From Powells.com
Book Recommendations for Asian Pacific Heritage Month
Synopses & Reviews
Ted Chiang has long been known as one of the most powerful science fiction writers working today. Offering readers the dual delights of the very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, Arrival presents characters who must confront sudden change. In “Story of Your Life,” which provides the basis for the film Arrival, alien lifeforms suddenly appear on Earth. When a linguist is brought in to help communicate with them and discern their intentions, her new knowledge of their language and its nonlinear structure allows her to see future events and all the joy and pain they may bring. In each story of this incredible collection, with sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by wonder.
Review
“A swell movie adaptation always sends me to the source material, so Arrival had me pick up Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others: lean, relentless, and incandescent.” Colson Whitehead, GQ
Review
“Chiang writes with a gruff and ready heart that brings to mind George Saunders and Steven Millhauser, but he’s uncompromisingly cerebral.” The New Yorker
Review
“Blend[s] absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space....raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human.” The New York Times
About the Author
Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and holds a degree in computer science. His fiction has won numerous awards. His first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into 10 languages. He lives near Seattle, Washington.