Stories of Your Life and Others

Stories of Your Life and Others is Ted Chiang’s original collection of short fiction. The titular story is probably the best known, as it was adapted as the 2016 film “Arrival” directed by Denis Villeneuve. I think the majority of stories in this collection would have to be classified as fantasy or speculative fiction. The volume opens with a story about the Tower of Babylon, and includes another story about angelic visitations and their consequences. A third story considers golems from a practical engineering standpoint. “Liking What You See: A Documentary” could be considered as science fiction, and considers what might happen if we could turn off our ability to be influenced by physical attractiveness. Each was previously published in diverse places from 1990 through 2002. Like many collections, some will be more interesting to a particular reader than others. However, I think it is a testament to Mr. Chiang’s skill as a writer that all of these stories were really well crafted, and made me think about the story for a while after finishing each one. The author provides a nice afterward that tells the history of the stories, and of his thought process in writing them. Definitely a collection worth reading!

That last story is incredibly thought provoking. It’ll stick with me a while.

Ted Chiang is described as a science fiction writer but that is too restrictive. I don’t read or like science fiction but I heard Chiang on a podcast, became mesmerized, so I read, and loved, these stories. All of them have other worldly elements to them but these are not what the stories are about. Rather, they allow Chiang to explore philosophical questions about life, knowledge, time, the nature of beauty, the meaning of devotion. This is a gorgeous book.

Stories of Your Life is the best piece of literature that I’ve read in a long time!!

This author is really intelligent. You think about his stories long after you are done reading them. I couldn’t understand every single thing (“Division by Zero” really zinged my brain), but highly enjoyed each story. Strongly recommend if you like sci fi!

I thought it was pretty good. Hype was pretty big. I did not recommend this to anyone I know, so it wasn't THAT good. My expectations were too high.

Finally, a twenty-first century successor to Clarke and Asimov!

I bought this book because I heard that one of the short stories was the basis for the film called "Arrival". This is a thinking person's science fiction. One of the stories took a twist that I couldn't see coming-that doesn't happen all that often, at least for me.