Text) which won Nebula & Sturgeon Awards, which brought Chiang to global notice when it was made into the critically-acclaimed movie Arrival in 2016 (8 Oscar nominations, 1 Oscar for sound editing). His most famous short story is the 17500-word 1998 “ Story of Your Life” Each story has a unique starting point, and feels like a world or novel unto itself despite their short page counts. ( Greg Egan with a heart) use those worlds & concepts to examine and build up a powerfulĮmotional point. Chiang’s stories can be described as rigorous world-building 1⁠, taking seriously premises such as the Kabbalah ( “72 Letters”) or intelligence enhancement ( “Understand”) or self-consistent time loops ( “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”) or a mechanical clockwork universeĮvil in a universe where God exists ( “Hell Is the Absence of God”)Īnd extending them logically, written in a lucid streamlined prose that (like Gene Wolfe’s) seems simple & easy unless one has tried to write like that oneself, but Most are collected in his 2002 anthology Stories of Your Life and Others ( my review). Ted Chiang is an American SF author of short stories & a novella, noted for both the Protagonist’s attitude towards life and the tragic death of her daughter, teaching her in a somewhat Buddhist or Stoic fashion to embrace life in both its ups and This holistic view of the universe as an immutable ‘block-universe’, in which events unfold as they must, changes the The alien race exemplifies this other,Įqually valid, possible way of thinking and viewing the universe, and the protagonist learns their way of thinking by studying their language, which requires seeing Instead, what appears to be precognition in Chiang’s story is actually far more interesting, and a novel twist on psychology and physics:Ĭlassical physics allows usefully interpreting the laws of physics in both a ‘forward’ way in which events happen step by step, but also a teleological way in whichĮvents are simply the unique optimal solution to a set of constraints including the outcome and allows reasoning ‘backwards’. Time or enjoy precognitive powers, interpreting the story this way leads to many serious plot holes, it renders most of the exposition-heavy dialogue (which is a largeįraction of the wordcount) completely irrelevant, and genuine precognition undercuts the themes of tragedy & acceptance. At no point does the protagonist travel in

However, movie viewers often misread the short story: “Story” is not a time-travel movie. One of Ted Chiang’s most noted philosophical SF short stories, “Story of Your Life”, was made into a successful time-travel movie, Arrival, sparking

Story of your life pdf ted chiang