Stories of Your Life and Others [Paperback]

"Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales...this collection is a pure marvel. [Ted] Chiang is so exhilarating so original so stylish he just leaves you speechless. I always suggest a person read at least 52 books a year for proper mental functioning but if you only have time for one, be at peace: you found it."--Junot Diaz
"Meticulously pieced together, utterly thought through, Chiang's stories emerge slowly...but with the perfection of slow-growing crystal."--Lev Grossman
"United by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang's calm passion."--China Mieville
"Ted is a national treasure...each of those stories is a goddamned jewel."--Cory Doctorow, "BoingBoing"
"Confirms that blending science and fine art at this length can produce touching works, tales as intimate as our own blood cells, with the structural strength of just-discovered industrial alloys."--"Seattle Times"
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"Essential. You won't know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang."-Greg Bear
"Ted Chiang is one of the rare contemporary science-fiction writers who has made his considerable reputation without producing one novel. His stories brim with originality and seduce with their complexity."-Ellen Datlow
"One of our very best writers. Prepare: Ted Chiang will astonish you."-James Patrick Kelly
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

This new edition of Ted Chiang's masterful first collection, "Stories of Your Life and Others," includes his first eight published stories plus the author's story notes and a cover that the author commissioned himself. Combining the precision and scientific curiosity of Kim Stanley Robinson with Lorrie Moore's cool, clear love of language and narrative intricacy, this award-winning collection offers readers the dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar.

"Stories of Your Life and Others" presents characters who must confront sudden change--the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens--while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story, a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection. A clever pastiche of news reports and interviews chronicles a college's initiative to "turn off" the human ability to recognize beauty in "Liking What You See: A Documentary." With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change, and also by beauty and wonder.

Ted Chiang is one of the most celebrated science fiction authors writing today and is the author of numerous short stories, including most recently "Exhalation," which won the Hugo, British Science Fiction, and Locus awards. He lives near Seattle.
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Here are eight astonishing science-fiction stories that explore the boundaries between science and religion, between determinism and our ability to choose, between words and the entities they describe. Here are stories of conceptual breakthrough … of making sense of the universe and our place in it. ‘What a pleasure it is to read Chiang … Can he be the best SF writer to come down the pike in the past thirty years? I honestly believe that he is’ Harry Harrison ‘Superb and thought-provoking. I could run out of superlatives trying to describe Chiang’s work. Stories of Your Life is the best collection of short stories, novellas and novelettes I have ever read … Ted Chiang will blow you away with this astonishing collection’ The Alien Online --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives outside Seattle, Washington. In 1990 he won the Nebula Award for his first published story, “Tower of Babylon”. Following this triumph, his stories have won him numerous other awards, making him one of the most honoured writers in contemporary SF. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.