By Benjamin Hong, Staff Writer
A lesson in physics set in the context of an alien landing. A reflection on the commercialization of mystic rituals. A reimagining of the Tower of Babylon. This 2002 anthology of the celebrated science fiction writer Ted Chiang’s first 8 novellas features a diverse collection of worlds and characters. With each short story exploring ideas as varied as prejudice, faith, and the perception of time, Stories of Your Life and Others has moments of both amusement and introspection for every category of reader.
The collection opens with “Tower of Babylon,” the story of a miner on an Earth with a structure reminiscent of pre-Copernican models, brought to the Tower of Babylon to dig through the “vault of heaven,” a massive stone ceiling above the world. This is followed by “Understand,” a piece on a man who becomes inhumanly intelligent after he experiences rapid neuron regeneration from a drug meant to heal brain damage brought on by a near-drowning experience.
The next two stories are “Division By Zero,” which features a prodigy mathematician who sinks into depression after discovering a proof that invalidates mathematics, and “Story of Your Life,” a classic first contact story featuring anatomically bizarre aliens that turns into an exploration into linguistics, physics, and humanity’s perception of time. “Seventy-Two Letters” brings Kabbalistic magic to 1800s London, the brief “The Evolution of Human Science” imagines scientific progress in a world of supremely intelligent “metahumans”, “Hell is the Absence of God” explores devotion to God in a world where angelic visitations are a fact of life, and the final story, “Liking What You See: A Documentary,” delves into the ripples in society that result from the invention of a procedure that can induce agnosia towards physical beauty.
While Chiang’s overall style and writing voice are geared toward a science-fiction audience, the topics he explores and the directions he takes with them are refreshingly startling to longtime readers of science fiction and highly engaging to those who may have more reserved opinions of the genre. It is therefore unsurprising to learn that Chiang’s short stories have netted him a total of four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, and six Locus awards, each of which recognizes the best science fiction and/or fantasy works each year. As Greg L. Johnson of SF Site declares, “science fiction has always depended on writers who work best at shorter lengths to continue to examine new ideas and push the boundaries of the field. In the decade plus a few years since he first started publishing, Ted Chiang has shown himself to be more than up to that task.”
This willingness to extend past the traditional scope of science fiction in a way that still exemplifies the genre makes Chiang’s narratives and essays highly accessible, serving as a fantastic introduction to science fiction for new readers. The short yet powerful prose in Stories of Your Life and Others is similar to that of Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, and the breadth of the content makes the move from Stories to virtually any other prominent sci-fi novel, from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series to Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, feel like the continuation of a journey, rather than a wholly new experience.
Many people find science fiction, with its technical jargon and unfamiliar landscapes, to be at best unappealing and at worst intimidating when compared to other genres. This is where books that can close the gap between genres, such as Stories of Your Life and Others, can be useful. To readers like freshman Lucas Chiang, Ted Chiang’s collection served as “the book that introduced me to science fiction. Before reading it I wasn’t that enthusiastic about sci-fi, especially since many books seemed to go too in-depth with the science-y aspects in my opinion, but this book made me more willing to try out sci-fi, and now I really enjoy those books.”
Stories of Your Life and Others is most impactful because of its ability to function as a bridge for readers from other genres to science fiction, which is why, regardless of existing genre preferences, Ted Chiang’s anthology deserves a spot on every student’s reading list.