(no subject)

[skygiants]

The stories in Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others have been praised a lot, and with good reason - they're a really good demonstration of what sci-fi at its best does. Each story carefully takes a 'what-if?' idea and extrapolates it out, step-by-step, considering the ramifications that don't necessarily occur to you on the first consideration of the "HEY SO COOL" premise. Even the stories that aren't explicitly science-fictional have sort of this attitude to their premises, which is what makes them work so well.

So, story-by-story, we have:

Tower of Babylon -- so what about a tower that reaches all the way up to Heaven? How do you actually construct something like that when it takes months to get a third of the way up it? There's cool cosmology stuff in here, but what's unique is the description of how the Tower of Babel works.

Understand -- the notes say this was a very early story, and it sort of shows, but cool to read anyways. Everyman gets smart. Then he gets super-smart. Then he gets MEGA-ULTIMA-SUPER-smart.

Division By Zero -- mathy types, beware! This story is about the worst thing that could possibly happen to a mathematician. :O

Story of Your Life -- this is a lot of reviewers' favorite story in the collection, and though it wasn't my favorite, I can see why. Alien linguistics, physics equations, relative perception of time, and parenthood. (The alien linguistics are AWESOME.)

Seventy-Two Letters -- steampunk bringing together two premises: 'what if a lot of the stuff the Victorians believed about reproduction was actually true?' + 'SCIENCE OF GOLEMS!' The ending felt a little abrupt to me, but it was fun getting there.

The Evolution of Human Science -- super-short, but I kind of loved this one. Written in the form of a scientific journal article querying the point of scientific journals when no ordinary human scientists can understand what super-genius-meta-human scientists are saying in their articles anyway.

Hell is the Absence of God -- this one was absolutely my favorite. In this cosmology, angels regularly appear like natural disasters, miraculously healing some and damaging or killing others. The story is about a man who loses his wife in an angelic manifestation, and is beautiful and chilling and touches on a lot of my own personal Religion Issues which I am not getting into at this time.

Liking What You See - A Documentary -- I really liked this one also! Controversy on a college campus about a technique that allows you to turn off your perception of faces as beautiful or ugly.

Most of the stories in the book, though very good, were thinky/intellectual stories for me; "Hell is the Absence of God" is the only one that I felt like was talking to me. But I suspect this would vary person-to-person.

Comments

[avariel-wings.livejournal.com]

Did you get the books I bought for you? :D

[skygiants]

I did - thank you! :D :D They are on my List To Be Read Once the Library Pile (Temporarily) Vanishes.

[nextian.livejournal.com]

Oh, this sounds right up my alley. Is it on the shelves or should I Amazon it?

[skygiants]

I think you'd like it! I got it from the library, but my guess would be you could find it on the shelves - Chiang is pretty well-known, and a lot of the stories in here have won Nebulas and things like that.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

OMG, I kind of liked all the stories, but Hell is the Absence of God is one of my favoritest stories of all time. When I was teaching my SF short stories class, I included it, and one of the first questions was "What makes this science fiction".

My initial answer may or may not have been, "Because I said so, freshman!" But my second answer was that, the premise is totally science-fictional. What would happen if you had a world where faith in God was unquestionable?

Anyways, if you haven't read it, his story from last year "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" would probably be something you'd really like.

[skygiants]

Oh man, t's so good, I can't even! I was trying to explain it to my dad yesterday, and waving my hands and flailing because I couldn't get it across. I mean, Chiang is definitely not the only sci-fi author to apply science-fictional writing methodology to theology. But of the attempts I've read, that story is the one that hits closest to home, for me.

I actually haven't read it - this was my first time reading any Chiang. Uh, not that it is going to take me that much of an effort to catch up on the rest, considering it is comprised of . . . what, three stories? But still!

[fire-and-a-rose.livejournal.com]

Random - moving servers, so your header is down temporarily only.

[skygiants]

Aha - thanks for the heads-up! :D

(Also random: we should totally schedule that episode-watching.)

[ashen_key]

You are going to be hell on my bookcases *she says, writing the book down*

That sounds like what I love best about sci-fi, really.

[skygiants]

As always, I aim to be helpful! *serene*

They're good sci-fi. I think just about every story in this collection has won some kind of award - Ted Chiang seems to be one of those guys who spends 95% of his time pattering happily about at his day job and the other 5% of the time writing ONE GENIUS STORY a year.

[ethelflaed.livejournal.com]

Huh. It took me a moment to remember this, but the summary rang a bell and "Story of Your Life" is actually a story I've read before - but I'd completely forgotten the name and the author. I kept on referring to it as "that alien language story" in my head. I had no idea the author was so well-known, or that he'd even written anything else (or even that he was a he, actually).

I'll have to read this book - because, while the parts about language really were the best parts (I found the rest of the story kinda. . .incoherent, I guess), they were great.

(wanders off to add to wish-list)

[skygiants]

I suspect "Story of Your Life" is a story that would work a lot better for me if I had any physics background at all. As it is, the physics-relative-time-related parts went a little over my head, although I could get the emotional gist he was trying to get at.

I definitely think the rest of the stories are worth reading!