Stories of Your Life and Others

Book Rating 5 of 5

Stories is a collection of short stories all by Ted Chiang. I strongly recommend this collection as it really only has one short story I didn’t enjoy.

The stories are, rating them individually

Tower of Babylon

4/5, very creative. I had to google the world shape after I read it because I didn’t uderstand it on the first reading.

Understand

4/5, A fun story. I found it more shallow then the rest of the content of the book. I think it should be made into a screen play.

Division by Zero

3/5, A little slow and dark. I probaly need to re-read to get the deeper meanings on this one.

Story of Your Life

5/5 - I watched “Arrival” not long ago which used this short story as its basis. In this situation the short story is MUCH better then the movie. I still liked Arrival and would recommend you watch it first then read this short story I think it gives good backgrownd for enjoying the short story more. If you want to go deeper maybe couple it with reading some of The Fabric of the Cosmos

Seventy-Two Letters

2/5 - Slow and wierd, sometimes hard to follow. If you skip one story this one is probably ok to skip. It has some interesting ideas and its feels “close” to something really interesting but it just couldn’t come together for me.

The Evolution of Human Science

5/5, seems like a likely future for humanity. Perhaps this is what we’ve been doing all along? We just don’t know it yet.

Hell Is the Absence of God

5/5, I found this story very compelling. It think this also would be a good rewritten as a screen play.

Liking What You See: A Documentary

5/5, what if I didn’t care about how everyone looked? Very interesting subject matter.

I will read these stories again, its that good. I liked the authors notes at the end, I think they added to the context of the stories. BUT I strongly recommend you NOT read them until after you’ve finished all the short stories.