Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
Ted Chiang (1967)
285 pages
For his collection Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang has crafted eight mesmerizing gems. Each story draws readers into a meticulously constructed, deeply convincing world, with plots that build deliberately but surely to a fever pitch.
Though they qualify as science fiction, Chiang centers his stories around a solid foundation of science fact and philosophical tradition. The science fiction aspects then motivate the action, a means through which to explore the vagaries and vicissitudes of human life, our strivings for both good and ill. His mastery and incorporation of the science will particularly thrill readers with a scientific or engineering background and interest, even those who normally avoid science fiction, while leaving the stories still accessible to a lay audience.
In the opening story, Tower of Babylon, groups of miners converge on the famous tower, which has reached the rocky surface of the vault of heaven, far above the dusty Middle Eastern plain. The miners have been asked to ascend to the far distant top of the tower, and then mine upwards through the rock to open a passage into heaven. Referencing the mysteries of ancient texts and traditions, Chiang explores humankind’s longing to reach for what lies beyond our understanding, the potent pull of the unknown on our imagination.
Another ancient tradition, the Christian doctrine of divine nomenclature, lies at the heart of Seventy-Two Letters. Set in the 1800’s, the story describes scientists exploring the possibilities and limits of animating objects by giving them particular names, developing a secular physics of nomenclature. What appears to be a kind of alternative history, however, suddenly transforms into a much more complex vision of physical reality. (I’ve little doubt that readers with a deeper understanding of biology will experience that realization rather earlier in the story than I did…)
The book’s title piece will be familiar to many readers as the basis for the film Arrival. Asked to try to communicate to aliens through a kind of portal they’ve placed on earth, a professor of linguistics discovers that they have a less linear, more comprehensive view of past, present, and future, and that they have reflected that in the structure of their language. The intensity of her engagement as she learns their language gradually begins to shift her concept of reality, causing her to rethink events in her own life. As well done as the movie is, this original story allows readers a more profound understanding of the main character’s mindset and transformation.
I came to Stories of Your Life and Others backwards in a sense, having already read Chiang’s marvelous, more recent collection Exhalation. (A link to my review at right.) Although wildly different in themes, the two sets of stories share a distinctive sensibility, as well as a dedication to the wonders and mysteries of science and ancient traditions, stretched and bent just a bit through Chiang’s imagination to create marvelously engaging works that explore our human condition. Don’t miss them, even if you are not normally a science fiction fan!
Other notes and information:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
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