter named Pete aim to take down their corrupt city government. Lastly, in "And He Built a Crooked House", a clever architect designs a house in the shape of the shadow of a tesseract, but it collapses through the fourth dimension when an earthquake shakes it into a more stable form.

©2013 Robert A. Heinlein (P)2014 Blackstone Audio

Nothing Like A Good Paradox To Spin Your Brain

This is a nice collection of five short stories by Heinlein. They are not, by any stretch, the philosophical behemoths that Heinlein is known for, but they are uniquely Heinleinian from the perspective of his cleverness and licentiousness. I think I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that RAH wrote 'All You Zombies' in a day, so just be prepared for an incomplete and not very deep story, yet it is still fantastic.

I think my favorite story was, 'And He Built A Crooked House,' based solely off the concept of originality; a house imploded on itself in the 4th dimension. RAH's description of a tesseract, despite his writing capability, still required me to look up a modern-day, computer-generated, models of various tesseracts because I had previously not know what one was.

The narration was great, but on "3x speed," it was unclear and jumbled together; I had to lower to "1.8x speed." This wasn't really an issue since the book is so short, but I don't understand the discrepancy between this audio book and 99% of the others I listen to at "3x."

Nostalgic

I read these stories when I was in high school, 1953. And again to my Grandson, 2010. I probably could locate the paper back copy that I think I have. I was a great listen for me.

Some neat concepts

fun and short scifi stories - entertaining to read with some neat ideas of reality

Early Heinlein

It is always enjoyable to read these short stories again. I especially enjoyed The Man who traveled in Elephants. The narrator does an excellent job portraying all characters‼️

Fun Heinlein, As Usual

5 Heinlein short stories, all entertaining, as usual. This author has such a WAY with both narrative and dialogue. Nothing is contrived or "pyshed" to be surprising or funny, and yet, it is. Heinlein's characters just POP like soap bubbles inflated with laughing gas.

Narrator was also brilliant and perfectly suited to the material.

Where did all you zombies come from

This book is amazing! It's all about time travel and the paradox that comes with it. The storytelling leads you towards the plot twists with little regard of what you thought was about to happen.

Nice Variety

Any additional comments?

This is the first Heinlein collection I've read/listened to, but it seems to be a great variety of entertaining stories with provocative thematic material.

Half and half

Some of the story's were good I bought this for all you zombies which was made into the movie predestination and is great the second story he built a house I think it was titled was really good and may have been what the idea for the movie cube and cube 2 hyper cube atleast there are parts of the story that reminded me of them the other 3 story's were alright but somewhat confusing

3 good ones, 2 lame ones

The first 3 stories are great and thought provoking. Don’t waste your time with the last 2

Disappointing For Heinlein

Any additional comments?

As a big fan of most of Heinlein's work, maybe I just came into this one with expectations a little too high...

By no means were the five stories in this small collection bad, but aside from the first story, none of them really made an impression with me.
Spider Robinson did a pretty damn good job of narrating the book, especially considering that he himself is an author and not an actor. But as I alluded to previously, the content itself just wasn't that great for him to work with.

If you LOVE Heinlein, you might want to add this book to your collection, but otherwise, I would pass on this one.

6.96 / 10.00