#Stories of Your Life and Others

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

*Published in 2016 under the title "Arrival"

#short stories #short story collection #short story collections #stories of your life and others #arrival #ted chiang #21st century literature #english language literature #american literature #asian american literature #chinese american literature #book polls #have you read this short fiction? #completed polls

[phasingphoenix]

I really love reading all of Ted Chiang’s works. He’ll craft these interesting settings and scenarios and wax poetic about some fundamental piece of human existence, and then you go read his notes in the back of the book and it’s always just like, “I heard a man say something in 1998 and thought I’d write a little thing about it :)”

#ted chiang #exhalation #stories of your life and others

[deuterosapiens]

I've started reading through Ted Chiang's collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, as a bit of a palatal reset. I'm familiar with this author's work for exactly one reason, but I thought skipping directly to that one would be a bit disrespectful. I'm of the opinion that the order in which an author chooses to present their work in a collection such as this is an important, and not made lightly. It might be thematic, or cleansing, or their might be an underlying structure that's made more clear if taken as a whole.

Or completely random, as Stephen King admits in the Foreward to (if I remember correctly) Everything's Eventual.

Here are my impressions of the first three stories:

"Tower of Babylon"- A retelling of the Tower of Babel with an odd little twist. The Tower has not be struck down and the tongues of men have not been muddled. A team of miners and quarry-men have been brought to the top to dig into the Vault of Heaven from below. I'm reminded a bit of The Last Battle by CS Lewis, in particular the bit about Narnia being like an onion which is larger and more perfect the more you peel its layers. I found the ending bittersweet, but it's an interesting perspective about the relationship between Heaven and earth as physical, geographical places.

"Understand"- You remember that movie Lucy? The film with the "Ten Percent of Your Brain"-conceit? This is basically that, but assume the Lucy-analog has Bene Gesserit-levels of personal, physiological awareness. The ending brings to mind Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, at least in the sense that it's very much what The Psychologist was trying to pull on The Linguist, had Area X not warped her physiology. This one felt a bit longer than it needed to be, though it pleasantly reminds me of a Philip K Dick story.

"Divide by Zero"- A mathematician discovers a proof that proves any two random integers are equal, and is driven to suicide at the greater implications this has to the rationality of Mathematics as a whole. Her husband is trying to be supportive and understanding, but their marriage's failure is inevitable. I'll admit, of the three, this was easily my favorite. I've heard stories of mathematicians and physicists becoming psychologically unstable as they delve deeper into understanding their fields, and the implications of them and this story feels quite plausible as a result. The fact that the husband feels an obligation to see his wife through to her recovery, but admits to no longer loving her and intends to leave is also something I've personally seen (though luckily never first-hand): sometimes the weight of seeing a loved-one suffer is too great, and you simply can't bear to be around it anymore.

Seeing as I admittedly do already know what "The Story of Your Life" is about, I find it humorous which threads from these stories tie into it. The inevitability of divorce after revelation, the unsuitability of existing language to properly describe the universe.

I'm going to be deeply upset, but in my defense, mostly because Arrival upsets me deeply.

#ted chiang #stories of your life and others #reading #short story #sci-fi

[tabgore]

'Sounds good.' We walked past the section of kitchen utensils. My gaze wandered over the shelves — pepper mills, garlic presses, salad tongs — and stopped on a wooden salad bowl.

When you are three, you'll pull a dishtowel off the kitchen counter and bring that salad bowl down on top of you. I'll make a grab for it, but I'll miss. The edge of the bowl will leave you with a cut, on the upper edge of your forehead, that will require a single stitch. Your father and I will hold you, sobbing and stained with Caesar dressing, as we wait in the emergency room for hours.

I reached out and took the bowl from the shelf. The motion didn't feel like something I was forced to do. Instead it seemed just as urgent as my rushing to catch the bowl when it falls on you: an instinct that I felt right in following.

Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang

#ted chiang #story of your life #stories of your life and others #i love this story so much #when he wrote #from the beginning i knew my destination and i chose my route accordingly #i really do love this piece #w

[librofm]

Short Story Collections I like: part 3

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Racism in America is the paint, but the images the author creates are so personal and imaginative that I got totally wrapped up in the world. Friday Black turned out to be the perfect appetizer to Chain Gang All Stars (also so good)

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Excellent scifi-ish mind bender, except there’s a super self absorbed guy in one of the stories that I related to wayyyy too much. Thanks a lot Ted. Also the movie Arrival is based on the titular story.

#short stories #Friday Black #Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah #Chain Gang All Stars #Stories of Your Life and Others #Ted Chiang #Arrival #audiobooks #librofm

[thespoot]

Reading Challenge Update - #20

Book number 3 goes to spot #20 A short story, one with less than 5,000 words. I read the whole collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, which certainly contained stories under 5000 words lol.

Why this book: This was part of my sci-fi language wishlist for books that use linguistics/language as a central theme or plot point. When I realized this had the story that the movie Arrival was based on, I was even more excited to read this collection.

Why this category: Last time I did this challenge, I got really hung up on trying to figure out how many words various books had. Kinda not caring as much this time, haha. Are there short stories? Sweet, probably under or about 5000 words I bet.

What did I think: This was an excellent collection of stories. I had two favorites. First, Division by Zero. Short stories are such magic - so few words and I care so much about Renee and her work and Carl and his poor choices lol. Second, Hell is the Absence of God. Good world-building, I easily identified with the main character and his ambivalence towards religion and belief. The ending of this, *chef's kiss*. I always enjoy a good ironic story about how cruel love/devotion can be.

Stories of Your Life was also great. I enjoyed Arrival, but I liked what the short story focused on instead of creating some wild threat to humanity. I also liked that there were more humans who understood the alien writing system - and more humans therefore who were going to experience this new way of seeing the universe with this "simultaneous consciousness."

My least favorite was probably 72 Letters - neat idea with industrializing the golem. But I felt like it got really bogged down in building the world and explaining the minutiae of making golems. It's a short story, you don't need to spend that many words suspending my believe. Let's hear more about the Kabbalist, the cultural impact of the golems, and what the elite British wind up doing when the plan comes to fruition. Overall though, great collection of stories and definitely recommend.

A quote or two:

"What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter what His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion." ~ Hell is the Absence of God

"-'No one could actually experience such a thing; it's like believing six impossible things efore breakfast.' -'How would you know what I can experienced?'" ~ Division by Zero

"Brain damage is never a good idea, no matter what your friends say." ~ Liking What You See: A Documentary

Next books: On my Discworld journey, I finished Jingo and started Last Continent. I'm excited to see how many categories I can shove Discworld into lol. My kiddo recently started The Giver at school, and I finished that during a long night at the hospital. I had never read it before. I also still have Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky in the wings.

#thespoot reads #Stories of Your Life and Others #ted chiang #reading challenge #booklr

[catwingsathena]

My mom checked Stories of your Life and Others out from the library (we’d both read and greatly enjoyed Exhalation) and, much as I love Ted Chiang and his writing, I have arrived at the unsurprising conclusion that reading intense, profound, brain-bending speculative fiction when you already have a headache is perhaps not the best idea.

#ted chiang #stories of your life and others #the first two stories were as expected amazing #the rest will have to wait until my head cooperates 🙁 #seriously though if you haven’t read anything by ted chiang go fix that #his writing is just… incredible #and i will enjoy more of it later. #catwings chatter

[esevik]

Tower of Babylon

This is a story about a miner who is working on the tower of Babylon and trying to break through the wall in the sky to reach heaven. The highlight of this short story is the world building, or how the tower itself functions. It does a good job depicting the massive size of the tower and the differences between the bottom floors and those higher up. It also does a good job at portraying the protagonist's concern about the tower. The twist about the truth of the sky-wall at the end is also pretty good.

I've never read the original tower of Bable myth, though I know the gist of the story (humans build tower, God is pissed off, tower is trashed, humans now speak different languages) but the story introduces enough worldbuilding that even someone who hasn't heard about the myth could still read it without feeling confused.

Rating: A-

#berättelser om ditt liv #ted chiang #stories of your life and others #tower of babylon #book #reading #liveblog #text #my thoughts #story of your life

[the-times-plague]

“Hillalum said nothing. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky.”

- Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life And Others

#ted chiang #stories of your life and others #tower of babylon #dybbuk

[pikminenjoyer]

At the time of counting, and with the added Book Hater Discord votes, phantom of the opera won and I did not enjoy it. Maybe this isn't the year for classics.

This however, means picking a new book to read!

#anti booktok #booklr #poll #my next read #kaikeyi #the last a novel #the priory of the orange tree #my real children #her majestys royal coven #stories of your life and others #tpotot #hmrc #soylao

[theturnofthephrases]

Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang, from Stories of Your Life and Others

Hillalum thought of the story told to him in childhood, the tale following that of the Deluge. It told of how men had once again populated all the corners of the earth, inhabiting more lands than they ever had before. How men had sailed to the edges of the world, and seen the ocean falling away into the mist to join the black waters of the Abyss far below. How men had thus realized the extent of the earth, and felt it to be small, and desired to see what lay beyond its borders, all the rest of Yahweh's Creation. How they looked skyward, and wondered about Yahweh's dwelling place, above the reservoirs that contained the waters of heaven. And how, many centuries ago, there began the construction of the tower, a pillar to heaven, a stair that men might ascend to see the works of Yahweh, and that Yahweh might descend to see the works of men. It had always seemed inspiring to Hillalum, a tale of thousands of men toiling ceaselessly, but with joy, for they worked to know Yahweh better. He had been excited when the Babylonians came to Elam looking for miners. Yet now that he stood at the base of the tower, his senses rebelled, insisting that nothing should stand so high. He didn't feel as if he were on the earth when he looked up along the tower. Should he climb such a thing?

#Tower of Babylon #Ted Chinag #Stories of Your Life and Others #*lokasi #*gagasan

[deuterosapiens]

Wrapping up Stories of Your Life, we are confronted with this little duo: "Hell is the Absence of God" and "Liking What You See: A Documentary".

"Hell is the Absence of God"- On the surface, a man loses his wife and seeks to be reunited with her in the afterlife. That itself isn't too remarkable, and were this simply that sort of story, I likely wouldn't have any opinions on it outside of acknowledging its place in this collection. What's interesting here is how much of an active presence Heaven and Hell have in this particular world, where the appearances of angels are as frequent as they are on a Night Vale baseball field. The arrival of an angelic presence is comparable to some form of natural disaster, with the ending here playing out remarkably like your typical Twister-obsessed Storm-Chaser affair. There's a recurring element about the pursuit of God for selfish reasons, with our lead finding himself condemned to being forgotten by God completely due to using Heaven as little more than a means by which he may be united with his wife. This story is unambiguously a dramatic love story, and a most unfortunate one. One can easily see Neil's Sarah as comparable to the Pilgrim's Beatrice, or Poe's Lenore. Honestly, this is solid and ripe for adaptation, though I can assume no studio would want to touch the ending.

"Liking What You See: A Documentary"- A technology has been developed that allows people to shut-off the parts of their brains responsible for the perceptions of appearance-based beauty. The fictional documentary in this story details a college's attempts to make the use of this technology mandatory for all students and staff on campus; it depicts the back-and-forth arguments of those sides for and against this initiative, and one student's personally experience living with this technology and willing giving it up. In general, this is probably the most straightforward story in this collection, but I feel like, despite being published in 2002 (oh God!), it probably does have a particularly meaningful slant now, more than ever. After all, in our world now, beauty isn't just commercialized and marketable, but the technology of influencing a person's feelings and reality perceptions is becoming more real than it could ever have been dreamed to have been, back then.

Of the two, yes "Absence of God" is my favorite.

#reading #ted chiang #stories of your life and others #Hell is the Absence of God #also #can I just acknowledge that that is such a damn hard hitting title #Like something a metal artist would have written in spiky wrought-iron letters on an album cover

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Stories of Your Life and Others | Author: Ted Chiang | Publisher: Picador (2020)

#books #Stories of Your Life and Others #Ted Chiang

[someonelookingpraediti]

Currently Reading...

Stories of your Life and Others - Ted Chiang

A couple of weeks ago, this was sitting on my friend's desk at work and, being me, I picked it up and started reading the first story. He immediately offered to pass it on to me once he was finished, which is exceptionally generous, considering we are casual friends, at most.

But honestly, it wasn't my type of book. It was very intelligent, very clever, but there wasn't a lot of emotion in it. It was all head, no heart. It might have been a bit beyond me.

One of the stories was adapted into "Arrival" a few years back, which I didn't enjoy at all. I found it boring, and when I told Jack, he explained why it was brilliant, and all the bits I'd completely missed when watching it. The thing is, if he hadn't explained it to me before I read that short story, it would have gone right over my head again while I was reading it.

So, yeah. These short stories were clearly well written, and the author is obviously very intelligent, but the problem is that I am... not. I'm only moderately intelligent, and these stories weren't for me. I just prefer something with a bit more feeling.

#currently reading #ted chiang #stories of your life and others

[ryssbelle]

Thought of this while at work, sorry it's a bit hard to read I sketched it out really fast before my last shift lmao wanted to get it done so I could work on other stuff hehe

If it's any consultation Floyd is mostly talking about himself

#my art #trolls #dreamworks trolls #brozone #trolls 3 #trolls floyd #trolls john dory #trolls branch #trolls poppy #the way i imagine their 20 years in troll village is that one meme where its the two different nothing in life matters pics #but one is super sad and the other is happy looking and radical #thats floyd and jd #but they switch places depending on the day #branch is a secret third option #also idk what id do with the 3rd movies plot #this scene in my head is 3rd movie era but i like havent decided what theyre doing yet #theres a few possibilities on whos in the bottle or if theres a bottle at all #this would take place in a timeline where clay or bruce is in the bottle #but like heres the thing any of the brothers could be bottled and itd make for a good story #i drift more towards clay only for the irony of finding out your brothers alive but its a race against time cuz hes literally dying #so it adds to the urgency but then its not much adventure cuz they just gotta get bruce and go #cuz we have 3/5 brozone here already #same goes for if its bruce #so like for story purposes that means it would be most likely JD or Floyd which is just most aus and canon #cuz after world tour Floyd would travel with JD on their own tour Floyd going solo with JD as his manager #and in this scenario they came back to tell Branch about finding whoever is in the bottle #but the story of these guys could also work without any bottle so idk we'll just have to see what i decide to do later #also im slowly coming up with a name for this #very slowly but it'll happen #i actually have a google doc that has a name so i may just use that

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wen ning #wei wuxian #wen qing #jiang cheng #Truly Massive disclaimer here: I am a Jiang Cheng enjoyer. I like his character. I enjoy that he is very flawed and volatile. #This episode of the audio drama has a lot of great breakdown scenes featuring JC - and they all deserve a feature. #But underlying this comic is a small meta comment of 'ah man I have too many comics of JC just wailing sadly' #My goal is to draw 6-8 comics per episode - I sometimes have to truncate and cut good scenes out. #Especially when a large majority is just different flavours of trauma and toxic relationships to your self-worth. #I would also like to make a note here that just because you lose the ability to do something that is very tied to your core identity- #-does not mean your life is over. It will feel like the end of the world. It will send you into a spiral of grief. It will hurt so badly. #Sometimes we do not realize how tied up our identities can be in certain things until we are cut loose. #You don't lose yourself. I promise the pain will fade in time. I promise you will find other things to tether you. I promise you will be ok #Life moves forwards. Time moves forwards. You move forwards. #Ego death just means an opportunity for ego rebirth. You are never committed to being the same person forever. #To wrap this around to JC: Yeah I love the twist with the core transfer but man I would have loved to see JC accept the loss. #Obviously it happens for a reason (story) but I can have my AUs. I can have these 'what-ifs'. #described in alt text #I'm trying it out! *please* give me feedback - I want to eventually Add image ID to all of these comics one day