A Brief Book Review of Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Of the eight works in Ted Chiang’s collection of science fiction short stories titled Stories of Your Life and Others (2002), I thoroughly enjoyed three. Those three being “Understand”, “Story of Your Life”, and “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” The first of my three favorites, “Understand”, is a thrilling exploration of how one man chooses to change his world after becoming super intelligent. The second, “Story of Your Life”, is the basis for Arrival (2016), an excellent alien contact film with a non-linear plot revolving around linguistics. My third favorite, “Liking What You See: A Documentary”, is a cheeky, dystopian exploration of a cure for the oldest of human social biases, “lookism”. When you think about it, three favorites out of eight is a pretty good record. If Chiang were a professional basketball player taking three-point shots, this would be a good shooting performance (3 out of 8, or 37.5%). (“Kobe”) For comparison, when I read Ray Bradbury’s immaculate The Illustrated Man (1951), I found favorites in eight of the 18 stories (44.4%). Ray is the best, though. (“Steph”) If they were shooting free throws, this would be very bad. I’m willing to wager, though, that successfully writing popular science fiction is more analogous to hitting contested professional threes.
While all eight stories were stimulating and Chiang is an inventive storyteller with broad knowledge, the other five stories were a bit disappointing; some started out hot but clanged against the rim. “Hell Is the Absence of God” could’ve been a thoughtful, creative exploration of grief, faith, and salvation. Instead, through employing ignorant, stigma-perpetuating tropes about mental health, Chiang airballs into the stands. Even Carlton Banks didn’t miss this badly. For such a polymath, Chiang should know better. That said, when Chiang is good, his writing is among the best science fiction I’ve read. “Understand” and “Stories of Your Life” were incredible. They alone motivate me to want to read his other short story collections.