Stories of Your Life (38 page)

It seems to me that the Book of Job lacks the courage of its convictions: if the author were really committed to the idea that virtue isn't always rewarded, shouldn't the book have ended with Job still bereft of everything?

"Liking What You See: A Documentary"

Psychologists once conducted an experiment where they repeatedly left a fake college application in an airport, supposedly forgotten by a traveler. The answers on the application were always the same, but each time they included a different photo of the fictitious applicant. It turned out people were more likely to mail in the application if the applicant was attractive. This is perhaps not surprising, but it illustrates just how thoroughly we're influenced by appearances; we favor attractive people even in a situation where we'll never meet them.

Yet any discussion of beauty's advantages is usually accompanied by a mention of the burden of beauty. I don't doubt that beauty has its drawbacks, but so does everything else. Why do people seem more sympathetic to the idea of burdensome beauty than to, say, the idea of burdensome wealth? It's because beauty is working its magic again: even in a discussion of its drawbacks, beauty is providing its possessors with an advantage.

I expect physical beauty will be around for as long as we have bodies and eyes. But if calliagnosia ever becomes available, I for one will give it a try.

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Thanks to Michelle for being my sister, and thanks to my parents, Fu-Pen and Charlotte, for their sacrifices.

Thanks to the participants of Clarion, Acme Rhetoric, and Sycamore Hill for letting me work with them. Thanks to Tom Disch for the visit, Spider Robinson for the phone call, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm for the guidance, Karen Fowler for the anecdotes, and John Crowley for reopening my eyes. Thanks to Larret Galasyn-Wright for encouragement when I needed it, and Danny Krashin for the lending me his mind. Thanks to Alan Kaplan for all the conversations.

Thanks to Juliet Albertson for love. And thanks to Marcia Glover, for love.

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These stories were originally published as follows:

"Tower of Babylon,”
Omni,
1990

"Understand,”
Asimov's,
1991

"Division by Zero,”
Full Spectrum 3,
19912

"Story of Your Life,”
Starlight 2,
1998

"Seventy-Two Letters,”
Vanishing Acts,
2000

"The Evolution of Human Science,”
Nature,
2000

"Hell is the Absence of God,”
Starlight 3,
2001

"Liking What You See: A Documentary,”
Stories of Your Life and Others,
2002

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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.

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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, Best of the Decade: Science Fiction and Fantasy,
Techland.com

"In Chiang's hands, SF really is the ‘literature of ideas’ it is often held to be, and the genre's traditional “sense of wonder” is paramount. But though one reads Stories of Your Life with a kind of thematic nostalgia for classic philosophical SF such as that of Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, the collection never feels dated. Partly this is because the “wonder” of these stories is a modern, melancholy transcendence, not the naive ‘50s dreams of the genre's golden age. More important, the collection is 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,
The Guardian

"Ted is a national treasure ... each of those stories is a goddamned jewel."

—Cory Doctorow,
BoingBoing

"Chiang's work 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."—
The Seattle Times

"Summarizing these stories does not do justice to Chiang's talent. Seemingly ordinary ideas are pursued ruthlessly, their tendons flayed, their bones exposed. Chiang derides lazy thinking, weasels it out of its hiding place, and leaves it cowering."

—
The Washington Post

"Chiang is one of those authors who prove the power of science fiction by looking at things in totally new ways."—
The Denver Post

"Abounds with examples of why Ted Chiang's stories have continued to be award winners. From “Understand", which both plays homage to and expands upon Daniel Keyes’ classic “Flowers For Algernon” to “Story of Your Life,” in which a linguist confronts the relationship between language and reality, it will not take readers new to these stories very long to appreciate their quality and beauty. Science fiction has always depended on writers who work best at shorter lengths to continue to examine new ideas and push the boundaries of the field. In the decade plus a few years since he first started publishing, Ted Chiang has shown himself to be more than up to that task."—
SF Site

"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.... They resemble the work of a less metaphysical Philip K. Dick or a Borges with more characterization and a grasp of cutting-edge science."—
Publishers Weekly

"Brilliantly conceived and emotionally moving."—
Infinity Plus

"A quirky, inventive and morally sober collection ... Discovering Chiang is one of those pleasures reserved for those of us not snobbish about genre SF. He is an important short-story writer.” Roz Kaveney,
Time Out London

"Absolutely mind-blowing and stunningly creative—Ted Chiang is the future of science fiction!"—Jamie M., Powells.com Staff Pick

"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 ... 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."—Amazon.com

"The level of ideas and concepts at work are nothing short of breathtaking."—
SFX

"Essential. You won't know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang."—Greg Bear

"Can he be the best SF writer to come down the pike in the past thirty years? I honestly believe that he is."—Harry Harrison

"[Chiang] is a master of prose as a precise instrument, or rather a well-stocked toolbox of instruments, subtly choosing and coolly crafting the right style not just to convey the particular content but to suit the particular form."

—
Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

"It has often been said that the short story is the heart of sf. On the evidence of Chiang's first collection, the genre heart is beating strongly and in a very healthy state indeed."—
Vector

"The qualities for which Ted Chiang is well-known—conceptual originality and dazzling clarify, for starters—are on show throughout."—
Foundation

"Sheer originality ... a remarkable collection. Every story amply repays the investment put into reading it."—
Interzone

"Chiang is a consummate stylist, and these lyrical tales aren't just great SF; they're great literature."—
The Globe and Mail

"Ted Chiang's collection is probably—without exaggeration—the most anticipated short story collection of its generation."—
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

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Since 2001, Small Beer Press, an independent publishing house, has published satisfying and surreal novels and short story collections by award-winning writers and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you'll never be able to forget. Recent titles include:

Julia Holmes, Meeks: A Novel

Two men struggle against the everyday oppressions of an authoritarian city-state in this darkly comic debut. Ben must find a wife or be banished to the factories; Meeks faces the threat of execution as part of a public theater performance.

Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn't See and Other Stories

In her moving and elegant first collection since the turn of the millennium, New York Times best seller Karen Joy Fowler writes about the Booth family, a cult, a pair of twins ... digging into America's past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can.

Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy: A Novel

A Victorian brothel. A love triangle. A vivid, sexy, historical novel that zips along like the best guilty pleasure. “Love and betrayal, blackmail and beatings, sex and death ... Koja's language is at its poetic best."—Cory Doctorow (Little Brother)

Karen lord, Redemption in Indigo

Paama, a great cook, leaves her husband and is given control of a chaos stick in this smart and funny debut novel “Lord's debut, a retelling of a Senegalese folktale, packs a great deal of subtly alluring storytelling into this small package."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, A Life on Paper (trans. Edward Gauvin)

Greer Gilman, Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (Tiptree Award Winner)

Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers

Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen; Trampoline (Editor)

Vincent McCaffrey, Hound: A Novel

Benjamin Parzybok, Couch: A Novel

Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak (Eds.), Interfictions 2

A Working Writer's Daily Planner 2011: Your Year in Writing

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

A twice-yearly fiction &c. zine ("Tiny, but celebrated"—Washington Post) edited by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant publishing writers such as Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, David J. Schwartz, Molly Gloss, and many others. (The Best of LCRW is available from Del Rey.) A multitude of subscription options—including chocolate—are available on our website.

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