Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang

I've been reading some of the individual stories in this volume as they came out over the years. It's a really different experience reading all of them together, and I don't think it's better. There's a pattern to Ted Chiang's writing--taking an idea and playing with it through characters, but really focusing on the idea--that works better when you experience it fresh, as opposed to repeating it in a story collection. Still, there were stories I really enjoyed:

"Understand": Some reviewers compare it to "Flowers for Algernon". I see that, but what I like about this one is that it has the best attempt at conveying what it is to be superintelligent in language non-superintelligent people (everyone) can understand. The rest of the plotting was needed to bring forth the idea.

"Division by Zero": Didn't like this one. I am familiar with Godel's Incompleteness proof--that there are true statements in mathematics that cannot be proven--and to me it has just as much impact as the equality in the story. If that's not enough try the history of the concept of infinity, and how it drove Georg Cantor mad.

"The Story Of Your Life": I enjoyed reading the short story, but to really experience the plot you need to see the movie "Arrival". This is the one and perhaps only time I have thought that the movie was better than the book. The Eric Heisserer screenplay intensifies the choice the linguist makes in having a child. And having visuals for a nonlinear orthography helps a lot.

"The Evolution of Human Science": I don't think this story was impressive in its time, but it takes on new meaning as we develop AI. Artificial intelligences could very well do science we can't comprehend.

"Hell Is the Absence of God": A really good one. The idea of a world in which the presence of angels is apparent, disruptive and not entirely positive is fascinating.

My Goodreads Review

It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning, by Ted Chiang

This story was commissioned by the New York Times as part of a series of "future editorials"--opinion pieces speculating on how some event or social trend is going to develop in the form of a newspaper opinion piece.  Ted Chiang's version, like pretty much everything else he does, is fully brilliant.  His piece speculates on a social intervention where some disadvantaged children are given a genetic enhancement that is popular with wealthy parents--one that boosts the IQ.  The kids generally finished a college education, but are still not any better off.  He gives various reasons for this that are drawn from today's knowledge, and draws reasonable conclusions.  He could do this for a living, except that being a sysadmin has to be more fun.

Omphalos, by Ted Chiang

Omphalos was nominated for the Hugo for Best Novelette this year.  At first it's hard to tell where the story is going, as it is done in the form of prayers.  But it is soon apparent why the scientist author is devoted--this is a small universe where the act of creation is readily apparent in the fossil record and in the stars.  The earliest trees have solid cores.  Cliffs with exposed sediment layers have solid granite not far beneath.  What is science like in a world like this?  Basically an exposition of God's ideas.  

But the people of earth are human, and have human conceits.  They believe they are the pinnacle of creation and the center of the universe.  But what if one of those incontrovertible facts is that we are not, in fact, in the center?  

Another truly amazing read.  It seems like everything Chiang writes gets nominated for multiple awards.  In fact I think this is true, because he is not particularly prolific.  He seems to write when he has something to say, and not otherwise.  Always worth it.

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, by Ted Chiang

 Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom is one of the original stories in Ted Chiang's Exhalation collection, and was nominated for a Hugo for Best Novella this year.  My very favorite thing about all of Chiang's stories is that in each one he takes on the biggest of topics--some aspect of the meaning of life.  I can't think of one that couldn't be a sermon (in a somewhat liberal, intellectual church).  The driver is a speculation that is sometimes possible, sometimes not, but always grounded in reality.  In this story the driver is a device that forces a quantum choice, causing possibilities to diverge, then showing you yourself living in that alternate possibility.  What would we use that for?  What would it teach us?  Well, we'd exploit it for money, but also use it for connection, for collaboration, and for science.  In the protagonist, Nat, we see someone who has gone down a difficult road but is trying to make better choices, and trying to find reasons to do so.  My favorite idea is that of making choices that influence our future alternate selves--each positive choice makes it easier for those alternate versions to make positive choices as well.  Made my day.

Goodreads Link

Seventy-Two Letters,by Ted Chiang

I took a time out from reading award nominated stories to read one I found somewhat by accident, linked off Ted Chiang's Wikipedia page.  Seventy-two letters is a more "normal" SF story than the others I've read by Chiang, which figures because it's from 2001. But really no less inventive.

In this story Chiang invents a place where golems are real, and the science of "nomenclature" is a prominent one--the study of how to create True Names for things, which then can animate them.  He describes a discipline emerging from craft and magic into an empirical, engineering type of application.  Wrapped in with it is a completely different principle on how reproduction occurs--animal species contain all their future generations in the male line, and each generation is the amplification of some chosen set from the infinitesimal.  At the time of the story, we are discovered to have only five generations left.

The action plays out well, but the best SF is about the ideas, and this is a classically written one.  Definitely can recommend it.  3 stars.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, by Ted Chiang

It is almost a crime that Ted Chiang doesn't write more.  He addresses deep philosophical questions in every topic he addresses, from religion, to the nature of intelligence, to our relationship to new technology.  He visits this last topic again in The Truth of Fact...and it's another home run.

He also hits my favorite scary topic, which is to speculate just a very little bit about where technology might go.  Imagine wearing Google Glass, and having it record constantly.  That's a "lifelog", which Chiang speculates many of us will be keeping in the near future.  In the story, people are keeping lifelogs but they are cumbersome to search--only worth it if you REALLY want the answer (like forensics).  But an app company comes along and offers easy, fast searchability.  All past events that are in any way recordable can be brought back within seconds.

Our protagonist is to do a story on the app company and the software.  He's pretty nervous about trying it out.  His ensuing journey through his past, as remembered and as actually happened, is realistically tangled.  And his conclusion on where this could go is rich and deeply satisfying.  I would tell you, but I really want you to go read it for yourself.  You think he's going one way and then he doubles back so artfully it's completely convincing.

We are within a few years of this, so it isn't a story for the ages.  It's a story for right now, and everyone should read it as it is a much better exposition of the situation than any factual article or editorial. 

It's just a crime that Ted Chiang does not write full time (he is a sysadmin). In a just world he would have a MacArthur grant or some such to just talk to people and write, even if it's only a few articles a year.  We very much need this kind of thinking about the world.  Come on, Ted, what do you say?  Be a pro! 
Four stars from me.