Synopses & Reviews
This new edition of Ted Chiang's masterful first collection,
Stories of Your Life and Others, includes his first eight published stories plus the author's story notes and a cover that the author commissioned himself. Combining the precision and scientific curiosity of Kim Stanley Robinson with Lorrie Moore's cool, clear love of language and narrative intricacy, this award-winning collection offers readers the dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar.
Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change — the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens — while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story, a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection. A clever pastiche of news reports and interviews chronicles a college's initiative to turn off the human ability to recognize beauty in Liking What You See: A Documentary. With sharp intelligence and humor, Ted Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change, and also by beauty and wonder.
Review
"Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales...this collection is a pure marvel. [Ted] Chiang is so exhilarating so original so stylish he just leaves you speechless. I always suggest a person read at least 52 books a year for proper mental functioning but if you only have time for one, be at peace: you found it." Junot Diaz
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"Meticulously pieced together, utterly thought through, Chiang's stories emerge slowly...but with the perfection of slow-growing crystal." Lev Grossman
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"United by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang's calm passion." China Mieville
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"Ted is a national treasure...each of those stories is a goddamned jewel." Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
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"Confirms that blending science and fine art at this length can produce touching works, tales as intimate as our own blood cells, with the structural strength of just-discovered industrial alloys." Seattle Times
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"Chiang derides lazy thinking, weasels it out of its hiding place, and leaves it cowering." Washington Post
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"He puts the science back in science fiction — brilliantly." Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Essential. You wont know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang." Greg Bear
Synopsis
One of the best short story collections of the last ten years, back in print in a new edition.
About the Author
Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York and holds a degree in computer science from Brown University. In 1989 he attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. His fiction has won three Hugos, four Nebulas, three Locus awards, and a Sturgeon award. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
Ted Chiang on PowellsBooks.Blog
My new book is titled
Exhalation, and it's a collection of short fiction. It contains all the stories I've published since my first collection, as well as two stories appearing for the first time. Some of the stories originally appeared in limited print-run editions, so it's nice to have them widely available now...
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