Arrival

Tower of Babylon - 4/5
The ending made it worth the read. Loved the twist.

Understand - 5/5
Best short story in this collection, hands down. Page turner I couldn't stop reading.

Division by Zero - 2/5
Here's the first stinker. Chiang tries to create a cosmic horror by math breakthrough but it's ridiculous and changes nothing about the reality of the universe.

Story of Your Life - 4/5
My all time favorite movie is based on this but I had a feeling that the short story would come short compared to it and I was right. Still solid and enjoyable.

Seventy-two Letters - 3/5
Weird one. Feel like a novel set in this world would fare better.

The Evolution of Human Science - 1/5
Thank god it's three pages long. You know, for fiction to be good it needs to make internal sense. The world author creates can't be a mix of garbled nonsense, there has to logic to it. There's none here.

Hell is the Absence of God - 2/5
Am I suppose to sympathize with a jealous prick that sends angels to kill and mutilate people as side effect to miracles and brainwashes some of them? Cuz the best part of this story was description of fallen angels - freedom and independence.

Liking What You See: A documentary - 1/5
I almost never give out one star ratings but I really struggled with this one and if it wasn't the last one in the book I'd probably just skip it. Not only is it dry and slow but it also goes against all of my moral and ethical principles. At the same time I feel like after wokists are done with racism and sexism they could very easily go for “lookism” in our real world as well. The issue is that author is biased towards this and actually states in his story note that he wants this to be a thing.

Yes, I know; a movie tie-in edition. But, I bought the book around the time the movie came out, and I loved that movie. And I quite like the movie-poster.

I own a lot of short story collections and anthologies. I don't read them enough. So, I made a bit of a project. I put a few short story collections in my reading pile and tried to read a couple of stories each week. This is the first one I finished.

Eight very well-written stories. I didn't love all of them, though they were all very clever, and quite impressive. I didn't dislike any of them.

My favourite story was definitely Story of Your Life, that inspired the movie. But I also really appreciated Seventy-Two Letters, Hell Is the Absence of God and Liking What You See: A Documentary.

I'm definitely interested in reading Exhalation.