Stories of Your Life and Others in Beyond Reality

Nov 10, 2016 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, 2016-shelf, fanboy-goes-squee

Update: Saturday the 12th, November 2016

I just watched the movie The Arrival and OMG it was amazing. :) :) :)
I cried. Like, a lot. I had chills and sat on the edge of my seat and I was totally engaged.
What's worse? The personal aspects of the movie just blew me away. And even worse? The mental ones were profound and beautiful and amazing. :) I AM SQUEEEING!!!!

Now here's the big question: Am I a fanboy because the movie only improved my appreciation of the original story? Or am I just blown away ...more

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Oct 23, 2018 Anthony rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nebula-nominees, sf, fantasy, poc-authors, short-stories, hugo-nominees, nebula-winners, locus-award-winners, hugo-winners, sf-group-2018

These stories are thoroughly thought-provoking, endlessly intelligent, finely crafted, and deeply engaging. Chiang wrestles with questions with no easy answers, and displays a rare gift for presenting those questions in compact forms that don’t lessen their profundity. Reading his work makes me feel like I’ve spent time with one of the smartest, most inquisitive, most compassionate people I might ever be lucky enough to meet.

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Nov 22, 2016 Cheryl rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: to-enjoy-again

Ralph liked the movie The Arrival based on the title story.
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Brilliant. Very much in the classic vein of "What If." Like those old shorts, a bit weak on characterizations... to me, it seemed like Chiang had sciencey ideas that he wanted to turn into stories and the characters were sketched and then shoe-horned in; they didn't feel real. But still. These are the kinds of stories I look for.

Interestingly, the story notes are unsatisfactory. Does he really believe that he wasn't influenced ...more

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Sep 03, 2014 Paul Perry rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, male-author, sf, favorites, short-stories, collection, read-in-2014

I've been meaning to read this collection for a couple of years, ever since hearing 'Understand' read on BBC Radio 4, and my only regret is that it has taken me so long to get around to it. To follow are reviews of the highlights, although all the stories were excellent.

From the first story, 'Tower of Babylon', I knew I was in for a rare treat. This is simply superb science fiction - told from the point of view of the science and technology of the time. It imagines an impossibly tall tower built ...more

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Jan 04, 2017 Tomislav rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: collection, science-fiction, 5-stars

The recent movie Arrival has brought new attention to Ted Chiang, and to his multi-award-winning novelette “Story of Your Life” on which it is based. This collection, which contains that story, actually dates back a few years to cover his works from the 1990s, up to 2002. Ted Chiang’s stories are intelligent and perceptive, and often attract awards. His nominations have been so numerous, that I will mention here only those awards that he has actually won. In fact, the collection as a whole is al The recent movie Arrival has brought new attention to Ted Chiang, and to his multi-award-winning novelette “Story of Your Life” on which it is based. This collection, which contains that story, actually dates back a few years to cover his works from the 1990s, up to 2002. Ted Chiang’s stories are intelligent and perceptive, and often attract awards. His nominations have been so numerous, that I will mention here only those awards that he has actually won. In fact, the collection as a whole is also an award winner – The 2003 Locus Award for a single author story collection. Here are my thoughts on each story:

Tower of Babylon – If the Babylonians had succeeded in building a tower to reach the Vault of Heaven, this is what it would have been like. The story extrapolates science fictionally, within the Babylonian world view, as climbers pass first the Sun and then the stars to reach and penetrate into the ceiling of the universe. The perspective character is an Elamite workman named Hillalum, who is bright enough to formulate a model of the universe explaining what is found. This novelette won the 1991 Nebula Award, and I had previously read it in the Nebula Awards 26 anthology. ****

Understand – First person narration of an experimental procedure to restore damaged brain function resulting in unanticipated intellectual growth. Leon Greco finds he must use his new abilities first to preserve his freedom and then to develop his abilities as far and as fast as he can. Eventually he must confront the problem of competition, and more importantly what purpose such abilities are applied to. I feel this is a somewhat overworked theme in science fiction. Ted Chiang handled it skillfully, but not innovatively. I had previously read this in the August 1991 edition of Asimov’s. ***

Division By Zero – A mathematician is driven to attempt suicide because she has developed a proof destroying the consistency of arithmetic. Not just through the trick of leveraging the undefined operation of division by zero, but truly. Told in a parallel track, is the story of her biologist husband, who had attempted suicide decades ago. He learns to distinguish empathy from sympathy. ****

Story of Your Life – This is the story on which the movie Arrival is based. In the near future, humanity has been contacted by an alien race known as the Heptapods. Linguist Louise Banks and Physicist Gary Donnelly are recruited to learn to communicate with them. First, they discover that the Heptapods have a written language which is idea-centric, rather than an encoding of their spoken language. Then, the personal collaboration between Louise and Gary and the collaboration of their sciences, leads to a breakthrough, revealing an understanding of time and existence which is alternative to Newtonian cause-and-effect. The reader is introduced to the Lagrangian formulation of classical physics, through the example of Fermat’s Principle, in which a ray of light follows the path of least ‘action’. The path is determined at the onset, but is dependent on conditions encountered later over the entire length. One philosophical consequence of that model is an essential conflict between knowing the future and free will. In parallel story, Louise is ‘remembering’ episodes from throughout the full lifetime of her child. Aside from the dramatic power of the story, the reader comes to see the Heptapod understanding as a valid interpretation of science, and therefore real. (Unfortunately, the physics has been scrubbed out of the movie version, leaving that Louise to obtain the Heptapod understanding on her own through a sort of mystical immersion in their language.) This is simply one of the best science fiction stories I have ever read, and I highly recommend it over the movie! The novella won the 2000 Nebula Award, the 1999 Theodore Sturgeon Award, and the 2002 Seiun Award for translated work. *****

Seventy Two Letters - In an alternate world where biology follows the principles of preformation rather than evolution, a researcher determines that life may be artificially formed through the encoding of digital ‘names’. This revolutionary technology, which seems to work like a hybrid of DNA and Von Neumann Machines, has social and political implications that could forever change 19th century England and the world. The researcher must deal with the real politics directing and constraining that work. This novella won the 2001 Sidewise Award. ****

The Evolution of Human Science – very short narrative of the role of human scientists after post-humans take over all research. No characters. **

Hell Is the Absence of God – In an alternate world where the Christian mythology of angels and miracles are a real everyday experience, a man tries to reunite with his wife in Heaven. The trick is that she died as a side-effect of someone else’s miracle, and the only way for him to get into Heaven is by loving God for that. This novelette won the 2002 Hugo Award, the 2003 Nebula Award, the 2002 Locus Award, and the 2004 Seiun Award for translated work, and I had previously read it in the “Feeling Very Strange” Slipstream anthology. This is one of the newest pieces in the collection, and was published after Ted Chiang became a recognized award winner. ***

Liking What You See: A Documentary – It is a measurable fact that individuals perceived as more physically attractive tend to be more successful in life. If it was possible to turn off peoples ability to recognize physical beauty in others, there would be fundamental change in how they relate to one another, sexual attraction, aesthetics, and society in general. Ted Chiang explores this through the perspectives of a diverse collection of individuals involved with a proposal to require that adaptation for all students at one university. *** ...more

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May 21, 2017 KG rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-ebook-nook

An interesting compilation of extremely thought-provoking stories. While some of them are a tad bit long-winded, they are, in all, well worth the time to read. Even the ones that didn't resonate with me completely were not, IMHO, a waste of time. Each, in its own way, was an experience of expanding my awareness. And I especially liked reading the eponymous story, after having watched the movie "Arrival" (upon which story this movie was based) - one is not in conflict with the other, and both are ...more

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Aug 09, 2017 Bookbrow rated it liked it

3.5 stars, Amazing how they flushed out a wonderful film from a impressive short story

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Nov 29, 2016 Pacmanguai rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Pese a que me ha parecido que existe un gran desequilibrio entre la calidad de los relatos, la lectura de los "buenos" compensa sobradamente aguantar los "malos". ...more

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