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A review by bbqxaxiu
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
2.0
this was ok, I give it 2.5 stars. his short stories could definitely be made into black mirror or love, death + robots episodes. my favorites were, in order, 1) story of your life, 2) tower of babylon, and 3) seventy-two letters.
for all his creativity, I have to admit he didn't make it easy to read a lot of his stuff. I understand that the "sci" in "sci fi" means I'll be coming face to face with some technical concepts, but there were many times I felt he used an obscure ass word just for kicks, when something more simple would've sufficed and been more tasteful, or he explained a scientific concept in a way that made made me so confused I had to go back and reread multiple times before eventually giving up and hoping it wouldn't appear again in the story.
this is because I think Ted falls into the trap of equating "good" writing with "confusing" writing—as if the more inaccessible something is, the more worth it has. I get that he has a cs background, but shit, I do too, and his good ideas are no use if—contrary to what he'll have you believe—he doesn't understand them enough to make others understand them too. he reminds me of many of the white and/or male teaching assistants of my cs classes, who were always too pretentious to be helpful to anyone, and while I think he has promise, at the moment I can't say I'm particularly impressed.
for all his creativity, I have to admit he didn't make it easy to read a lot of his stuff. I understand that the "sci" in "sci fi" means I'll be coming face to face with some technical concepts, but there were many times I felt he used an obscure ass word just for kicks, when something more simple would've sufficed and been more tasteful, or he explained a scientific concept in a way that made made me so confused I had to go back and reread multiple times before eventually giving up and hoping it wouldn't appear again in the story.
this is because I think Ted falls into the trap of equating "good" writing with "confusing" writing—as if the more inaccessible something is, the more worth it has. I get that he has a cs background, but shit, I do too, and his good ideas are no use if—contrary to what he'll have you believe—he doesn't understand them enough to make others understand them too. he reminds me of many of the white and/or male teaching assistants of my cs classes, who were always too pretentious to be helpful to anyone, and while I think he has promise, at the moment I can't say I'm particularly impressed.