Stories of Your Life and Others

Review
I'd say that despite my 3 star rating (obtained by averaging the individual ratings for each story), I didn't care too much for this collection as a whole. This is the first I've read by Ted Chiang and based on these stories, his writing just isn't for me. I likely won't read anything else by him.

This collection is heavy on the science and really heavy on religious concepts. The later being something I just have very little interest in reading about. The stories I liked best didn't focus on religion, or if they did it wasn't apparent to me.

That doesn't mean it's bad. Far from it. I doesn't mean his ideas are bad either. Just that they didn't click for me.

Well except one. I really enjoyed the title story “Story of your Life” quite a lot. A few of the others were good in some parts but not in others, and some were a slog to get through.

Ratings
- Tower of Babylon - 2.5 stars
- Understand - 3.5 stars
- Division by Zero - 2.5 stars
- Story of Your Life - 4.5 stars
- Seventy Two Letters - 3.5 Stars
- The Evolution of Human Science - no rating
- Hell is the Absence of God - 1 star
- Liking What You See - 3.5 stars

These stories really stick with you. What a treasure of a collection! “Story of your Life” will definitely stick with me forever in a way the movie (also amazing) simply will not. This collection was actually not as hardcore sci-fi as I thought. Much of it was a meditation on the power of language, with science fiction being the tool he uses to discuss these ideas in. I highly recommend this collection to any lover of fiction, genre aside.
Except the math ones. The math ones are very mathy. I liked them, but they are probably not as universally appreciated as ones like Tower of Babylon or the others.

Don't know what else to say except that I really like Ted Chiang's writing, his exploration of science and religion and humanity and philosophy... My intelligence has been thoroughly tested and I'll definitely have to reread some of these short stories at a later time to fully get the depth of them. Which isn't a bad thing at all.

Ted's short stories are as close to perfect as I can imagine - nobody packs this much heart and imagination so efficiently

Although I am not a great fan of short stories, my experience has been that speculative fiction can be an exemplar of the positives of the format.

I enjoyed a lot reading Mr Chiang's stories - at times very thought provoking, at others simply fun to read.

borzasztó körülményesen és irtó unalmasan ír ez a faszi. jók az ötletei, de se füle, se farka nincs egyiknek se.
az arrival elég jó volt, de lehet, azt is inkább csak a film tette élvezhetővé, amit igazából sokkal jobbra írtak át.

would've been 4 stars if the last story wasn't so bad

Una visión particular de la ciencia, la humanidad, lo que nos hace lo que somos y la interacción de todos estos sistemas como visión holística de nuestra especie.

Recomendable, a pesar de que no todos los aspectos e historias son completamente interesantes.

Nice selection of short works by Ted Chiang. Mind-expanding stuff it is; close reading required.
(The movie Arrival was inspired by Story of Your Life.)

Tower of Babylon- 6/10
Understand - 5/10
Division by Zero - 2/10
72 Letters- 6.5/10
Stories of Your Life - 6/10
Random 3 page nonsense story- 1/10
Hell Is The Absence of God: 6/10
Liking What You See: 9.5/10

Total rating: 6/10


I am sad

Wonderful.

Stories with ideas you don't just consider for a moment, but return to again and again.

What if you could remember your future? What if belief is not just a psychological violence but a physical one as well?

If I knew this, I'd forgotten it, so I was happy to discover that the story “Story of Your Life,” was the basis for the film “Arrival.” Probably my favorite film of the last few years. Imagine a language that requires knowledge of the future in order to be properly contextualized.

Loved it.

What a ride this book is! It's like someone wrote up episodes of Black Mirror in prose. I got around to eventually reading this after watching Arrival, and also the repeated recommendations on the Tim Ferriss Show. Each story is based on a central concept, building a world of myriad possibilities. These get your head churning like no other.

2.5

Only the second book I've not been able to finish. I can't stay awake. It's a textbook disguised as a collection of stories. No humour. No character development. No heart.
Interesting ideas written by someone that fails to capture my imagination.
I enjoyed Babylon, but everything else felt pretentious.
Sorry. Highly rated, but for reasons I don't understand

Wow! My mind was blown and my thoughts engaged numerous times. I almost regret having read through it straight way: perhaps it would have been better had I stopped and started, giving myself time to digest what I had read. But no; I could not stop, I had to keep going. The stories are as compelling as they are thought-provoking.

The title story “The story of your life,” which was made into the movie “Arrival,” is relentless with its question, “What would you do differently, or would you do anything differently, if you knew the future and the results of your decisions?” “The Tower of Babel” twisted my world a little, while “Division by Zero” made me feel exactly the feeling I usually try to avoid when questioning and doubting the biggest and most important faith of my life. “Hell is the Absence of God” makes me glad, so very very glad, that my theology is not that of a child, thinking that the world really should work the way the one in this story does. What hell that would be! And at the end of it all, “Liking What You See: A Documentary” instigated a little bit of a smack-down fight in my inner conversation.

It made me think, sometimes uncomfortably, and the structures and the writing are at times quite beautiful. So all in all, I rate this a highly successful book.

Impressive collection of scifi short stories, exploring how different world-views can affect our lives. They feel like mathematical puzzles, yet they are brought to live with the characters that inhabit them.

Gave up after 3.5 stories. Really enjoyed “Story of your Life” and I can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the stories I did finish, but it was more hard sci-fi and lacked enough emotion to make me want to finish the collection.

When I was in high school, a catholic school, I asked my religion teacher (social justice, I think, which is interesting in retrospect because of how so many Christians currently treat the concept as demonic) a question about hell: “if Satan was cast out of heaven for wanting to be greater than God, why would he make Hell a horrible place—wouldn't he want to make it the best place he could?” And the answer I got has stuck with me for twenty years, despite my agnosticism bordering on atheism: “God is the source of all goodness. No matter how good Satan would want to make Hell, Hell would remain a place out of God's light and thus devoid of any goodness.” It's compelling and, frankly, terrifying. And honestly I've never heard it discussed like that again, until one of the stories in this book. The story notes at the end also add some really interesting context to that story.

Arrival was one of my favorite movies in years, so I had to pick up this book, which features the short story it was based on. That story is very different in literary form, but just as good, and the other stories approach that same level of excellence. I especially love the last story, about a scientific advance that allows people not to see beauty and ugliness in faces. Really thought provoking. I'd definitely give it a go.

Highly recommend this collection to anyone and everyone.

My first foray into the mind of Ted Chiang. What a fascinating time. A mix of stories that stepped back and forth over the border into science fiction.

A group of miners are recruited to dig into the vault over the Earth and into heaven at the top of the tower of Babel.

A man recovers from a catastrophic event and finds he has enhanced powers of intellect, sufficient for him to become a fascination to scientists and a threat to the govt.

A linguist is asked to help negotiate conversations with aliens, only to discover that she is having memories of things that have not yet happened. The movie Arrival is based on this story.

In an alternate, almost seampunk, history a team of developers make golems, clay automatons that are powered by cabbalistic names impressed upon them.

Imagine a world where angels make regular appearances in frightening events of power that leave some people dead or injured and others miraculously healed. Would you go chasing them?

And what if you could turn off the feature in your brain that makes some people look attractive so that you could then treat all people equally?

Read “Story of  My Life” short story and LOVED it. Book adapted to movie: Arrival. 

Every story in this collection left its distinct aftertaste. I didn't find the style mind-bending. However, his plots are strong, really really strong.

Understand is a science fiction novelette by American writer Ted Chiang, published in 1991. It was nominated for the 1992 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and won the 1992 Asimov's Reader Poll.

The story follows a man who is given an experimental drug to heal brain damage caused by anoxia after he nearly drowns. The drug regenerates his damaged neurons and has the unintended side effect of exponentially improving his intellect and motor skills. As he gets smarter and smarter, he is pursued by several government agencies and eventually receives a message from—and then enters into conflict with—another super-intelligent test subject.

Leon's superbrain learns phenomenally quickly and remembers faultlessly, so he can accomplish in hours what “normals” would struggle to achieve in weeks, months, or a lifetime. Everything is intuitive, without conscious learning, he's never indecisive, and “No matter what I study, I see patterns”. It's equivalent to time dilation.

He doesn't get physically stronger, but he is more co-ordinated and more aware and in control of his body. For example, her can control heart rate, kidney function and nutrient absorption. His ability to read body language, subtext, and pheromones seem telepathic.

Well written and thought provoking. Recommended.

Buy a copy here.

Short story anthology. I really loved Ted's other book of short stories so I decided to give this one a read. These contain his earlier works (from the 90s) as well as the short story that inspired the acclaimed sci-fi movie Arrival.

I think he's definitely improved in his storytelling over time, so some of his earlier work is boring in comparison (one was very mathy and about how 1+1=2, another where a guy became a super genius and then it was just explaining how he was outwitting the government, felt kind of dry).

The movie Arrival I enjoyed more than the actual short story as well, it had more of an emotional impact but definitely big kudos for inspiring such an awesome movie.

The last couple were the best. Like one where all of humankind technically already “exists” in an unborn state, because if you zoomed in on sperm close enough, you could see the sperm for its children, and so on (sounds stupid but I think it's partially based on what people used to think). Also one where angels literally walk the earth and people chase them around like storm seekers chase after tornados, often with dangerous consequences.

I'll give this one a 4 overall since it does have some good stories.

I really liked Story of Your Life, Babylon, and Hell is the Absence of God, but Understand and the math-related one really fell flat for me; I just didn't fit the story engaging or the characters interesting.

What is there to say about Ted Chiang that hasn't been said already? Fantastic book — highly recommend reading Gwern's discussion of the different stories