Reviews - Stories of Your Life and Others

5.48k reviews for:

Stories of Your Life and Others

Ted Chiang

4.21 AVERAGE

ethanaustin's review against another edition

5.0

Every single story was a 5/5. Cannot believe the literary talent of Ted Chiang. It’s a shame he has only 2 books published. This is a must must must read for people who like hard sci fi and academia

73y1a's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

boomt's review against another edition

3.0

There is no question Chiang is brilliant. Each story considers profound questions about science, religion, language, and other themes. At an intellectual level, this is some of the best science fiction I have read. However, his characters are often one-dimensional leaving many stories feeling lifeless. "The Story of Your Life" is the most compelling story in the collection, as it considers how the strange syntax of an alien language reflects a radically different world-view from our own. (I hope Arrival, the upcoming movie based on the story, does not twist it into a standard Hollywood alien invasion narrative.) "The Evolution of Human Science" considers a future in which artificial intelligence pursues scientific investigation beyond the limits of human understanding and the varying human responses to that future. Fascinating, but it is a three page sketch rather than a story. I recommend these stories if you like SciFi to tease your mind, but personally, I look for more.

chicokc's review against another edition

3.75

challenging hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Y el libro es un conjunto de cuentos, ocho en total. Están acomodados conforme los fue publicando. Por lo tanto, el libro es un compendio de cuentos. De distintas extensiones y todos en sí de ciencia ficción o fantasía.
Si les dijera que es un libro sencillo, les mentiría. Es complicado en algunas partes, en algunos temas. De repente toca un poco de temas matemáticos, pero no se asusten, no es primordial analizar todos esos problemas para disfrutar de ellos.

heysirha's review against another edition

3.0

Story of Your Life and Others is a sci fi anthology, encompassing a diverse range of what one would call “sci-fi”. I was prompted to read this book after I watched the movie Arrival, which was absolutely mind blowing to say the least. There’s an unexpectedly large number of religious references/themes, and a decent amount of hard science which I appreciate! Most of the worldbuilding is extremely fast paced (possibly due to the book being an anthology) or nonexistent and because of that some content was confusing. Overall, it’s more spiritual and speculative than I expected, and I was disappointed. I didn’t finish the last story as well because it was excruciatingly boring.

The only stories that stood out to me were “Liking What You See: A Documentary” and “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” The first one is about a technology that eliminates pretty privilege, and the second one is just a super wholesome fable/allegory that has a time traveling twist. They were quite incredible; I wholly recommend them. If you want to read this book you should just skip around and read what interests, you instead of wasting precious time and effort by reading everything.

aroden's review against another edition

4.25

Stories of Your Life was genuinely a 5 star story for me and overall the stories in this anthology all dealt with really interesting concepts, but I think I still prefer Exhalations in terms of the writing.