Lisa Eckstein’s Reviews > Stories of Your Life and Others > Status Update

"Liking What You See: A Documentary" takes an idea and imagines all the repercussions and perspectives. This is something I love to see done well, and of course Chiang does it well.

An impressive collection of stories, for sure!

"Hell Is the Absence of God": I like the idea of a science fiction story based on the premise that the improbable notions of God, heaven, and hell are actually real.

"Seventy-Two Letters": An amazing combination of concepts in this story. I guess that's true for much of this collection!

"Division by Zero": I really like the mathematical premise of this story. Initially I didn't understand why the ending worked, but then I got it, and it's pretty clever.

Two stories into this collection, and I can tell they will all be amazing and very different. "Tower of Babylon" is about the almost plausible logistics of building of the Tower of Babel. "Understand" looks at what could happen to someone with unbounded mental faculties.