[1] "By His Bootstraps" was reprinted in Heinlein's 1959 collection The Menace From Earth, and in several subsequent anthologies,[2] and is now available in at least two audio editions.
In 1952, Bob Wilson locks himself in his room to finish his graduate thesis on a mathematical aspect of metaphysics, using the concept of time travel as a case in point.
Bob does not care much at this point whether his thesis (that time travel is impossible) is valid; he is desperate for sleep and just wants to get it done and typed up by the deadline the next day to become an academic, since he thinks academia beats working for a living.
Diktor explains that humans in the future are handsome, cultured in a primitive fashion, but much more docile and good natured than their ancestors.
Without much memory of what happened before, he reenacts the scene, this time from the other point of view, and calling himself "Joe" so as not to confuse his earlier self.
While setting the Gate, he finds two things beside the controls: his hat, and a notebook containing translations between English words and the language of Diktor's slaves.
He then visits a woman he had been dating, but has begun to dislike, and has his way with her, smugly intending to never see her again, and leaving his hat in her apartment.
After returning to the future, he adjusts the Gate to send himself back to a point ten years earlier, to give himself time to establish himself as the local chieftain.
The experience is so traumatizing that he runs away screaming, for the creature feels such sadness and other deep emotions that a 20th-century go-getter like Bob cannot bear it.
Floyd C. Gale of Galaxy Science Fiction said of "By His Bootstraps", "In 18 years I haven't seen its equal" as a temporal-paradox story.
[4] Philosopher David Lewis considered "By His Bootstraps" and "'—All You Zombies—'" to be examples of "perfectly consistent" time travel stories.
[5] Stating that it and other Heinlein time-travel stories "force the reader into contemplations of the nature of causality and the arrow of time", Carl Sagan listed "By His Bootstraps" as an example of how science fiction "can convey bits and pieces, hints and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the reader".