[Review] Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

Title of Book: Stories of Your Life and Others

Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Picador
Publication Year: 2020
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 338

With Stories of Your Life and Others, his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality, Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasias invite us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

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Stories of Your Life and Others is a short stories collection by Ted Chiang. This book includes a short story titled Stories of Your Life, which was adapted into a film titled Arrival. Aside of Stories of Your Life, this collection also includes some of the best stories written by Ted Chiang.

This collection is opened by Tower of Babylon. This story is Chiang’s first published work. It follows Hilalum, a miner who’s brought from the city of Elam to join the construction of the Tower of Babylon. The tower of Babylon is an enormous brick tower and the construction has taken centuries. The goal of the construction of the tower is to reach the Vault of Heaven. However, the further Hilalum build the tower, he finds out that it doesn’t reach what is expected. This story is built on the basis of pre-scientific cosmology. At first, I was confused by what the ending implied because I didn’t know what kind of earth this story is based on. After I know, I find the ending depressing. I mean, Hilalum worked relentlessly to build the tower so they can reach the Vault of Heaven. When he’s close to reach it, he found that what he worked for was pointless.

The second story, Understand, is a story about super intelligence. It reminds me of Flowers for Algernon. The main character of this story was given an experimental drug to heal brain damage. The drug ends up regenerating his damaged neuron, thus causing him to improve his intellect. Through this story Chiang showed that heightened intelligence can be beneficial if used ethically. The next story, Division by Zero, uses mathematical equation as the analogy of the relationship between the two main characters. Division by Zero is the story in this book that I least enjoyed. Mostly because I couldn’t find the comparison between the relationship to the mathematical equation. This one went over my head.

Story of Your Life is my most favorite story from this book. I actually watched the film adaptation first. I like Arrival so much that I decided to pick this book up. I found the language concept in this story intriguing. I was much impressed by the linguistic theory which becomes the center of the story. Story of Your Life presents the idea of how language could affect the way we perceive world.

The next story, Seventy-Two-Letters, is a steampunk set in a world where people use technology based on the use of Golems. While The Evolution of Human Science, which is the shortest story in this collection, is written in the form of a science article, reporting the advancement of science in a world where humanity is divided into two classes, ordinary people and metahumans.

Hell is the Absence of God is a story which follows Neil Fisk, who lived in a world where angel visitations, hell and heaven are no doubt real. This story questions the role of faith in religion. What would happen if God is undeniably existed. The last story in this book, Liking What You See: a Documentary introduces calliagnosia, a reversible procedure which induces a visual agnosia toward physical beauty. People who undergo the procedure will not be able to perceive physical beauty.

Of all the stories in this book, my favorites are Story of Your Life, Hell is the Absence of God, and Liking What You See: A Documentary. I think Chiang heavily infused science in his stories. Some of them are not difficult to grasp, some just go over my head. The science in Story of Your Life is easy to understand. I think it’s the way he explained and incorporated it into the story. His short stories are dense. He also uses various sciences in his stories to challenge philosophical questions. I must say, I’m glad I decided to read this short story collections. Though sometimes I’m too lazy to put in extra effort to understand the science, overall his stories are fascinating read. I’d recommend this short story collection for those who enjoy reading science fiction.