otrops reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Storygraph'
3 stars
Ted Chiang artfully takes our world, changes one thing and asks "What if?" What if the Tower of Babel were successful? What if we could augment our intelligence to the point where we immediately spotted the patterns in the chaos around us? What if our language determined the way we view time itself?
Many of these questions boil down to one question: What if the way we perceive the world changes the world itself? It's a fascinating question, and Chiang sets out to answer it with admirable gusto. The scenarios he imagines are complex and compelling. He manages to tease out a number of surprising possibilities that aren't obvious at first. The ideas he explores are always take the reading down fascinating twists and turns.
There is some familiar territory here. As I read some of the stories I couldn't help being reminded of other stories. At times I found …
Ted Chiang artfully takes our world, changes one thing and asks "What if?" What if the Tower of Babel were successful? What if we could augment our intelligence to the point where we immediately spotted the patterns in the chaos around us? What if our language determined the way we view time itself?
Many of these questions boil down to one question: What if the way we perceive the world changes the world itself? It's a fascinating question, and Chiang sets out to answer it with admirable gusto. The scenarios he imagines are complex and compelling. He manages to tease out a number of surprising possibilities that aren't obvious at first. The ideas he explores are always take the reading down fascinating twists and turns.
There is some familiar territory here. As I read some of the stories I couldn't help being reminded of other stories. At times I found myself thinking about [book:Flowers for Algernon|18373], and [author:Kurt Vonnegut|2778055]'s "Harrison Bergeron". While Chiang may be covering familiar territory, may be asking questions authors have asked before or pointing out similar problems, the way explores those questions and problems never fails to go in new and interesting directions.
The stories themselves are mixed. In some, the third person narration is so matter-of-fact and flat, that I found myself imagining them being read in the affectless voice John Cale uses to narrate The Velvet Underground Song "The Gift."
In some, the characters are little more than an empty vessel that Chiang uses to explore an interesting idea, but they take on no real life of their own. I never really felt invested in them as characters.
Exploring ideas as completely as Chiang does here is difficult, doing it while also creating fully-fledged characters is rare. It's still more rare in short stories, where it is hard to do both of those things well. And yet, Chiang succeeds at least twice. Both "The Story of Your Life" and "Liking What You See: A Documentary" both manage to strike this balance.
I'm looking forward to reading more of Ted Chiang's work.
