Stories of Your Life and Others [Anglais] [Relié]

This marvelous collection by one of science fiction's most thoughtful and graceful writers belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in literary science fiction.

Collected here for the first time, Ted Chiang's award-winning stories--recipients of the Nebula, Sturgeon, Campbell, and Asimov awards--offer a feast of science, speculation, humanity, and lyricism. Standouts include "Tower of Babylon," in which a miner ascends the fabled tower in order to break through the vault of heaven; "Division by Zero," a precise and heartbreaking examination of the disintegration of hope and love; and "Story of Your Life," in which a linguist learns an alien language that reshapes her view of the world. Chiang has the gift that lies at the heart of good science fiction: a human story, beautifully told, in which the science is an expression of the deeper issues that the characters must confront. Full of remarkable ideas and unforgettable moments, Stories of Your Life and Others is highly recommended. --Roz Genessee

Here's the first must-read SF book of the year. Chiang has acquired a massive reputation on the basis of very few pieces of short fiction. This collection contains all six previously published tales, including the Nebula Award-winning "Tower of Babylon," plus a new story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary." It's rare for a writer to become so prominent so fast. In this case, though, the hype is deserved. Chiang has mastered an extremely tricky type of SF story. He begins with a startling bit of oddity, then, as readers figure out what part of the familiar world has been twisted, they realize that it was just a small part of a much larger structure of marvelous, threatening strangeness. Reading a Chiang story means juggling multiple conceptions of what is normal and right. Probably this kind of brain twisting can be done with such intensity only in shorter lengths; if these stories were much longer, readers' heads might explode. Still, the most surprising thing is how much feeling accompanies the intellectual exercises. Whether their initial subject is ancient Babylonians building a tower that reaches the base of Heaven, translation of an alien language that shows a woman a new way to view her life as a mother, or mass-producing golems in an alternative Victorian England, Chiang's stories are audacious, challenging and moving. They resemble the work of a less metaphysical Philip K. Dick or a Borges with more characterization and a grasp of cutting-edge science.
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*Starred Review* A "what-if" question fuels each of Chiang's eight thought-provoking stories. "What if the famed biblical skyscraper actually reached the 'vault of heaven'?" asks "Tower of Babylon," as it follows a miner hired to tunnel through that vault all the way up and beyond. "What if genuinely alien aliens visited Earth, and an earthling learned their conceptually different language?" is the engine of "Story of Your Life." "What if an omnipotent Old Testament God and His angels visited Earth regularly, distributing blessings, tribulations, and chastisements?" drives the grindingly ironic "Hell Is the Absence of God." "Understand" answers the same question about artificially enhancing intelligence that Daniel Keyes' classic Flowers for Algernon did, but the stakes are considerably higher. In fact, the stakes are high in all Chiang's stories, for their social and existential implications concern him as much as their construction. These are stories to enjoy for their form--one is the transcript of a radio or video documentary, another the response to a query from the British science journal Nature. Also intriguing are their foundations--"Story of Your Life" and "Division by Zero" extrapolate from a physical theorem and a mathematical equation, respectively. Finally, if Chiang doesn't offer much rounded characterization and dynamic action, he puts the science back in science fiction--brilliantly. Ray Olson
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"Essential. You won't know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang."-Greg Bear

"Ted Chiang is one of the rare contemporary science-fiction writers who has made his considerable reputation without producing one novel. His stories brim with originality and seduce with their complexity."-Ellen Datlow

"One of our very best writers. Prepare: Ted Chiang will astonish you."-James Patrick Kelly

Ted Chiang's first published story, "Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF.

Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far-plus an eighth story written especially for this volume.

What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Stories of your life . . . and others.

Ted Chiang lives near Seattle, Washington.