Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Stories of Your Life

by Ted Chiang

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Amy Adams.
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 changethe inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of alienswhile 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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Reviewed by pamela on

5 of 5 stars

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Hell is the Absence of God and Story of Your Life are possibly two of the best short stories I've ever read. Everything in this collection means something, and the language choices are very deliberate. These stories are not to be read while distracted. They take profound amounts of concentration. It's High-Concept, unique, diverse, and most of all, and exploratory collection about the human condition.

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  • Started reading
  • 28 December, 2018: Finished reading
  • 28 December, 2018: Reviewed