Stories of your life and others by Ted Chiang

Stories of your life and others by Ted Chiang

If you've read my review of the Paper Menagerie, you know that I confused two Chinese-American authors, to my great shame, but having thoroughly enjoyed the one I thought was Ted Chiang (Ken Liu) I then went and bought the book I intended to buy which was Ted Chiang's Stories of your life and others. I didn't realise that the short stories collected in this book were all 20 to 30 years old, but I don't think it matters much, because the science in Chiang's science fiction is much more the conceptual and mathematical type than it is the technology we normally associate with science-fiction. Chiang is devilishly clever, and as such each of the stories contained in there is a marvel of ingenuity. I think however that that cleverness occasionally diminishes the impact of his stories, for two reasons: first, Chiang starts with awesome concepts, but doesn't necessarily know how to end them satisfyingly; second, the intelligence of his constructions goes against the emotional impact, and to me some of these stories just felt very cold. That said, a few of them stand out. Stories of your life, which was adapted by Denis Villeneuve as the movie Arrival is one of the few that has a strong human and emotional component, in addition to being terribly clever. The resolution is actually a lot more powerful than in the movie, but I can see why it would have been really tricky to pull off in the movie. Liking what you see: a documentary is also super clever, but it's about soft sciences and humans, and thus very impactful as well. These two are a cut above the rest. Seventy Two Letters, while less satisfying narratively, is so clever that I'll pass it as well, I really enjoyed this 19th century alternative reality where the principles of the Kabbalah form the basis of scientific progress. If I'm honest, I enjoyed something about all of the other stories as well, nothing is shabby in there. But so soon after having marveled at the emotional power of Liu's short stories, I felt this collection was lacking on that front. Still, well worth a read.