Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiang
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From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times).Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of show more aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic.
Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival. show less
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Some might say (I think I said this myself in my review of his second collection, Exhalation) that Ted Chiang writes hard sf. I don't think that's true per se, because I don't think Chiang is always concerned with rigorous science. Rather, I think what Chiang is interested in is rigorous extrapolation. Given a counterfactual idea, he wants to explore exactly how it would play out, no matter how fanciful the original idea is. Such an approach is fundamental to, for example, "Hell Is the Absence of God," which is based around the question "what if people's belief really did send them to heaven or hell, and we knew it to be factually true?" But Chiang's extrapolations aren't there just to be there; Chiang is also really good at that show more target="_top">Miévillian doubling effect, where the story is both a really detailed extrapolation of another world, and tells us something about our own world—in the case of "Hell Is the Absence of God," he explores the operation of faith, for example. (Across his whole oeuvre, I think Chiang does this best in Exhalation's "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," which is both a really thoughtful take on how we might make genuinely intelligent AI, and a moving metaphor for the difficulties of parenting.)
Honestly, though, I found "Hell Is the Absence of God" more intellectually interesting than genuinely moving, which is probably the trap Chiang most often falls into. (Again, Chiang doesn't write hard sf, but it is definitely a fault hard can have.) On other occasions, Chiang doesn't quite land the metaphoric resonance of his sfnal idea; the core conceit of "Division by Zero" ended up coming across as a stretch. Still, Chiang even at his weakest is always attempting to do something interesting, and I think it's the kind of collection where one reader's weak story will be another reader's favorite. (The only story I flat out disliked was "Understand," a take on one of my least-favorite sf tropes, the guy who becomes a super-genius.)
For me, the two best stories in the book were "Story of Your Life" and "Tower of Babylon." The former justly gets a lot of praise. There's an interesting sfnal concept about time and perception given here (the gimmick here is about Fermat's principle, not the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis like in the film), married to a strong meditation on the kids of decisions parents must inevitably make, along with some disturbing implications about free will. Really cleverly done and told.
But I also really liked "Tower of Babylon," which essentially takes a Babylonian conception of the universe as literally true. What if there was a physical firmament in the sky, and you could build a miles-high tower that went up to it? Chiang explores this idea in a lot of ways, making it feel real with lots of small logistical details, in a story that at the same time is about faith and what it gets people to do and how it works. (I found it had much more of interest to say about faith than "Hell Is the Absence.") show less
Honestly, though, I found "Hell Is the Absence of God" more intellectually interesting than genuinely moving, which is probably the trap Chiang most often falls into. (Again, Chiang doesn't write hard sf, but it is definitely a fault hard can have.) On other occasions, Chiang doesn't quite land the metaphoric resonance of his sfnal idea; the core conceit of "Division by Zero" ended up coming across as a stretch. Still, Chiang even at his weakest is always attempting to do something interesting, and I think it's the kind of collection where one reader's weak story will be another reader's favorite. (The only story I flat out disliked was "Understand," a take on one of my least-favorite sf tropes, the guy who becomes a super-genius.)
For me, the two best stories in the book were "Story of Your Life" and "Tower of Babylon." The former justly gets a lot of praise. There's an interesting sfnal concept about time and perception given here (the gimmick here is about Fermat's principle, not the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis like in the film), married to a strong meditation on the kids of decisions parents must inevitably make, along with some disturbing implications about free will. Really cleverly done and told.
But I also really liked "Tower of Babylon," which essentially takes a Babylonian conception of the universe as literally true. What if there was a physical firmament in the sky, and you could build a miles-high tower that went up to it? Chiang explores this idea in a lot of ways, making it feel real with lots of small logistical details, in a story that at the same time is about faith and what it gets people to do and how it works. (I found it had much more of interest to say about faith than "Hell Is the Absence.") show less
He’s a really singular author, balancing precise, analytical, dispassionate worldbuilding with human characters who yearn and suffer. Lots of interesting concepts (an optional brain modification that prevents you from judging if a person is attractive or not, Victorian scientists and artists who attach names to automata to imbue them with specific physical abilities and the study of nomenclature is part science part religion part philosophy). I got more of a kick out of the new Exhalation collection though.
Superb. Amazing collection of really inventive and imaginative science fiction stories. All of them are clever, all of them have some relevance to modern life, all of them branch out in an unusual and clever manner. Some are of course better than others, but even the least good of the stories is still much better than so many others I've read.
It's very difficult to review collections of short stories, especially one covering such diverse themes as this. The title 'Story of your Life' was recently adapted into a film, and I can see how that would have worked although I haven't seen it. Aliens have arrived on earth, but communication has not been achieved until your heroine changes how she sees the world. Many of the other stories sort show more of follow a similar theme - changing your view of how you see religion, death, fashion etc. The title story is great, but some of the others are probably even better, 'Liking what you see:A Documentary' is my favourite. A series of interviews with college students leading up to a vote on whether or not to apply a mental block against physical beauty. This is true of all the stories - the science is hand wavy. It's there to provide a concept, and a context not for rigorous understanding of the physical universe we live - and yet even better, as far as I could tell, none of the "Laws of Nature" we know about have broken. There's no FTL etc.
Some of the best SF I've read in a long time. Thought provoking, unique, clever, relevant, fun and well written. What more could you ask for? I just wish he'd write a novel, or a LOT more stories. show less
It's very difficult to review collections of short stories, especially one covering such diverse themes as this. The title 'Story of your Life' was recently adapted into a film, and I can see how that would have worked although I haven't seen it. Aliens have arrived on earth, but communication has not been achieved until your heroine changes how she sees the world. Many of the other stories sort show more of follow a similar theme - changing your view of how you see religion, death, fashion etc. The title story is great, but some of the others are probably even better, 'Liking what you see:A Documentary' is my favourite. A series of interviews with college students leading up to a vote on whether or not to apply a mental block against physical beauty. This is true of all the stories - the science is hand wavy. It's there to provide a concept, and a context not for rigorous understanding of the physical universe we live - and yet even better, as far as I could tell, none of the "Laws of Nature" we know about have broken. There's no FTL etc.
Some of the best SF I've read in a long time. Thought provoking, unique, clever, relevant, fun and well written. What more could you ask for? I just wish he'd write a novel, or a LOT more stories. show less
What a surprising gem of a book. I loved how most of the stories tweak some foundational underpinning of what it means to be human and explores how that change would play out. I also really enjoyed the cadence of several stories as well. The short, couple paragraph vignettes made it surprising easy to bounce around some of the ideas he was exploring in my own head.
These eight short stories and novellas each encapsulate a fascinating "what if", play it out in a satisfying short story, and include interesting notes that give the reader insight into Chiang's ideas. They're so different from each other that it's hard to review as a whole, but each one left me so invigorated, keeping me thinking about it long after I turned the last page.
"The Story of Your Life" was made into the movie "The Arrival" (which now, of course, I have to see), and I really loved the use of the future tense. I thought it was just brilliantly conceived and so consistently used that it really worked. "Seventy-two Letters" I didn't remember, but now that I look back on my past reading, I see that I had read and really liked it show more in the Steampunk collection edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. (In fact, in 2010 I said, and I quote "I want to look for more by Ted Chiang" - ten years later, I finally have.) The final story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary" was the inspiration for Ken Liu's "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary". This was another of my favorites, and really made me wonder - if there was a technology that allowed us to turn off our response to beautiful people and see their personalities and characters more clearly, would I want it? There was not a clunker in the bunch, and I'm only sorry that now I've read all of his collections. show less
"The Story of Your Life" was made into the movie "The Arrival" (which now, of course, I have to see), and I really loved the use of the future tense. I thought it was just brilliantly conceived and so consistently used that it really worked. "Seventy-two Letters" I didn't remember, but now that I look back on my past reading, I see that I had read and really liked it show more in the Steampunk collection edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. (In fact, in 2010 I said, and I quote "I want to look for more by Ted Chiang" - ten years later, I finally have.) The final story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary" was the inspiration for Ken Liu's "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary". This was another of my favorites, and really made me wonder - if there was a technology that allowed us to turn off our response to beautiful people and see their personalities and characters more clearly, would I want it? There was not a clunker in the bunch, and I'm only sorry that now I've read all of his collections. show less
This collection includes the inspiration for the film “The Arrival” as well as many others that juggle big ideas with a philosophical approach. What if we could get rid of “lookism” (judging people by outward appearance)? If a man’s wife dies and he wants to believe in God, but only so he can be with her for eternity, is that enough to get him into heaven? If you build the Tower of Babel forever, what is at the top? What would you become if you took a drug to increase your brain usage? So much of Chiang’s work is looking at the world around him and wondering “what if?”. Some impacted me more than others, but each story made me feel like I was stretching my understanding. My only complaint is that his writing is more show more driven by cerebral quandaries than the heart, so they felt a bit disconnected from emotion. I particularly loved "Tower of Babylon", "Understand", "Story of Your Life", and "Hell Is the Absence of God". show less
This is one of the most astonishing collections of short stories I've ever read. Ted Chiang seems to be something of a universal genius, writing about a wide variety of different subjects - theology, philosophy, sociology, linguistics - with equal ease and authority. This may be because all of the stories express the difficulties of living in a world full of uncertainty, uncertainties that aren't alleviated by scientific advances but are often worsened by them. A brilliant collection.
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Author Information
35+ Works 12,250 Members
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Contains
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- La tour de Babylone
- Original title
- Stories of your life and others
- Alternate titles
- Arrival
- Original publication date
- 2002-07
- People/Characters
- Hillalum; Leon Greco; Renee Norwood; Peter Fabrisi; Louise Banks; Gary Donnelly (show all 10); Robert Stratton; Neil Fisk; Janice Reilly; Ethan Mead
- Related movies
- Arrival (2016 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For Brian Chiang and Jenna Felice
In memory of
Brian Chiang
and
Jenna Felice. - First words
- Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days' journey to walk from one end to the other.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But it's something we have to deal with now.
- Publisher's editor
- Nielsen Hayden, Patrick
- Blurbers
- Brin, David; Diaz, Junot; Link, Kelly; Harrison, Harry; Doctorow, Cory; Bear, Greg (show all 7); Butler, Octavia E.
- Original language*
- English US
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3603.H53
- Disambiguation notice
- The movie Arrival is based on the novella Story of your Life, not this anthology.
This collection contains eight (8) stories. Please do not combine with a similar collection that has a different set of stori... (show all)es.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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