Stories of Your Life and Others
Ratings478
Average rating4.3
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.
2025 Reading Challenge ~ [1/12]
My first read of the year turned out to be a delightful surprise. “Stories of Your Life and Others” strongly reminded me of Borges, both in style and intellectual ambition, which was definitely a bonus point for me.
Chiang truly shines when he ventures into religious, philosophical, or metaphysical territory. The way he describes impossible places and objects is just a joy to experience. “Tower of Babylon,” a perfect example of this, is hands down one of the best short stories I've ever read.
His stylistic versatility is also quite refreshing. Each story has its own well-defined tone, particular rhythm, and unique character that makes it quickly distinguishable from the others in the collection. For the reader, this translates into more variety and, consequently, more entertainment.
When it comes to “hard” science fiction, I have mixed feelings, though this might be due to my limited experience with the genre. At times it gets dense and perhaps a bit too obsessive with technical details. I get the commitment to accuracy, but it can be overwhelming.
All in all, this is an excellent collection and a wonderful gateway into the work of an author who, I'm sure, has plenty to offer to lovers of fantasy and science fiction with philosophical and metaphysical approaches.
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?
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
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.
לפחות עבורי, קשה למצוא סיפורי מד”ב שמרגישים חדשניים באמת. סיפורים שלא עוסקים בנושאים שנחרשו שוב ושוב ע”י מאות סופרים בעבר.
טד צי'אנג מצליח בכך באופן פנומנלי. כמעט כל הסיפורים מרגישים חדשניים, והחדשות היא מהותית ועמוקה. רעיונות שלא חשבתי עליהם ואפילו לא שמעתי עליהם, ואם הם כן עברו אצלי בראש, לא מפותחים ומפורטים כמו אצלו.
מומלץ בחום לחובבי מד”ב שמרגישים תקועים קצת עם שחזורים חדשים של רעיונות ישנים.
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
Overall, a great collection of short stories. As a linguist, I was hesitant to read “Story of Your Life”, because many (most?) scifi authors grossly misinterpret linguistics. But, I really enjoyed that story—easily 5/5. It is Sapir-Whorf (ugh), but in an interesting and (crucially) non-racist way, and coupled with ideas (probably not the right word) from physics; it was an interesting combination. I also really enjoyed “Hell is the Absence of God” and “Seventy Two Letters”.
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.
Not as strong a set of short stories as his later collection (Exhalation), but still interesting what-if scenarios playing on bibilical/theistic and scifi concepts
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
Há algum tempo eu não sentia essa vontade de terminar capítulos e histórias. Navegar por essa tapeçaria de Ted Chiang é conhecer desconhecidos inimagináveis e ainda assim sentir que tudo é palpável e potente e real.
Tenho minhas favoritas, mas cada história, apesar de muito diferentes, foi notavelmente criada pela mesma mente genial que parte de uma ideia pontual, observada ou imaginada, expande ela por uma perspectiva logico-científica e cria um pedaço de mundo perfeito pra receber uma história sempre muito humana e instigante.
Além de todas as histórias balancearem muito bem ciência fantástica e dramas humanos, o livro como um todo também é muito bem organizado, sequenciando contos com ambientações, narrativas e estruturas muito diferentes, o que deu, a meu ver, um ótimo ritmo à coletânea. Ainda sobre narrativa e estrutura, comunicação entre forma e conteúdo do texto sempre me encantam, então escrever memórias em tempo futuro num conto e emular uma argumentação matemática ao longo da estrutura de outro foram alguns dos pontos altos da leitura pra mim.
Fui fisgado por Arrival e Story of Your Life, e conhecer mais da ficção de Chiang foi uma ótima experiência. Com certeza lerei mais no futuro.
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 - 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.
This short story collection was a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed the “Tower of Babylon,” “Hell in the Absence of God,” and “Liking what you see,” but the rest fell flat. The ones I dislike focused more on the convoluted scientific concepts they were exploring and had rather flat characters, whereas the ones I had an easier time with felt more grounded in human issues.
The writing is not bad, the stories sort of have an intellectual element to them. The author has a good understanding of story structure, philosophy and human psychology I guess.
But nonetheless, these are just short stories, and by the time it takes to make them interesting, when that happens at all, they are over.
Read 4:33 / 10:23 44%
Just like the more recent Ted Chiang short story collection I read recently, Exhalation, this is a mix of beautifully told stories with scientific/philosophical leanings (Tower of Babylon, Story of Your Life, Hell is the Absence of God) and some other stories that feel like term papers with a bit of a narrative wrapping (Understand, Division by Zero, Seventy-Two Letters).
I think it's totally worth reading for the former stories, and the latter aren't bad either, just can become tedious or hard to follow at times.
4.5/5
A thought-provoking and dense collection of sci-fi short stories. As a brief note up-front, there is nothing explicitly tying these stories together - each tale stands alone in its own unique setting and with new characters. However, you can expect each story to feature strong internal consistency and distinct but open-ended social discussion, with a lesser focus on individual people.
Chiang's writing style at first seems to conform to hard sci-fi conventions, where a plot is driven by or has a new technological development (or novum) based in known science principles. It makes sense that Chiang has a computer science degree, but I was honestly surprised that he did not have an even more academic background. This is due to the in-depth explanations and ingenuous utilisations of often high-level scientific and mathematical concepts featured in all his stories. When the technology or concept seems to be mundane, the story takes over with some intriguing outcomes and effects on individuals explored.
This is also why I believe Chiang's writing often falls into the soft sci-fi classification as well, which explores societal aspects and human emotions in the foreground of an alternative world (or alterity). There are two stories especially in Story of Your Life and Others which are more fantastical than sci-fi (Tower of Babylon and Hell is the Absence of God), but all the stories in both his collections have some sort of social commentary being explored, with some more on the surface than others.
This is Chiang's strength, as he links deep scientific connections with philosophical discussions in often brain-breaking stories. As a reader, I was surprised at how much time I needed to complete his works. Not only are you meeting new characters and a unique setting, but you have to understand and then keep track of the technology's implications as well as the narrative - and this introductory phase is repeated for each story! This is not at all a knock on Chiang's writing style or the collection, but an acknowledgement that this cannot be approached with the same reading style as that of a typical novel.
I certainly enjoyed the mind-blowing aspect of his storytelling, and the diversity of ideas featured. From fables, world-views and existentialism to CIA action, agency and choice, each story was written slightly differently and distinct in its purpose. After completing the Exhalation collection I'll be moving on to some longer-form sci-fi (which removes the breaks mentioned above), but I whole-heartedly recommend even just a few of Chiang's stories to a curious sci-fi/ fantasy reader. If you do decide to read all of his works, it shouldn't be a time-consuming task but will likely require short breaks between stories so that you are able to absorb the narrative and social deliberation displayed.
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.
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.