By His Bootstraps
by Robert A. Heinlein
Bob Wilson, Ph.D. student, throws himself 30,000 years into the future, where he tries to
figure out what began this whole adventure.
Evan Zweifel gave me a copy of this magazine as a present!
Wait a minute now—he was under no compulsion. He was sure of that. Everything he did
and said was the result of his own free will. Even if he didn’t remember the script,
there were some things that he knew “Joe” hadn’t said.
“Mary had a little lamb,” for example. He would recite a nursery rhyme and get off
this damned repetitive treadmill. He opened his mouth—
“By His Bootstraps” by Robert A. Heinlein, Astounding, October 1941.