Stories of Your Life and Others
by Ted Chiangshort stories science fiction
Reviewed on: 22nd April 2025.
Ted Chiang writes stories that are imaginative and ambitious, all diverse while circling a common theme: the upper limits of humanity and its understanding of the world and itself. His writing is consistently clear, purposeful, always sophisticated but never pretentious. “Stories of Your Life and Other” has quickly become one of my all-time favorites in science fiction; a must-read for any enjoyer of the genre, I may never stop recommending it.
The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.
Tower of Babylon — A miner climbs the mythical tower on a quest to breach Heaven.
Understand — A patient with severe brain damage is treated with a revolutionary drug.
Division by Zero — A mathematician derives a disconnect between math and the physical world.
Story of Your Life — A linguist recruited to decypher alien languages learns a dual perception of reality.
Seventy-Two Letters — A nomenclator researches lexical solutions to social issues and existential threats.
The Evolution of Human Science — A researcher debates the role of human scientists in a posthuman world.
Hell Is the Absence of God — A man struggles to reconcile with God after his wife dies to an angelic visitation.
Liking What You See: A Documentary — Students vote on a procedure that removes the perception of beauty.