Stories of Your Life and Others

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction / Chiang, Ted	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Science Fiction / Classic / Chiang, Ted	4-week checkout	Due 05-14-2024

Tower of Babylon -- Understand -- Division by zero -- Story of your life -- Seventy-two letters -- Evolution of human science -- Hell is the absence of God -- Liking what you see: a documentary.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

I wish Ted Chiang was prolific submitted by SurfGrape on July 12, 2015, 8:01am Ted Chiang writes rarely--perhaps one or two short stories a year. Those stories then go on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and all other other big awards in science fiction. Yes, the man is THAT talented. Collected here is the complete (up to now) body of his work. All of them are award winners. All of them are outstanding. Especially don't miss "Story of your Life," about a linguist who communicates with aliens, and by learning their language begins to experience time differently. It's a story that will stick with you.

Thought-provoking stories. submitted by keebs23 on June 16, 2017, 11:12pm Ted Chiang's writing is more lyrical than you'll find in average sci-fi collections. Expect elements of fantasy and an emphasis on human connections.

Superb Science Fiction submitted by Meginator on June 20, 2017, 10:41am This is one of the best collections of science fiction short stories that I have ever read, if not the best. "Story of Your Life" is absolutely superb; it is indescribably good and somehow creates an entire narrative around a hard sci-fi study of linguistics (of all subjects). The other stories are equally accomplished and will stick in your head as they challenge you to re-think the way you view the world. This is a must-read for fans of modern science fiction.

And if you don't like science fiction? Give this collection a shot and you may find yourself surprised by what a literary genius can do in the genre. Run, don't walk. This book is not to be missed.

Great for teen and up submitted by clessure on July 15, 2017, 1:02pm I gave this story collection to my teen reader who said it was "the best present" and then he asked me to read it so that we could talk about the stories together. Chiang provides great writing and thought provoking stories.

Digging into tangibles + taking ideas to their logical extremes submitted by terpsichore17 on July 16, 2019, 1:24pm Quite effective science fiction. Skirts the line between convincing science and magical realism, always making the topic under discussion (no matter how outlandish, metaphysical, or simply impossible) tangible, concrete, there to be plucked. Chiang makes stories out of engineering problems and mathematics and linguistics I didn't know anything about, but by golly if he can't draw these unknowns in enough detail to feel real.

re: Story of Your Life: an interesting treatment of free will and physics. And words: the idea that utterance is significant even if everyone knows what is going to be said? Damn, but it's lovely.

re: 72 letters: the notes on this were great. I love where this came from, even if it went...weird places.

re: Hell is the Absence of God: there's a bit about love of God being as obvious as 1+1=2, which is kind of amusing in the wake of "Division by Zero." There's also a bit about the shortcut leading Neil to the same destination as the conventional path, which is like a rearranging of the light particles in "Story of Your Life." I wonder if all Chiang's stories have this reshaping of ideas (a golem that walks in different ways)?

re: Liking What You See: a Documentary: This is really impressive to me because of all the different voices within it. Such convincing arguments on all sides. Reminds me of Harrison Bergeron, but less fatal and more modern/realistic. Is it odd to say I'm surprised it was written at least 17 years ago? It reads like social media posts today.