“Stories of Your Life and Others” by Ted Chiang

This is a collection of short science fiction stories. Most are not “traditional” science fiction, as they are not set in the future, but in an alternate past that is very true to actual history, except for one or two fantastical tweaks. Chiang’s most famous story is “Story of Your Life”, which was adapted for the film “Arrival”. The linguistics, physics, and philosophy of time aspects of the story are riveting. Chiang flips back and forth between technical science and a loving narrative between mother and daughter. You get lost in the past, present, and future. It is spellbinding and does not lose its potency after you figure out what is going on. Technical science and math play a role in a lot of Chiang’s stories. “Division by Zero” is about a former math prodigy who discovers a proof that 1=2 and the resulting crisis that that inspires within her. A couple of Chiang’s stories also contain Biblical elements. “Tower of Babylon” is inspired by the Tower of Babel, but as Chiang writes, “the characters may be religious, but they rely on engineering rather than prayer. No deity makes an appearance in the story; everything that happens can be understood in purely mechanistic terms.” In “Hell is the Absence of God”, on the other hand, angels make frequent visitations to Earth, souls can be seen either going up to Heaven or down to Hell after death, and occasionally humans can even see down into Hell, like a glass bottom boat. It makes for a surreal tale set amidst an otherwise present-day America. This is Chiang’s rift on the Book of Job. One of the best features of this collection is that Chiang includes his “Story Notes”, a short paragraph on each story where he explains his thoughts and inspirations. My favorite story was “Understand” about a man awoken from a brain-dead coma, whose neuron synapses are improved by medical injections into his spine. It combines philosophy of mind, technical science, the role of language, the role of culture, philosophy of self, arguments for altruism, and thoughts on the purpose of life in a magical tale. I have not read science fiction in many years, but this book has me researching for similar works in the genre.