Stories of Your Life and Others

by Ted Chiang

281 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 2010 by Small Beer Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-931520-72-0

(248 reviews)

Ted Chiang's first published story, "Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF.

Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far--plus an eighth story written especially for this volume.

What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven--and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Stories of your life . . . and others.

20 editions

Taylor reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I'm thrilled to have finally gotten around to the story that one of my favorite movies was based on. Story of Your Life made me appreciate the movie Arrival even more, while enjoying additional story elements from the source material here. I'm not very familiar with the world of sci-fi, but ever since Black Mirror went on hiatus I've had an unmet hankering for some good dystopian speculation that leaves you with that warm and fuzzy existential dread.

Chiang is my first exposure to short sci-fi. His stories are heavy on the math and science, and are so well done that I sometimes had trouble discerning where the fiction elements began. The other side of the coin here is that the stories often do focus more on the ideas than the characters or plot. But the ideas were so interesting that I didn't care.

Chiang's ability to write for so many different perspectives on a novel topic was consistently impressive. For example: how does the world, and the various tribes and organizations within, react to random angelic visits that are akin to a natural disaster? This ability was most impressive in the final story, where seeing physical attractiveness is optional. I was blown away by this collection and am stoked for Exhalation. And don't skip the Story Notes at the end. They briefly cover Chiang's inspiration for each piece.

异圈 reviewed 你一生的故事 by Ted Chiang

设定控狂喜

5 stars

特德姜擅长把一个概念拓展成一个世界。他的故事是另一个世界的一片截面，常常是我们随着主角一起去探索世界。其力量感也正在于此。

我特别喜欢审美滤镜那篇。

Neon reviewed Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Interesting, but not a page-turner

3 stars

The stories were interesting speculative journeys, but none of them really inspired me that much. Read up to Seventy Two Letters, and then my loan expired.

Sergio reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Chiang is really good at short stories. I appreciated how despite them being short stories they still felt substantial, something Exhalation (which I read first) didn't feel as consistent about. These also read a lot like Black Mirror episodes, and feel ripe for adaptations. I know Story of your Life was adapted into Arrival, but it feels like most of the stories here have similar potential.

Books That Burn reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

These stories play with math, language, and science, situating their more technical aspects within various strange and internally consistent rule-sets which stretch into the fantastic while wearing the clothes of the scientific, all to tell deeply moving stories about people in strange worlds which are almost like our own. From a literal interpretation of the Tower of Babel wherein they reach to the heavens, to a mathematical formalism so destabilizing that it drives the theorist to despair, to a contemplation on beauty and appearance which refuses to ever quite take a side on its central question. One of the strengths of this collection is the worldbuilding, the way the details vary from story to story but they're all extremely immersive, exploring the strange corners of each premise while still feeling complete and focused. My favorites were "Tower of Babylon" and "Understand", closely followed by "Story of Your Life" (upon which …

Spencer reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Only read Stories of your Life, because it had to go back to the library. I enjoyed it, but it's a rare example of a book where the movie is even better.

LuisVilla reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Makes me want to read more scifi magazines to find this kind of thing earlier.

mikewilson reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Too cerebral, even for me.

tgt reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Some brilliant ideas let down by somewhat soulless execution.

axleyjc reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Great sci-fi shorts! Lots of interesting details as well.

Wintermute reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Incredible. In each story, I thought I had an idea where it was going, but I was surprised every time. Chiang is brilliant.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

First read in 2003; then again (natch) after Arrival. The collection is hit-or-miss: some of the stories did nothing for me, but the hits... wow.

Nuno reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A collection of unrelated stories that explore themes that are almost unheard of in current day sci-fi. The ability that Ted Chiang demonstrates in creating new universes, some of them based on western mythology is amazing. In some stories it even allows for a jump into mythological metaphysics and biogenesis, all the while creating a raft of coherence that allows the reader to see the story not as a magical fantasy but as a otherworldly sci-fi experience. The only thing bad is that this is just one book and not 5 or 6, but as an experimental collection of stories I could not allow myself but to have it rated right at the top.

Daniel Darabos reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I have not read a short story collection in a good while. What an amazing thing! Much more varied than a novel. Great pace too. My only objection is that the next story starts right away, before you even had time to fairly contemplate the previous one. (Sure, I could theoretically stop before turning the page.)

Tower of Babylon: My favorite! I never looked at this legend as sci-fi, but it is! It is all about a super-human engineering feat. Why it is done, how it is done, what is accomplished. Really awesome, I would love to read more stories set in this world, or similar worlds.

Understand: Starts out paralleling [b:Flowers for Algernon|18373|Flowers for Algernon|Daniel Keyes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1367141311s/18373.jpg|3337594] but the focus is examining what a super-human intelligence could be like. It is interesting to think about this, but I never find it fulfilling to read about it. I think a lesser mind is incapable of really understanding a superior mind. It can be as accurate as a small child imagining what an adult thinks like. That is no obstacle to making a fun story: it is fun, with some cool ideas.

Division by Zero: Very cool. It is a great example of the overall strengths of Ted Chiang: good personal drama, creative narrative, and a thought-provoking plot based on real science.

Story of Your Life: A.k.a. "Arrival". I watched the movie earlier this year, and I did not know it was based on a story. I liked the movie. The short story has a great element (refraction) that is missing from the movie. (I guess it would not work well with test audiences!) But the movie also has good additions that are missing from the short story. (Cool spaceships instead of a bland screen. Aliens spitting out the pictures instead of drawing them. Explanation for why they came.)

Seventy-Two Letters: Another sci-fi set in a past era! Again I loved it. I want this to be a genre! You can combine sci-fi and fantasy in two ways: put fairytale stories in space (Star Wars-style) or put scientific stories in fairy-land. I am an immediate fan of this second option!

The Evolution of Human Science: Very short. Interesting setup (again, super-human intelligences), but no interesting insights.

Hell is the Absence of God: Sort of interesting setup (angels randomly dishing out miracles and breaking stuff). Sort of interesting personal stories. But makes no sense. Does it make sense? Please tell me if this made sense to you. I think the point may be that this makes no sense. But that does not make a very satisfying read.

Liking What You See: A Documentary: I like the experimentation with narrative techniques. This time it is a series of interviews for a documentary. The subject is "calliagnosia", where you flip a switch in your brain and reversibly turn off the part responsible for evaluating how pretty a face is. Interesting setup (we may have this sort of technology one day) and a lovely examination of it. We see so many different viewpoints, arguments for and against, it is great.

What's Expected of Us: Very short, but awesome. It distills the core question of all time-travel sci-fi into a small device you can put on a keychain and 3 pages of text.

My copy had three extra stories beyond the above! How cool.

The Merchant and the Alchemist: Basically the same as What's Expected of Us but in 30 pages and set in ancient times. It does not make any use of the ancient setting though, other than flavor. It has a few interesting, but not very novel time-travel stories.

Exhalation: Pretty cool! It is about mechanical robots that live in an enclosure which they perceive as the universe. They forgot how it started. They are powered by air (argon) pressure. The story is about how they realize the pressure difference will vanish over time and they can do nothing against it. It is largely the same for us with entropy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe is a great read.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects: A story about virtual pets written (apparently) by a person who has never seen a computer. This is the longest and weakest story. If you have used a computer you will be in anguish on every page when they do things that do not make sense or do not do things that make sense. And even if someone can ignore these mistakes, what is the point of this whole story?

Joerg reviewed Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Review of 'Stories of Your Life and Others' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

If you ever get your hand on only one or two volumes of Philip K. Dick's collected short stories you will realize not only that they are much better than his novels, but that he has invented any Sci Fi scenario you have ever seen in any movie or show, and much more. And has has been unchallenged in this until Ted Chiang started writing. His stories are different though, exploring fascinating, masterful ideas that challenge our notions of what life is and then drilling in deeper to shed light on the thoughts from as many angles as he can. His stories draw upon a full view of science including sociology, linguistics, engineering, even religious studies to an appreciably heretic degree (or should I see secular sarcastic, since heresy would require the actual existence of God/unicorns/the tooth fairy).
There's no other recommendation but read this!