A review by bhnmt61
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

4.0

It seems to me that recent science fiction tends to be more about an idea or a concept than a well-told story (“recent” meaning “not Bradbury, LeGuin, and Asimov.” I’m old.) Three of these stories were really interesting ideas, explored in ways that were effective. The rest of them were a bit tedious to read, ie, they weren’t very good narrative stories. But the ones that worked were great. The title story was the basis of the film Arrival and is much more about decoding an alien language than was possible to do in a 2-hour mainstream movie. “Hell is the Absence of God” was absorbing and surprising. The last and best one, about a neuromodification that keeps people from being able to tell if someone is attractive, was fascinating, and since it’s presented as the fictional transcript of a documentary, it doesn’t really need to be a story and thus works particularly well. Mixed bag. I’m glad I read it, even though a couple of them were a slog.