Important Information

Title: Stories of Your Life, and Others

Author: Ted Chiang

Publisher: Tor/Tom Doherty Associates

Cover art: quite a bit more avant-garde than we’re used to seeing—very appropriate for the book.

Length: 323 pages in hardcover

Rating

6 nominated for 7 (Chiang could write for and conquer any genre… we’re grateful he chose this one)

"Chiang writes seldom, but his almost unfathomably wonderful stories tick away with the precision of a Swiss watch—and explode in your awareness with shocking, devastating force."

--Kirkus

You can tell when the pros mean it versus when they’re just blowing smoke up your keister, can’t you? This is one we think Kirkus meant. This describes exactly how we felt reading this book: it’s hard to fully grasp just how beautiful these tales are and there are several moments when you’ll be forced to set the book down and sort of gape at the wall in astonishment. And isn’t that exactly what reading speculative fiction is really about?

What are some of the best and most influential short stories every written? Several come to mind for us: Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keys), The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne), Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville), The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allen Poe), The Horse-healer’s Daughter (D.H. Lawrence), Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad), and—of course—The Dead (James Joyce). Collections of short stories are often difficult to review and assess precisely because they are short stories: independent works bound together under one cover. Each of these short stories we listed appeared at one time or another as part of a collection, yet it was the individual story that lingered in the readers’ minds and places them in the canon of great literature today.

The question, then, is this: does any of Ted Chiang’s work contained herein measure up to these greats? That's what Inchoatus is all about--the discovery of Great Literature--that can actually measure up to the most timeless classics and perhaps even surpass them. The critical authority surely thinks so. Chiang is one of the most decorated authors writing today averaging slightly more major awards than stories (he has yet to attempt a novel). The showers of praise from the critical community is as effusive as it is endless. For us at Inchoatus, the question is the influence it will exert on the genre—both the authors writing for it and the readers reading it; viz. will the genre itself change permanently as a result of any one of these stories?

Let there be no question. In the (vastly underrated) movie The Thirteenth Warrior there is a scene where the Vikings chant a prayer about their death and their vision of all the generations of fathers preceding them seated in the halls of Valhalla in judgment and the chanters say, "They bid me take my place among them." That list of authors (Keyes, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Lawrence, Conrad, and Joyce) is a group of authors that certainly belong in the Valhalla of English Literature—Chiang gives us no less than three stories that can take their rightful place among these greats.

It is said that in a collection of short stories, the author is to place his best story first, his second best story last, and his worst story second-to-last. Tower of Babylon is the first story and won the Nebula Award. It is a fascinating allegory regarding God, the origin of the universe, and the meaning of life given a theistic cosmos. At least Chiang is satisfyingly ambitious. The setting is a literal telling of an alternate universe where the biblical events of the Babel Tower occur… or is it? The story is fantastic and as good as it is, and despite all the recognition it received, it’s not even one of our three favorites.

Stories two, three, and four are respectively Understand, Division by Zero, and Story of Your Life. They discuss in turn the nature of intelligence, the nature of happiness, and the nature of free will as adroitly as any author has ever expressed them. They are absolutely timeless and absolutely priceless. If "required reading" makes any sense as a definitive term at all, then these tales should qualify. They will each change how you view the world.

His next three stories are Seventy-Two Letters, The Evolution for Human Science, and Hell is the Absence of God. These are all good and deal with engineering, academies and their goals for furthering knowledge, and the human condition in relation to its Creator. Let it not be said that Chiang writes lightly! We feel that they deserve to be read but our unlikely to re-shape the way the reader views the world. Hell is the Absence of God has particularly drawn rave reviews from many credible geek-sites across the Internet and is indeed quite fascinating.

The last story, Liking What You See: A Documentary is our least favorite. It appears that Chiang defied this prescription by editors for the placement of short stories in the collection. This final offering deals with the concept of a society where it is possible for people to "switch-off" their appreciation/bias of beauty in people. That is, one could see Claudia Schiffer and Roseanne Bar side-by-side and, knowing nothing about either person, feel no attraction towards one over the other. Interesting concept but it pales in comparison to the rest of his work.

One of the finest tributes towards this group of stories--and the reason it is nominated for a 7--is that the tales are completely accessible yet they sacrifices none of their learnedness. Anyone from high-school age to retiring scholar can equally appreciate these tales—they require only that a person has at some time or other bothered to contemplate their own existence. Some of our highest recommendations have gone to works that can be intimidating or otherwise defy vast accessibility. But Chiang has the genius of Shakespeare to overcome this problem of accessibility and appeal to everyone who is human.

There is little else we can say in praise of this book without spoiling some if its details and effects. Instead, we should like to publicly say to Chiang, "You have changed us. Thank you for writing this book."

Chiang is as highly decorated as they come. Publisher’s Weekly noted in their review "It is rare for a writer to become so prominent so fast. In this case, though, the hype is deserved." Chiang is on the cusp of breaking in to the mainstream of literature from the beginning in a genre held to be the ghetto of geeks, which is something very hard to do most especially as a short-story writer. We believe that he will become the household name among speculative fiction enthusiasts that Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick have become.

If you haven’t gotten the point from our main review, we think that these stories can be read and adored by anyone. Absolutely anyone. All ages, all fields, all nationalities. Chiang is the kind of writer who can single-handedly change a genre. Especial notice to those fans of Ray Bradbury whose moods and internal conflicts as a concept are echoed (and surpassed!) in these tales.

It’s hard to imagine anyone who bothers to read at all would not gain something profound from reading at least some of these works. But the, they are absent of cursing, violence, and sexual titillation. Those of you who seek super-action or other thrill-seeking vehicles should seek out Goodkind or some other author to satisfy these baser needs and return to Chiang when that catharsis is over.