Recommend me some sci-fi!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. Heinlein wrote the greatest time travel story ever, the gender-bending "All You Zombies", which has no zombies

He also wrote the second best time travel story: "By His Bootstraps".

Here's the link to the "All You Zombies" article but I really recommend reading the short story first before the article.

“ALL YOU ZOMBIES—”

by Robert A. Heinlein

Back in the 1950s the sophisticated editors of that sophisticated magazine Playboy asked Robert A. Heinlein for a story, an adult story, of course, and Heinlein sent along this eye-opening mind-bender. Turned out the editors of the bunny mag weren’t sophisticated enough to wrap their brains around “—All You Zombies—” and rejected the story, after which it saw publication in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which may have lacked a foldout but was sophisticated enough to see the story’s merits. So did Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig, who in 2014 made the story, with small changes, into a very effective movie, Predestination, well worth checking out.

2217 Time Zone V (EST) 7 Nov 1970 NYC–“Pop’s Place”: I was polishing a brandy snifter when the Unmarried Mother came in. I noted the time—10.17 p.m. zone five or eastern time November 7th, 1970. Temporal agents always notice time & date; we must.

The Unmarried Mother was a man twenty-five years old, no taller than I am, immature features and a touchy temper. I didn’t like his looks—I never had—but he was a lad I was here to recruit, he was my boy. I gave him my best barkeep’s smile.

Maybe I’m too critical. He wasn’t swish; his nickname came from what he always said when some nosy type asked him his line: “I’m an unmarried mother.” If he felt less than murderous he would add: “—at four cents a word. I write confession stories.”

... {the full story}