Stories of Your Life and Others Paperback – 24 July 2020

The media could not be loaded. Ted Chiang is one of my favorite authors. He presents these magical phenomenon as a truth in their respective worlds and his characters give these worlds even more depth. Recommend!

Every story is different. In some of the stories like Tower of Babylon and Hell is the absence of God, the author creates a universe far different than ours. In Arrival he ponders over theoretical implications of science. In some he treats the ethical implications of science, and in others he asks what if the basic tenets of science itself is wrong. Every story is different, the premise of every story is different, the aftertaste of every story is different. Truly, a must read

I bought this book to read 'Story of Your Life', after knowing the movie Arrival is based on this story. I read the story and as expected, it was mind blowing, and is beautifully written.Let me start with Story of Your Life. This is not another alien invasion story. It addresses a different scenario altogether. How to communicate with a species whose language is entirely different from any language that exists on the Earth? The way Ted Chiang introduces the beauty of science and linguistics along with love and relationship of a mother and a daughter is brilliant and beautiful. The way Louise explains watching her daughter grow up makes you fall in love with the character!I can write a three-page review just about this story. But I shouldn't limit this to just one story. Although I loved this one the most, I liked all the stories. Each story centres around a particular theme. It could be a problem, facet of the society in the present or past, varying from myths and religion to beauty and science.Two of my other favourites are ‘Hell Is the Absence of God’ and ‘Liking What You See: A Documentary’. The former focuses on religion while the latter deals with the perception of humans based on others' looks, or as he describes in the story, 'lookism’. The first is set within a world where the concepts of religion and faith are built upon facts and logic. Both are wonderful!Sometimes, I felt like I was watching an episode of 'Black Mirror' while reading these stories! If you have time to read, think and comprehend, I recommend you this book. This is the best Sci-Fi short story collection I've read so far.

Each of the stores questioned my thought process and what I thought logical and what not. Opened up my mind to new ways of imagining this world and took my expectations from sci fi to a next level.

This is my first Ted Chiang book and I find his writing refreshingly original and satisfying. He has the ability to take a scenario and look at it in an entirely new way (like with Story of my life), shedding vital insight along the way about how radically different yet similar such a world would look. Which is what good science fiction is supposed to do- make you consider your biases and look at the world from the perspective of another person(possibly in the future). Seriously thought provoking and an excellent read

This book makes a significant contribution to both my learning and my teaching. The stories in the book are about the process of constructing knowledge, both at the individual level, and the collective level, and what it take to build a tower of academic knowledge. They are also about the epistemology, ontology, and sociology/anthropology of knowledge construction. As a transdisciplinary researcher and educator, if i were to pick one book that I have read during the last five years, I would pick this one.

As simple as it may seem, but most complex structure.You feel an ocean of emotions hit you after finishing each story and most important of all, It makes us think and recheck our reality for atleast a once. Just speechless.

The writing was just incandescent. Ted Chiang's imagination and grasp of the underlying science of each story come together and is perfectly balanced. He has a number of articles in the mainstream and academic press and if you have read any of his other work, you will not be disappointed.I took half a day off work to finish this book.