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A review by asriram
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
3.0
Overall, this book was fine — there will be stories that I may reread, and definitely a few which I won’t, but since this is a short story collection, I probably should rate all of the individual stories.
1. Tower of Babylon - 2.5/5, interesting ideas, but I struggled with the blending of historical and fantastical events, and the writing style made it difficult to read, had to take a break in the story and was almost completely perturbed by it
2. Understand - 1.5/5, started off interesting but as soon as the main character reached unreachable levels of human intelligence, the plot became extremely boring, plus the main character becomes an unpleasant individual at that point, not really sure what the author was trying to say with this story
3. Division by Zero - 4/5, interesting story that tied in mathematics (yay!) with the idea of what to do as your fundamental beliefs are shaken and how to be with someone who is experiencing that
4. Stories of Your Life - 3.5/5, good story, but the weird flash-forwards don’t really make sense for the first half of the book, which makes it difficult to enjoy the B-plot of the flash forwards. That being said, I think a reread will make me enjoy this much more, I loved the physics and mathematics in the main plot, and the linguistics were also fascinating.
5. Seventy-Two Letters - 4/5, overall good story, had some interesting concepts and the blend of scientific and religious undertones was interesting, but nothing remarkable
6. On the Evolution of Science - 2/5, boring and uninteresting, only upside was that it was relatively short
7. Hell is the Absence of God - 2.5/5, interesting story, but some of the underlying ideas are a bit horrifying and something I really dislike, so not really my thing.
8. Liking What You See: A Documentary - 3.5/5, interesting premise, and it raises some interesting points regarding how we view facial attractiveness, but not as engaging as some of the other stories.
Overall, definitely glad to have read it, but not planning on rereading this or reading any more of Ted Chiang’s works anytime soon barring strong recommendations.
1. Tower of Babylon - 2.5/5, interesting ideas, but I struggled with the blending of historical and fantastical events, and the writing style made it difficult to read, had to take a break in the story and was almost completely perturbed by it
2. Understand - 1.5/5, started off interesting but as soon as the main character reached unreachable levels of human intelligence, the plot became extremely boring, plus the main character becomes an unpleasant individual at that point, not really sure what the author was trying to say with this story
3. Division by Zero - 4/5, interesting story that tied in mathematics (yay!) with the idea of what to do as your fundamental beliefs are shaken and how to be with someone who is experiencing that
4. Stories of Your Life - 3.5/5, good story, but the weird flash-forwards don’t really make sense for the first half of the book, which makes it difficult to enjoy the B-plot of the flash forwards. That being said, I think a reread will make me enjoy this much more, I loved the physics and mathematics in the main plot, and the linguistics were also fascinating.
5. Seventy-Two Letters - 4/5, overall good story, had some interesting concepts and the blend of scientific and religious undertones was interesting, but nothing remarkable
6. On the Evolution of Science - 2/5, boring and uninteresting, only upside was that it was relatively short
7. Hell is the Absence of God - 2.5/5, interesting story, but some of the underlying ideas are a bit horrifying and something I really dislike, so not really my thing.
8. Liking What You See: A Documentary - 3.5/5, interesting premise, and it raises some interesting points regarding how we view facial attractiveness, but not as engaging as some of the other stories.
Overall, definitely glad to have read it, but not planning on rereading this or reading any more of Ted Chiang’s works anytime soon barring strong recommendations.