Stories of Your Life and Others

This has been on my to read list for a while but I never bothered since I'm not usually a fan of anthology style short story books. However, Ted's writing style is intriguing even disregarding an overuse of “I make tangential scientific connections to add meat to my story” style. Some of the stories that went longer imo should have been cut short, especially the last one. However some of the ones I think had a good freedom of motion to evolve into something bigger were randomly cut short, perhaps not to up the disbelief factor too much. Overall an okay read since I'm not a big fan of the genre, however the writing was captivating and some elements were truly well thought out.

As with all short story collections, you're bound to enjoy some more than others. My favorites, which I consider to be 5(+) star reads, are Tower of Babylon, Story of Your Life, Seventy-Two Letters, and Hell is the Absence of God.

I did find one of the main character's reaction in Divide by Zero to be annoying enough to detract from what was otherwise a fascinating concept.

Even though, these are all excellent examples of why I love science fiction so much. Not only is there a lot of imagination, but every one of them causes you to think, to look at things from a different perspective, and you find yourself thinking back to the ideas and concepts long after you've finished.

All these short stories are so full of imagination and questions for humanity. When the weak link is the titular story (a story that is beloved by nearly everyone, so I may be the odd man out here) - and even then that is great, the collection is quality.

Anyways here are my reviews on each story:

Babylon - HOLY COW. That was an awesome story. Even though it was a familiar Biblical story, the way it was told was so fascinating and tense. Brought life to a familiar tale. 10/10

Understanding - Like Flowers for Algernon, but on crack with supervillains. It was good - just a bit too long and loses the novelty of a normal man becoming smarter and gets too absurd. I don't know if it was supposed to be funny or not, and I also don't know what the message was. But it was fun. 8/10


Division by 0 - yeah... probably the worst story so far. Lovecraftian Math that drives someone insane? It had some interesting moments of empathy for someone losing their sanity, but overall, this was just not that interesting. Good ending though. 5/10

Story of Your Life: the movie adaptation is ever so slightly better. So much of this story was just bogged down with describing the logistics and the sequences of the child were a bit too long. It's just good. Don't know why this is the story that got the most attention, but I still enjoy the concept. 7/10”

72 Letters - This was a good story, it is just dense enough that the concept is intriguing but it works well as a thriller too. Awesome ending. 8/10 (Evolution of Human Science - makes for good flavor text for an entire world, but it's a 5 minute short story elaborating on a concept from the previous story. Basically an epilogue)

Hell is the Absence of God - 10/10. Scientifically accurate religious miracles and still maintaining the mysteries of religion? Amazing stuff. This is personally my favorite story thus far and probably one of my favorite stories of all time. Just all around really interesting in how miracles would have implications in the real world and how complex it would be to deal with them

Liking What You See - really interesting concept and it's mostly just a giant “What If?” if people developed a way to remove the brain's ability to see attractiveness. And while it's light on story, it's up to you to think if this is a dystopia or a utopian technology that will dramatically improve society. 9/10