#25 [2025/CBR17] Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

CBR17Bingo - "Recommended" because this book was recommended to my by my friend.

Most of my book club is composed of a bunch of lawyers. However, there is one, lonely electrical engineer among us who is constantly recommending science-fiction novels that are met with a varying amount of acceptance. She has recommended a number of Hugo-award-winning novels to me that I have intensely disliked, so I don't completely trust her judgment. So, when she loaned me another science-fiction book to read and said she didn't care when she got it back, I put it on my shelf for a number of years and forgot about it.

Then came the day when I needed a book to read, and my library books were all on hold. In my desperation, I turned to the rejects on my bookshelf. And there it was, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) by Ted Chiang. This book contains eight short stories. Chiang seems to be a very well-respected writer of science-fiction. On the whole, these stories were unique and interesting, although some of them were a more painful plod than others. I tended to lose interest in the stories that focused more on religion, but that's just my preference. 

Below is a short blurb about each story in the order they appeared. The starred stories were my favorite.

"Tower of Babylon" - This story explains the building of the Tower of Babylon. Just bringing bricks up to the highest level takes months. People live up there, while they work, growing plants where they can. The sun is especially intense near the top. When they reach the top, they bring a team to drill through to heaven. They are flooded with water and end up back on the ground. It turns out Heaven and Earth were much closer than they had thought. It's like a cylinder with drawings imprinted on it rolled onto the Earth. They might appear far apart if you only look at the impressions from the cylinder on the ground. But they're right next to each other on the actual cylinder. 

*"Understand" - The main character is a subject of an experimental drug that helps him recover from a coma after a near-drowning incident. His brain had been pretty much destroyed, but the drug makes him smarter than he was before. And he keeps taking it, and then he goes rogue and steals another dose. He's smarter than ever, and then he runs into Reynolds, someone else from the program. Their brains are beyond powerful, but they have different ideals and eventually seek to destroy each other. Interesting.

"Division by Zero" - Carl and Renee are an older couple. Renee is a mathematical genius and she discovers a theorem that disproves the very building blocks of Math that are the cornerstone of Renee's entire life. It ruins math for her completely. Her husband realizes that he doesn't love Renee anymore, and it's a similar realization for him. I thought this one was okay, but it wasn't my favorite.

*"Story of Your Life" - I did not know that this eponymous story was the basis for the movie, Arrival. I have not seen Arrival, but I did think this story was good. There is a linguist, and she is brought in by the army to try to communicate with aliens who have appeared in locations around the Earth. In the process, she learns a new language and a new way to think, which allows her to know what is going to happen in the future. ***SPOILER*** She learns that she will have a daughter who will die young, and she has to decide if she wants to have her daughter knowing what's going to happen. This was one of my favorite stories. The details of learning to communicate with the aliens as well as the emotional punch of her discovery was very well done.

"Seventy-Two Letters" - You can create a kind of living automaton with certain combinations of letters. One scientist wanted to create beings that were able to create others. This was seen as a huge threat to the people who already created the automatons. This story was not my favorite. It felt very long and religious-y

"The Evolution of Human Science" - This entire short story is written as an article in Nature magazine. Apparently there are metahumans (something like AI, I think). These metahumans make all the advancements in the world while humans are left just trying to understand it. I found this one short and interesting. I liked that it was written as a magazine article, and it may hit a little too close to home.

"Hell is the Absence of God" - This story also felt very long and religious-y. We are in a world where angels come to Earth, sometimes (accidentally?) bringing death and destruction with them. Surviving these experiences means something and some people chase this experience trying to change their lives. Not my favorite.

*"Liking What You See: A Documentary" - This was one of my favorite stories. The story is written from a bunch of different perspectives. Science has come up with a thing where you can alter your brain so that you are not aware of beauty. It affects the way you see faces, and makes everyone look kind of bland. In this context a college is trying to decide whether they should require and/or encourage everyone on campus to undergo the procedure. This issue is pretty controversial, and the story consists of the many different opinions and perspectives on the matter. There are students who grew up with it, who both like it and dislike it. There are people who want looks to not matter so much. There are the advertisers who desperately need people to see beauty in order to sell their products, and many more. 

This story probably gave me the most to think about. First, this wouldn't realistically work unless it affected our views of bodies as well. Of course beautiful faces are important, but people definitely look at the whole body when determining beauty and attraction. Second, it's fascinating to imagine a world where people were not treated differently based on their looks. Finally, it was both interesting and realistic to see how the competing interests handled this proposal at the college. Inevitably money got involved and people were paid to endorse certain points of view. I think this was my favorite story, and I'm glad the book ended with this one.