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4.21 AVERAGE
4.21 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Smart, clear, and thought provoking stories. A few of the stories were a little unrefined and scientifically dense making them not as accessible to the general reader. My favourites were Tower of Babylon, Division by Zero, and Hell is the Absence of God.
First reread: Finished and wrote review on May 19, 2022.
Sad to have reread this book only to have it rated lower than my first-time read rating. But Division by Zero remains supreme. Anyway, I gave a score for each story and the average was a perfect four point zero.
1. Tower of Babylon — 4.2/5
In this story, Chiang recreated the story of the Tower of Babel. It was impressive to read a sci-fi set in Biblical times, which included scientific theories that were mostly presently outdated, but which were in fact the belief in that time and before the era of modern science. It also highlighted the extent of man's desire for discovery that can be a hubris, but is also fundamental in the name of science. And in this story, that very same desire taught Hillalum a breakthrough discovery of the world.
2. Understand — 4.3/5
With a story reminiscent of Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, Understand is a first-person narrative of man saved from the brink of death by an experimental drug. Like with his first story, Chiang centered here humankind's thirst for discovery and enlightenment, as told by a single superhuman.
3. Division by Zero — 5.0/5
This was one of my favorite stories in this collection during my first read and it still is this time around. In such a brief story, Chiang challenged two fundamental systems—marriage and mathematics—through a husband-and-wife tandem, with shifting perspectives. I cannot emphasize enough the sheer brilliance of the parallelism Chiang presented between two unlikely structures.
4. Story of Your Life — 4.5/5
In this, Chiang subverted the whole alien-arriving-to-Earth plot and improved it with less war and more civil interaction where culture and language were shared. Next to Division by Zero, this is one of the more emotional stories—centering a relationship between a mother and her daughter.
5. Seventy-Two Letters — 4.0/5
This is a wild reimagining of a Victorian era world where robotics were already a common study. Because of the era it was set in, this was quite difficult to read as Chiang adapted the tone of classics stories. But the ingenuity in adapting robotics into the past was remarkable and I appreciated this story more this time around than when I did the first time.
6. The Evolution of Human Science — 3.0/5
This is written as brief, as informative, and as pointed as that of a pamphlet given out in the streets. While there was indeed wit in its brevity, this was still underwhelming and it felt like a filler story amongst longer ones. I like the one featured in Exhalation better.
7. Hell is the Absence of God — 3.5/5
Chiang has dabbled in philosophy and theology in some of the stories in this collection, but only in Hell is the Absence of God did he fully delve on religion, making this the least sci-fi-esque in the book. I really liked this the first time I read it, but now it left me a bit underwhelmed. It was a clever concept, but it felt unstable, somehow and while it is still original, it didn't feel as ingenious and as creatively done as his other works. It felt too tongue in cheek, as if like his protagonist Neil Fisk wasn't fully devoted to God, Chiang didn't feel fully sold to this idea.
8. Liking What You See—A Documentary — 3.5/5
The idea presented here and the way the story was written were both interesting and impressive. But a weak topic can really only go so far. It was interesting to read the debate between two sides, but it became too redundant and too long.
First-time read: Finished and wrote review on August 25, 2019.
Confession: I purchased this book because I wanted to read the source story for the movie Arrival (2016). It was a great film that stars the inimitable Amy Adams. This collection is titled Stories of Your Life and Others which somehow put the short Story of Your Life--the previously mentioned movie basis--as the main event to look forward to, but the seven other short stories featured in this are as mind-blowing and as interesting. Ted Chiang has the wildest and most imaginative mind across writers. I was truly glad to have experienced his prowess.
The book featured eight short stories whose connecting theme is the science fiction genre and how deeply human these really are. Chiang didn’t mainly write about the near-future or the effect of futuristic technologies; in fact, his most compelling story and my absolute favorite Hell is the Absence of God is set in an alternate present-day world. And while he did write about this and other main SF tropes (e.g., aliens and automata), Chiang differs because his tales are so human. Most SF stories had that cold, mechanical feel; the readers are transported to new cities and societies that utilize steel more than glass and cement, populated with androids and robots, and what-nots. Chiang wrote about people who suddenly found themselves in the middle of the most bizarre events (see: Story of Your Life, Understand) or how scientific concepts affect our lives (see: Division by Zero). At the center of all his stories are humans who are simply trying to live their lives in the most normal way possible.
As I mentioned, my favorite piece was Hell is the Absence of God. It’s set in an alternate present-day where angel visitations were more frequent and more normal than we could have imagined. These visitations, however, brought both miracles and disasters to the people who were lucky (or unfortunate) enough to witness it. The latter could be said about the protagonist Neil Frisk who lost his wife during a visitation. Determined to spend eternity with his beloved when he dies, Neil attempted to love God, whom he hadn’t been paying attention to before. The ending came as a complete shock and it felt like the ending to George Orwell’s 1984. It was exceptional.
My second favorite is the story I wanted to read after watching the movie Arrival (2016), Story of Your Life. Having known the premise based on the film, I was still not less than excited when I began reading the life of linguist Louise Banks who found herself communicating with aliens and interpreting their language. The plot twist presented at the end of the film had devastated me and I thought the same thing would happen in the novelette. But short story and a full-length film are two separate and different forms of media and one cannot expect that the same elements shown in one could still be efficiently adapted to the other. That’s just common sense. And anyway, the short and movie tackled different matters. While the movie focused on said plot twist and the arrivals of the Heptapods, the book presented and confirmed the twist early on because it was not about it. It was about whether we’d still act the same if shown of our future, of the story of our life. Alas, the concepts of determinism and the Book of Ages were ultimately scrapped out from the movie adaptation. But each was a beast of its own.
And my third favorite is Division by Zero, a succinct tale about a brilliant mathematician, Renee, and her husband, Carl, and the events that followed when she found a proof that the mathematics that she loved and respected was unstable. It was told in three perspectives: the A subsets were written from Renee’s POV; the B’s, from Carl’s. The numerical subsets that introduce the dividing chapters were anecdotes about mathematics. In the end, Renee’s and Carl’s met in a single subset aptly and self-referentially titled “9A=9B” where the readers found themselves heartbroken by the husband’s revelation. Two belief systems were introduced in this and both were decimated in the end.
An honorable mention is Liking What You See: A Documentary where Chiang presented a story in the format of a documentary. “Interviewing” various students from Pembleton University and experts, Chiang started the debate about calliagnosia, a neurological software that make people with it not feel anything about the aesthetic of another person’s face. The universal conflict of more attractive people are more likely to be successful was argued over in this. Interesting students were interviewed, including a female student who decided to remove her nose to “freak” people out and to challenge beauty itself.
The rest are equally fascinating; from the retelling of the Tower of Babel story (Tower of Babylon); to the tale of the man who became a super-intelligent being (Understand); and to the world where inanimate objects could be made alive by a special set of letters (Seventy-Two Letters), Chiang’s imaginative mastery were expressed greatly. Each story was as original, as unique, and as engrossing as the next. It was an absolute delight to experience Chiang’s worlds and words.
Sad to have reread this book only to have it rated lower than my first-time read rating. But Division by Zero remains supreme. Anyway, I gave a score for each story and the average was a perfect four point zero.
1. Tower of Babylon — 4.2/5
In this story, Chiang recreated the story of the Tower of Babel. It was impressive to read a sci-fi set in Biblical times, which included scientific theories that were mostly presently outdated, but which were in fact the belief in that time and before the era of modern science. It also highlighted the extent of man's desire for discovery that can be a hubris, but is also fundamental in the name of science. And in this story, that very same desire taught Hillalum a breakthrough discovery of the world.
2. Understand — 4.3/5
With a story reminiscent of Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, Understand is a first-person narrative of man saved from the brink of death by an experimental drug. Like with his first story, Chiang centered here humankind's thirst for discovery and enlightenment, as told by a single superhuman.
3. Division by Zero — 5.0/5
This was one of my favorite stories in this collection during my first read and it still is this time around. In such a brief story, Chiang challenged two fundamental systems—marriage and mathematics—through a husband-and-wife tandem, with shifting perspectives. I cannot emphasize enough the sheer brilliance of the parallelism Chiang presented between two unlikely structures.
4. Story of Your Life — 4.5/5
In this, Chiang subverted the whole alien-arriving-to-Earth plot and improved it with less war and more civil interaction where culture and language were shared. Next to Division by Zero, this is one of the more emotional stories—centering a relationship between a mother and her daughter.
5. Seventy-Two Letters — 4.0/5
This is a wild reimagining of a Victorian era world where robotics were already a common study. Because of the era it was set in, this was quite difficult to read as Chiang adapted the tone of classics stories. But the ingenuity in adapting robotics into the past was remarkable and I appreciated this story more this time around than when I did the first time.
6. The Evolution of Human Science — 3.0/5
This is written as brief, as informative, and as pointed as that of a pamphlet given out in the streets. While there was indeed wit in its brevity, this was still underwhelming and it felt like a filler story amongst longer ones. I like the one featured in Exhalation better.
7. Hell is the Absence of God — 3.5/5
Chiang has dabbled in philosophy and theology in some of the stories in this collection, but only in Hell is the Absence of God did he fully delve on religion, making this the least sci-fi-esque in the book. I really liked this the first time I read it, but now it left me a bit underwhelmed. It was a clever concept, but it felt unstable, somehow and while it is still original, it didn't feel as ingenious and as creatively done as his other works. It felt too tongue in cheek, as if like his protagonist Neil Fisk wasn't fully devoted to God, Chiang didn't feel fully sold to this idea.
8. Liking What You See—A Documentary — 3.5/5
The idea presented here and the way the story was written were both interesting and impressive. But a weak topic can really only go so far. It was interesting to read the debate between two sides, but it became too redundant and too long.
First-time read: Finished and wrote review on August 25, 2019.
Confession: I purchased this book because I wanted to read the source story for the movie Arrival (2016). It was a great film that stars the inimitable Amy Adams. This collection is titled Stories of Your Life and Others which somehow put the short Story of Your Life--the previously mentioned movie basis--as the main event to look forward to, but the seven other short stories featured in this are as mind-blowing and as interesting. Ted Chiang has the wildest and most imaginative mind across writers. I was truly glad to have experienced his prowess.
The book featured eight short stories whose connecting theme is the science fiction genre and how deeply human these really are. Chiang didn’t mainly write about the near-future or the effect of futuristic technologies; in fact, his most compelling story and my absolute favorite Hell is the Absence of God is set in an alternate present-day world. And while he did write about this and other main SF tropes (e.g., aliens and automata), Chiang differs because his tales are so human. Most SF stories had that cold, mechanical feel; the readers are transported to new cities and societies that utilize steel more than glass and cement, populated with androids and robots, and what-nots. Chiang wrote about people who suddenly found themselves in the middle of the most bizarre events (see: Story of Your Life, Understand) or how scientific concepts affect our lives (see: Division by Zero). At the center of all his stories are humans who are simply trying to live their lives in the most normal way possible.
As I mentioned, my favorite piece was Hell is the Absence of God. It’s set in an alternate present-day where angel visitations were more frequent and more normal than we could have imagined. These visitations, however, brought both miracles and disasters to the people who were lucky (or unfortunate) enough to witness it. The latter could be said about the protagonist Neil Frisk who lost his wife during a visitation. Determined to spend eternity with his beloved when he dies, Neil attempted to love God, whom he hadn’t been paying attention to before. The ending came as a complete shock and it felt like the ending to George Orwell’s 1984. It was exceptional.
My second favorite is the story I wanted to read after watching the movie Arrival (2016), Story of Your Life. Having known the premise based on the film, I was still not less than excited when I began reading the life of linguist Louise Banks who found herself communicating with aliens and interpreting their language. The plot twist presented at the end of the film had devastated me and I thought the same thing would happen in the novelette. But short story and a full-length film are two separate and different forms of media and one cannot expect that the same elements shown in one could still be efficiently adapted to the other. That’s just common sense. And anyway, the short and movie tackled different matters. While the movie focused on said plot twist and the arrivals of the Heptapods, the book presented and confirmed the twist early on because it was not about it. It was about whether we’d still act the same if shown of our future, of the story of our life. Alas, the concepts of determinism and the Book of Ages were ultimately scrapped out from the movie adaptation. But each was a beast of its own.
And my third favorite is Division by Zero, a succinct tale about a brilliant mathematician, Renee, and her husband, Carl, and the events that followed when she found a proof that the mathematics that she loved and respected was unstable. It was told in three perspectives: the A subsets were written from Renee’s POV; the B’s, from Carl’s. The numerical subsets that introduce the dividing chapters were anecdotes about mathematics. In the end, Renee’s and Carl’s met in a single subset aptly and self-referentially titled “9A=9B” where the readers found themselves heartbroken by the husband’s revelation. Two belief systems were introduced in this and both were decimated in the end.
An honorable mention is Liking What You See: A Documentary where Chiang presented a story in the format of a documentary. “Interviewing” various students from Pembleton University and experts, Chiang started the debate about calliagnosia, a neurological software that make people with it not feel anything about the aesthetic of another person’s face. The universal conflict of more attractive people are more likely to be successful was argued over in this. Interesting students were interviewed, including a female student who decided to remove her nose to “freak” people out and to challenge beauty itself.
The rest are equally fascinating; from the retelling of the Tower of Babel story (Tower of Babylon); to the tale of the man who became a super-intelligent being (Understand); and to the world where inanimate objects could be made alive by a special set of letters (Seventy-Two Letters), Chiang’s imaginative mastery were expressed greatly. Each story was as original, as unique, and as engrossing as the next. It was an absolute delight to experience Chiang’s worlds and words.
Really interesting sci-fi short stories. Some better than others, Story of Your Life is great as is the last one about calli/beauty erasure. Definitely worth it if you are a fan of sci-fi/dystopic techno-futures!
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
"Story of Your Life", my beloved ♥
(the other pieces in this collection are also good!)
(the other pieces in this collection are also good!)
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
One of the best all-around short story collections I’ve read. All have something interesting to contemplate and are crafted so well.
Started to lose steam toward the end
I was definitely more impressed with some of the stories than others, but it was a strong collection overall.