Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book next week -- buy it now.
Review: I didn't know what all the fuss was about with Ted Chiang... but after reading this book -- I was totally clued in...
This collection of short stories are great... two stories I didn't much care for, but the rest are great.... especially the short story called "Understand" and "Story of Your Life" -- Excellent. All in all, a good read!
Rating:
Summary: One of the best recent collections I've read . . .
Review: I gave up a decade ago on trying to keep up with the science fiction magazines, so I only recently became aware of Ted Chiang's wide range of ideas and considerable proficiency at communicating them. There are eight stories in this anthology; all of them are at least good and several are excellent. Perhaps the best is the title piece, "Story of Your Life," which is also the only one I had previously read. It's about simultaneity vs. sequentiality and free will vs. predestination, with a strong taste of the sort of notions regarding time that Vonnegut originally made use of in _Slaughterhouse Five_. "Tower of Babylon" is sort of Babylonian science fiction, about the building of a mud-brick tower that takes four months to ascend and which reaches all the way to the vaults of heaven. An intriguing yarn, though the ending is a little weak. "Understand" is an interesting kind of riff on Flowers for Algernon, but with the implications very much updated. "Division by Zero" is about the effect on a woman mathematician who discovers (and proves) that the basic principals of math are quite arbitrary and inconsistent. While it's a good psychological portrait, and also vividly presents some (to me) novel ideas, the math and the character development really have nothing to do with each other. "Seventy-Two Letters" is set in an alternate Victorian London in which nomenclature, the act of bestowing names on things, has become an experimental science. There's a certain Bruce Sterling flavor here, but it's really not at all derivative. "The Evolution of Human Science" is a short-short that originally appeared in NATURE. I'm not sure I got the point of it, frankly, though it has a rather neat twisty ending. "Hell Is the Absence of God" is another terrific tale of an alternate world in which the souls of the deceased can be seen ascending or descending, Hell is often visible just below street level, and miracles are a regular news item. But a visitation by an angel (tracked by CB) is just as likely to kill an innocent bystander with an exploding window as to restore sight to the blind. Moreover, the whole God and salvation thing is entirely happenstantial, arbitrary, and without justice of any kind; a convicted child-killer who sees the Light goes to Heaven after his execution, while the victim of two previous miracles -- the first crippling, the second restorative -- receives a wasted third miracle she doesn't want or need. This is a quietly angry story and, as a thoroughgoing secularist who is frequently ... off by smug santimony, I really enjoyed it. "Liking What You See: A Documentary" is a very thoughtful and insightful examination of the misuse of beauty, of the effects of "lookism," and of the ruthlessness of media advertising. Very nicely done. In all, I have to say that while Chiang doesn't always get it quite right, he's certainly well above the average. I'm definitely going to have to keep up with his future work.
Rating:
Summary: Some of the greatest stories I've ever read
Review: I have never been as blown away by a book of short stories, as I have by this one. I can still remember lying on the futon reading the title story, procrastinating on dinner, an hour later after I finished the story, I was sobbing over the stove. I don't think a story has so fundamentally shifted the way I look at things. Like the main character, It will rearrange your brain, along with Hell is the Absence of God, and Liking What You See. This guy kicks
ass over the dull literary fiction that passes for meaning these days. It will rock your world.
Rating: 
Summary: Stories of Your Life and Others
Review: I have two words to describe the stories in this book. Boring and depressing. This author could be described as the Shirley Jackson of SF. If this is the future of SF (as indicated by a blurb from Greg Bear, an author I have enjoyed reading, but now will no longer trust for book recommendations) then there is no SF in my future.
Rating:
Summary: Fiction Done Very Well
Review: I picked up Ted Chiang's "Stories of Your Life and Others" after reading a few synopses of the stories within. They sounded intriguing, and I was not let down after reading them. This is one of the best collections of an author's short stories I've read. It's incredibly exciting to discover a new writer of this caliber (whether they're really "new" or not--Ted was new to me)! His style is sharp and evocative in its descriptive yet measured power. If you like Science Fiction--or even if you just like through provoking stories--and you've been looking for something new and worthwhile to read, this is the book you must read.
Rating:
Summary: After a long wait, we finally get a book.
Review: In 1990, I read the short story/novella "Tower of Babylon" published in Omni magazine. I was blown away, and the story has remained in my mind for over a decade. I later found that this story won a Nebula award, but was never able to find another copy to read. Ted Chiang is apparently not a prolific writer. Since "Tower of Babylon," his first story, was published, readers have only been treated to six other pieces (one a short-short) by Mr. Chiang. But what he lacks in quantity is more than made up for in quality. All of these pieces, plus a new story, are bound in this volume, making for one spectacular read. This is science fiction for non-sci-fi readers. The emphasis here is on character and story, with any technology being smoothly incorporated into the setting. It's more like the slightly fantastic realities created by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez than what many would think of as SF. I'm not sure whether this pedigree (and the Tor imprint) will help or hurt sales of this book -- the stories could have just as easily been published in The Atlantic Monthly as anywhere else, and that might be an audience who could be sorely missing out on a great writer. Bottom line: Highly recommended literary fiction.
Rating:
Summary: After a long wait, we finally get a book.
Review: In 1990, I read the short story/novella "Tower of Babylon" published in Omni magazine. I was blown away, and the story has remained in my mind for over a decade. I later found that this story won a Nebula award, but was never able to find another copy to read. Ted Chiang is apparently not a prolific writer. Since "Tower of Babylon," his first story, was published, readers have only been treated to six other pieces (one a short-short) by Mr. Chiang. But what he lacks in quantity is more than made up for in quality. All of these pieces, plus a new story, are bound in this volume, making for one spectacular read. This is science fiction for non-sci-fi readers. The emphasis here is on character and story, with any technology being smoothly incorporated into the setting. It's more like the slightly fantastic realities created by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez than what many would think of as SF. I'm not sure whether this pedigree (and the Tor imprint) will help or hurt sales of this book -- the stories could have just as easily been published in The Atlantic Monthly as anywhere else, and that might be an audience who could be sorely missing out on a great writer. Bottom line: Highly recommended literary fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Putting the humanity back into Science Fiction
Review: In an era when most sci-fi books are about time-traveling crypto-cyber-steam-magic-punking heroic "please-make-me-into-a-movie" fluffed-up 1000-page fare, this is the lean humanist stuff that harkens back to the short stories of Harlan Ellison's DeathBird or Ellison's short story collaborative-effort, Dangerous Visions.
All the stories are worthy reads and, IMHO, stand out stories are "Understand", "Tower of Babylon" and "Hell is the Absence of God".
"Understand" - A beautiful ultimate-human story; far more than a I'm-Superman romp...
"Tower of Babylon" and "Hell is the Absence of God" - both stories that look at faith in the "powers-that-be" in very different ways. If I didn't know better, I would have claimed two different authors wrote them.
This Ted Chiang's collection deserves to be placed on that rarified shelf - that shelf of books that can be shared with *gasp* your science-fiction ambivalent significant other or jaded-too-cool-for-Star-Trek-Crap child.
All done without the pain of embarrassment for all involved.
Rating:
Summary: Great short sci-fi!
Review: Possibly the best collection of SHORT science fiction that I have ever read! All of the stories are engrossing and intellectually stimulating.
Rating:
Summary: You need to read these stories....
Review: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. TOR, July 2002. 1st edition hardcover.
It's hard to believe that Mr. Chiang has been published for over 12 years and this is the first time I've read his work. This is a 'must read' collection of some of the absolutely most thought provoking stories I have ever ingested. For more info on Ted Chiang, read the LOCUS interview in the August 2002 issue. He was nominated 5 times for the Hugo and 'Tower of Babylon' and 'Story of Your Life' each won a Nebula. Here's my take:
Tower of Babylon - fun, inventive, and with a twist. A tower that is in fact a way of life, that reaches what? Heaven?
Understand - an ultimate 'super intelligence' mind game.
Divide By Zero - Sorry. Will have to read this one again!
Story of Your Life - This story got to me on so many levels. If you're a sci-fi or speculative fiction fan and a parent, it'll blow you away.
Seventy-Two Letters - Think James Watson, Francis Crick and Daniel Webster all working together on a grand experiment.
The Evolution of Human Science - A very short justification/rationale of super-humans.
Hell Is the Absence of God - What if you couldn't decide? Is there a God? Your life stinks, so probably not. Then, at the end, you saw 'the truth'. But no one, not even God, would ever know.
Liking What You See: A Documentary - Racism, sexism, and now 'lookism'. A thought-provoking debate on the truth/denial/marketing of 'beauty'. I could use a 'calli' treatment.
With DJ praises from Bear, Brin, Datlow, Kress and others.
Story notes are a revealing touch; a look into Mr. Chiang as a person. Acknowledgements are heart felt.
Very highly recommended reading. Stimulating and will stick to your ribs.
R.D.Kedd, Proprietor - ABNormalBooks.com
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