Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang

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Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang
pub: TOR. 331 page enlarged paperback. Price: $14.95 (US), $21.95 (CAN). ISBN: 1-765-30419-8

check out website: www.tor.com

Ted Chiang is an ideas writer. This short sentence will probably tell you whether you will enjoy this anthology of his short stories or not. Each of the eight stories in this volume is written around a unique premise and the exploration of the idea is the most important part of the story. In other words, a classical SF approach to story writing.

Not that the rest of Ted Chiang's skills aren't impressive because the level of writing throughout is excellent and enjoyable to read. The contents of this anthology have won two Nebulas, a Hugo, a Sidewise Award, the Saturn Award and netted Chiang the John W. Campbell for best new writer in 1992 and it shows. The writing is polished and skilled. But occasionally the characters and plot seem to be sacrificed to the idea.

The concepts Chiang comes up with can be breathtaking in their originality. The alien language being studied in 'Stories Of Your Life' and the way it alters perception of time when you learn it is audacious, but makes wonderful sense throughout. The journey up 'The Tower Of Babylon' is as immersive as travelling up the mythical tower yourself. Everything in Chiang's worlds are carefully researched and planned, so that the experience throughout feels very true and convincing.

That said, 'Understand' reads like Tom Clancy taking on Daniel Keyes classic 'Flowers For Algernon' and the hyper-intelligent protagonist is brutally inhuman and very difficult to empathise with, which makes this story hard to enjoy despite its own flashes of brilliance. The rather flat ending to 'Tower Of Babylon' feels like a cop-out, even if the rest of the story to that point was superlative.

The stories are set out in the order they were written and it shows. As the anthology goes on, most of the small problems in the first few stories have been corrected and it becomes a sheer pleasure to read. The steampunk setting of 'Seventy-Two Words', in which golems form part of the Industrial Revolution and mankind is dying out is absolutely fantastic. This novella was my favourite of the stories and the one that made up my mind on the anthology of a whole: excellent. The following novelette, 'Hell Is The Absence of God', further cements Ted Chiang's reputation and is an essential read.

Chiang is still a young writer and this is his first anthology. For his first eight published stories to be of such high quality bodes well for his future as a mammoth name in SF. The sheer number of major awards to his name already speak volumes to his current skill and even though I had a few gripes with some of the earlier stories contained within 'Stories Of Your Life And Others', I still enjoyed reading them.

Ted Chiang has written some excellent, award-winning stories and conceived of some wonderful ideas in his short writing career and all of them up to the present are contained within 'Stories of Your Life And Others'. Having all eight stories together in one collection is a real treat and is a good showcase of the writer who many consider one of the finest short fiction writers in the field today. Definitely worth reading.

Tomas L. Martin

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