XPost: alt.fan.heinlein   
   From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 2 Dec 2025 17:21:08 -0000 (UTC), "Don"  wrote:   
      
   >Paul S Person wrote:   
      
      
      
   >Idiocy is in the eye of the beholder.   
      
   Whatever.   
      
      
      
   >Are ALL YOU ZOMBIES and THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF the sole SF self-sex   
   >stories tangled in time travel?   
   >   
   >Precedence does not imply provenance.   
   >   
   >Self-sex science fiction was first formulated by RAH. He predictably   
   >kept his narrative basic and bare bones by using only four time loop   
   >characters: Jane, the baby, the unmarried mother, and the bartender.   
   >    Gerrold embellishes by expanding his ensemble of time loop   
   >characters. Calculating the character count could prove difficult in   
   >the case of THE MAN WHO FOLDED HIMSELF.   
      
   I believe the precise answer is -- infinite. Possibly uncountable.   
      
   As to "--All You Zombies--", this is a short story, which explains its   
   shortness compared to /The Man Who Folded Himself/, which is a novel.   
          
   It was made into the film /Predestination/, which feels like a good   
   Heinlein story done exactly (I've never read the story so cannot say   
   how close they are). But, of course, adapting a short story to a film   
   is likely to follow the original better (unless, of course, the   
   filmmakers decide to go off in their own direction instead of doing   
   something so boring as actually telling the same story) than a novel   
   because there is enough screen time to include most if not all of the   
   short story.   
      
   As to the number of characters, I would say it has essentially /one/.   
   Although other characters exist (most prominently the Agency guy).   
   That, after all, is the point of the story. Or at least of the film.   
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)