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Stories of Your Life and others (Paperback)

by Ted Chiang (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Tor (20 Feb 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1405041021
  • ISBN-13: 978-1405041027
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 15 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 221,552 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #68 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Short Stories

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Product Description

Product Description

What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven - and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were inconsistent? What if there was a science of naming things which calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into Hell was a routine event on city streets?

These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Collected here for the first time are eight of his extraordinary stories - including one specially written for this volume.



About the Author

Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives outside Seattle, Washington. In 1991 he won the Nebula Award for his first published story, 'Tower of Babylon.' Following this triumph, his stories have won him two more Nebula Awards, a Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, making him one of the most honoured writers in contemporary SF.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Marvellous short SF, 1 Jun 2004
By J. R. S. Morrison "Bibliomane" (Adelaide, SA, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
For those who enjoy the mind-boggling SF of Greg Egan, you must try this fantastic collection of short stories and novellas by US-based Ted Chiang. Where Egan concentrates on biology and physics at the bleeding edge of the imaginable, Chiang focuses on mathematics, linguistics and religion. A brilliant collection - 'Story of Your Life' and 'Hell is the Abscence of God' in particular are marvellous, marvellous stories.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect collection of perfect stories!, 18 Oct 2009
By Murray "Murray Ewing" (West Sussex, UK) - See all my reviews
  
This book collects Ted Chiang's output from his first published story, 1990's "The Tower of Babylon", to 2001's "Hell is the Absence of God", plus "Liking What You See: A Documentary", which is original to this collection. That's a mere eight stories in eleven years -- but what stories!

Chiang is obviously most comfortable writing novelette-length short stories, thus enabling him to fully explore all the angles of his ideas. And this is most certainly idea-driven fiction, with stories like "Hell is the Absence of God", "Liking What You See" and "Understand" taking a single idea and thoroughly exploring its moral, social, cultural and philosophical implications. (Taking those three stories in order, that's: the impact of random, life-changing but potentially-devastating Divine "miracles"; the invention of a process that removes the ability to judge how good-looking people are; and the development of super-intelligence.) This really is speculative fiction.

But it is also science fiction in the truest sense, as Chiang takes scientific ideas and uses them as metaphors to take a new look at human life and human stories. So, in "Division By Zero", we see how a nonsensical but logical proof affects the mathematician who discovers it, and in "Stories of Your Life", how a person's life can be viewed from a completely new, and intensely poignant perspective. "Stories of Your Life" just also happens to be about that perennial science fictional concept, alien first contact; "Division By Zero" contains no fantastical element, but nevertheless fits perfectly into the collection.

Religion makes its presence felt in several stories, but always with a very balanced viewpoint, neither for nor against, but taking a thoroughly humanistic stance. The opener, "Tower of Babylon" is an almost Borgesian fable about the building of the legendary tower, and what happens when the builders finally reach their limit at the ceiling of the world. "Hell is the Absence of God" is an amazing look at people's reactions to sudden, devastating and incomprehensible changes in their lives, and how even the verifiable presence of God, angels, Heaven and Hell, can still leave room for doubt and difficulties. "Seventy-two Letters", meanwhile, takes the religious and scientific views of the Victorian Age and extrapolates them into a world in which golem-building is a major industry. But as well as religion, there's a lot about language -- in particular, the insufficiency of our human languages for understanding or expressing some of the more advanced ideas of science or philosophy -- and there's also a lot about simply being human, and trying to live an ordinary life in the face of all this.

Ted Chiang doesn't write a lot, but what he does write really counts. Every story in this collection feels like a thorough exploration of its idea, taking its initial premise places you just won't expect. And on top of the ideas, there's a real emotional poetry, sometimes embedded in the very form in which the stories are told ("Stories of Your Life" being a case in point -- no precis can equal the effect this story achieves through its intertwining of storylines, you just have to read it!)

Highly recommended for anyone who likes speculative-, science-, or just plain fiction.
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