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sunn_bleach 's review for:
Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiang
challenging
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read "Exhalation" last year and loved it; I have some more mixed feelings here. The first three stories have the self-conscious author problem of being afraid the audience won't "get it". All of their endings explicate what you were supposed to intuit, which robbed them of their mystery. Many of these were written when Chiang was a younger author, so perhaps there's some first-timer's fear that they'll be misunderstood.
In fact I was very surprised to read that "Tower of Babylon" won a Hugo and a Nebula, as it feels pretty "standard" so far as magical realism goes - and also has Chiang's worst example of explication over intuiting. On the other hand, no surprises at all that "Story of Your Life" got him acclaim, even if I'm so tired of sci-fi authors using the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to mean "language is magic powers".
The rest of the collection was written 8 or 10 years later than the earlier stories. It's cool to see an author progress so seamlessly and strongly into what makes them a "great". Everything from "Story of Your Life" onward was an absolute banger, with "Liking What You See: A Documentary" being like "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" in how it took a specific social issue, offered a technological solution, and then went with that idea as far as he possibly could. "Hell Is the Absence of God" is just as extraordinarily harrowing as one might imagine; it's a good pairing with Peck's "A Short Stay in Hell". And I loved the brief 3-page short story/fake Nature article. Metatextualism in scientific writing is an A+ trope for me.
In fact I was very surprised to read that "Tower of Babylon" won a Hugo and a Nebula, as it feels pretty "standard" so far as magical realism goes - and also has Chiang's worst example of explication over intuiting. On the other hand, no surprises at all that "Story of Your Life" got him acclaim, even if I'm so tired of sci-fi authors using the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to mean "language is magic powers".
The rest of the collection was written 8 or 10 years later than the earlier stories. It's cool to see an author progress so seamlessly and strongly into what makes them a "great". Everything from "Story of Your Life" onward was an absolute banger, with "Liking What You See: A Documentary" being like "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" in how it took a specific social issue, offered a technological solution, and then went with that idea as far as he possibly could. "Hell Is the Absence of God" is just as extraordinarily harrowing as one might imagine; it's a good pairing with Peck's "A Short Stay in Hell". And I loved the brief 3-page short story/fake Nature article. Metatextualism in scientific writing is an A+ trope for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Child death, Death, Mental illness
Moderate: Body horror, Forced institutionalization, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Addiction, Blood