bea_k 's review for:

5.0

A master of the short story form, Chiang pulls you in with intricate worldbuilding and deeply relatable characters. My favorite piece in this collection was Seventy-Two Letters, which explores two types of von Neumann machines. Around the 80% mark, I tried to predict how it would end—I was nearly right about the outcome, but completely wrong about how it would come to pass.

Each story compels with its elegant structure and delivers one mind-bending thought experiment after another, challenging your worldview at every turn. I loved them.