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thecasecloser 's review for:
Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiang
2024 update: I have had the ending scene from Arrival stuck in my head since reading this book and rewatching the movie. I frequently rewatch the ending, and even tried to learn the song on guitar (and learned songs for violin don't work very well on guitar).
I loved rereading the original story and noticing all the foreshadowing and details. The sentence structure "I remember when [insert something in the future tense]" is so smart and creative, I think about it all the time. The nuanced way the story deals with determinism and free will works for me.
The movie feels like a human story that happens to have aliens involved, but the book is more of an alien story that happens to have a human element. I actually think they're synergistic in that the details in the book help you appreciate the adaptations in the movie.
Story of Your Life is a strong enough 5 stars that I'm going to rate this collection 5 stars and pretend I didn't read the bad stories included.
Original review:
This is the Paul George of books. Paul George is a very good NBA player; he has incredible highlights, he's had very good regular season performances, and is entertaining to watch, but he is also frequently injured and he started his career missing his first 13 potential game winning shots. In a moment of NBA infamy Paul George capped off a historic collapse by clanking an open shot off the side of the backboard.
This book is a collection of 8 short stories. 4 of them were not compelling at all to me, 2 had very interesting ideas but unsatisfying endings, 1 was fantastic all around, and 1 was an absolute clunker off the side of the backboard.
"Story of Your Life" (basis for the movie Arrival) is the highlight of the collection. I actually prefer the short story over the movie - there's no political fluff and no "saving the world" drama, just pure bizzare, intricate ideas on how the world might be very different than we perceive it intertwined with a simple, meaningful story. Days later I am still thinking about it, wrapping my head around how it would work and appreciating the subtle details that make the story consistent to its theme. It's no Better Call Saul, but it was concise, clever, and compelling.
Three critiques of this as a collection of short stories:
1) Only one of these had a satisfying ending
2) They were all way too similar in theme - all having to do directly with humans ascending to something more than they currently are. I haven't read much sci-fi, but this seems too narrow to have 8 separate stories on
3) For me, one major benefit of reading a book over other forms of entertainment is that the time spent, detail, and active participation (i.e. reading vs watching) allows me to develop a different world in my head where I can intuitively understand and feel what is happening. Short stories inherently numb that aspect of reading by just being short and without much detail
When I rated each story individually I got to 21/40 stars, so rounding up to 3/5.
I loved rereading the original story and noticing all the foreshadowing and details. The sentence structure "I remember when [insert something in the future tense]" is so smart and creative, I think about it all the time. The nuanced way the story deals with determinism and free will works for me.
The movie feels like a human story that happens to have aliens involved, but the book is more of an alien story that happens to have a human element. I actually think they're synergistic in that the details in the book help you appreciate the adaptations in the movie.
Story of Your Life is a strong enough 5 stars that I'm going to rate this collection 5 stars and pretend I didn't read the bad stories included.
Original review:
This is the Paul George of books. Paul George is a very good NBA player; he has incredible highlights, he's had very good regular season performances, and is entertaining to watch, but he is also frequently injured and he started his career missing his first 13 potential game winning shots. In a moment of NBA infamy Paul George capped off a historic collapse by clanking an open shot off the side of the backboard.
This book is a collection of 8 short stories. 4 of them were not compelling at all to me, 2 had very interesting ideas but unsatisfying endings, 1 was fantastic all around, and 1 was an absolute clunker off the side of the backboard.
"Story of Your Life" (basis for the movie Arrival) is the highlight of the collection. I actually prefer the short story over the movie - there's no political fluff and no "saving the world" drama, just pure bizzare, intricate ideas on how the world might be very different than we perceive it intertwined with a simple, meaningful story. Days later I am still thinking about it, wrapping my head around how it would work and appreciating the subtle details that make the story consistent to its theme. It's no Better Call Saul, but it was concise, clever, and compelling.
Three critiques of this as a collection of short stories:
1) Only one of these had a satisfying ending
2) They were all way too similar in theme - all having to do directly with humans ascending to something more than they currently are. I haven't read much sci-fi, but this seems too narrow to have 8 separate stories on
3) For me, one major benefit of reading a book over other forms of entertainment is that the time spent, detail, and active participation (i.e. reading vs watching) allows me to develop a different world in my head where I can intuitively understand and feel what is happening. Short stories inherently numb that aspect of reading by just being short and without much detail
When I rated each story individually I got to 21/40 stars, so rounding up to 3/5.