Stories of Your Life and Others

[starlady]

Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. New York: Tor Books, 2002.

On the cover of this book (which, incidentally, in my opinion is ugly) Greg Bear says that it's "essential. You won't know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang." So I guess I know SF now that I've read it!

Yeah, that was sarcasm.

Let me dispute Bear's implicit claim that Chiang is writing SF first of all, because I don't think that stories such as "Tower of Babylon," which takes the Hebrew version of the myth of the Tower of Babel and its associated cosmology as true, or "Hell is the Absence of God," which is predicated on the idea that the evangelical Christian worldview is true, can comfortably be called "science fiction"--no, not even "Babylonian science fiction" in the case of "Tower of Babylon." Babylonian science fiction would have to be written by Babylonians, I think. What does distinguish Chiang from many other sf writers of my experience is that almost all of his work--the majority of the stories in this book, certainly--is predicated on actual science rather than handwaving it, even if, as in the case of "Seventy-Two Letters", it's pre-Darwinian pseudoscience mixed with a healthy dose of kabbalah and alchemy.

That said, while Chiang is undeniably a brilliant writer, I found myself mostly unmoved by the characters in these stories, with the notable exception of the narrator in "Story of Your Life," a linguist who makes contact with an alien race; it's probably not a coincidence that she's the only viewpoint female character in the book. In fact, my predominant feeling while reading these stories was one of creeping unease verging on horror, particularly at "Understand" and "Seventy-Two Letters." My flesh crawls at what the idea of preformation, were it true, would mean for women (and what it did mean before it was disproved), though I don't think Chiang was thinking about that so much. The stories are dominated by implicitly white men of a certain class; people like Robert Stratton, the protagonist of "Seventy-Two Letters," appear attractive only because they are juxtaposed with eugenicists like his patron Earl Fieldhurst. At the end of just about every story I immediately experienced a sensation of overwhelming relief that the world was not in fact the way it was depicted in the story. In that sense they are actually slightly horrific.

So, while I'd say this book is certainly worth reading, I can't really say any more than that. Even if "Story of Your Life" does explicitly cite Borges, which is awesome.

Comments

[troisroyaumes]

Hm, I think I found the stories much more relatable than you did. "Story of Your Life" is probably his best work, and I agree that it has the most emotional impact; I also found "Understand" to be rather clumsy and didn't like it much. But I quite liked "Seventy Two Letters"--I liked how the solution at the end worked as a metaphor for DNA, and it appealed to the biologist in me. I have to admit the implications for women didn't occur to me until you pointed it out here; I'll have to read the story again (and probably find it more depressing than I did previously).

I thought "Division By Zero" and "Hell is the Absence of God" were both quite emotionally moving, although they're by no means uplifting. I wonder if the "slightly horrific" quality you point out has something to do with his thematic obsession with fate and determinism...Have you read "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "What's Expected of Us" yet? I'm curious to know what you would think of those.

[starlady]

I was just linked to "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" on LJ; I will probably read it.

I think I missed the fact that the solution at the end of "Seventy-Two Letters" is a metaphor for DNA; I was totally fixated on the social ramifications of nomenclature. But as a story, purely technically, it was brilliantly done, and the conceit itself and the worldbuilding Chiang puts under it are brilliant too.

I liked "Hell is the Absence of God", though…I don't know, I was basically completely unmoved by the characters, and the ending didn't seem surprising to me, really, though again I liked the worldbuilding. I really didn't like the narrator of "Division By Zero," and I didn't like his wife either. I could totally be brought to feel emotional distress at math being untrue, since I do love mathematics, but that's not the way a story would have to go about posing that conceit, for me.

[yhlee]

Oh, interesting. I did not relate to the narrator in "Story of Your Life" at all, but based on the firestorm that arose in my LJ when I reported on that story ages ago, I seem to be in a minority on that front. I haven't read the full collection, but I agree that the main character in "Seventy-Two Letters" is not that appealing, and in fact when I do read Ted Chiang, I don't read him for the characters, I read him for the mathy flavor of his worldbuilding. I will have to read this collection sometime--of "Hell Is the Absence of God" I only remember that I found it baffling and had to have it explained to me (which explanation I have since forgotten), and I'm not sure I've ever read the others.

[yhlee]

--and oh wait, I think I'm confusing "Divison by Zero" and "Hell Is the Absence of God." Another reason to read the actual collection in its entirety. :-D

[starlady]

I didn't understand "Division by Zero" until I read Chiang's note at the back either. Which, I think, speaks to my total lack of sympathy with both characters in the story.

And I sort of questioned the way he depicted suicide in that story, too, thought not in any way I could articulate coherently.

[starlady]

See, I really liked the fact that all of his stories are so science and math-y. And though everyone cites "Story of Your Life" for the emotional impact, what made the biggest impression on me wasn't the narrator's personal life but the heptapods' written language and how it embodied their worldview and what that meant for, well, everything. That was so cool!

But, yeah. Definitely not so much with the characterization.

And I don't even think that there's anything wrong with that; it's just...I don't know, if the characterization is going to be a minus I want the rest of the elements to pull their weight, and not all of these stories do that.

[yhlee]

Yeah, and in my case, I was flat-out uninterested in the narrator's personal life and would have enjoyed the story more if that had been excised so there was more focus on the worldview stuff. Sigh.

[starlady]

The worldview stuff was so freaking cool.

I was thinking about this more today at work a bit, and I think Chiang's language is in some ways too plain to really bear the fact that his characterization is so flat. I don't know; it's a very unvarnished style, and it reads like no style at all.

[seekingferret]

I read "Division by Zero" after reading a rant about its math, and found its math exactly as frustratingly preposterous as the rant suggested.

[starlady]

Yes, "Division by Zero" is the one that is handwave-y. And doubly annoying because of it.

[moontyger]

I have not read the book, but I have read "Hell is the Absence of God" in an anthology (a best of the year one, I believe) and I remember being, well, unimpressed by it. I didn't hate it, but it really did nothing for me either. Thus, this review somehow sounds to me like about what I'd expect from more of his work.

Lately, I've read a lot of things with characters that do nothing for me at all. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of odd trend.

[oyceter]

I had a really similar reaction! "Story of Your Life" mainly got a "Huh" reaction from me the first time I read it; on a reread, it had slightly more emotional impact, but not that much. Although I like his stories for the thinkiness and the cool ideas, I don't think I love them, and I had problems with the depiction of disability in "Hell Is the Absence of God" and the story on lookism also just did not quite sit right with me.

[starlady]

Yeah, definitely. I couldn't decide what the narrative thought of the female college student in the story on lookism, in a way that bothered me. And "Division by Zero"'s portrayal of suicide just didn't sit right with me, either.

Definitely I like the thinkiness and the cool ideas, but he seems not to take the thinkiness into the realm of society at all.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Really appreciate (and agree with) this review. A lot of people adore Chiang, and I've been meaning to read some of his more recent and highly-acclaimed short stories, which have gotten crazy and persuasive praise, but I've only read this book. And while I felt he had some clever ideas and technical skill, his characters felt to me like absolute cardboard, and something about his writing--I'm not quite sure how to describe it, perhaps his lack of interest in the social ramifications of his ideas--leaves me cold. (I do vaguely remember that one of his stories was premised on math instead of science--something about dividing by zero?--which I found incredibly cool, but I think it's telling that I remember the premise and nothing else about the story.)

The exception to that is "Story of Your Life," which is probably one of the best short stories I have ever, ever read, and made me cry. It was so powerful. I would wade through his next collection to find a story half as good.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Cardboard, yes!

And, yes, total disinterest in the ramifications of the stories' conceits. I have a particular problem with "Hell Is the Absence of God" in that respect, since I think (and this might be my liberal bias, in truth) that society under those conditions would bear little or no resemblance to the way he writes it, which seems to be mostly contemporary society with that tacked on.

"Story of Your Life" nearly made me cry too. But the one about dividing by zero is a particularly egregious example of how his characters are completely unsympathetic (if not just awful), so that the story's conceit is robbed of impact. Mathematics is untrue! Oh the horror! (And, actually, okay, I just don't buy that particular conceit. Mathematics isn't untrue.)

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is ringing more and more bells, especially about the dividing by zero one--both the unlikeable characters and the mathematics being untrue as an unbelievable conceit.

I don't remember "Hell Is the Absence of God" at all, but I feel like I read a lot of sf or fantasy in which society is just like our contemporary society with a conceit tacked-on, and it irks me. It's sloppy world-building. I've been particularly thinking about societies in which certain types of social prejudice have been eradicated, but without any of the farther-reaching implications that would be needed to make it plausible--societies in which homophobia doesn't exist but gender roles are still intact, to take an obvious example. And I don't think Chiang ever goes there, as social implications are not his thing, but 'tis much on my mind lately.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I said to someone on DW that "Division By Zero" is the handwave-y exception. And the handwaving makes the characters' shortcomings even more obvious.

On the other hand, I really liked the short-short about metahuman science. It had no characters and the thinnest sketch of a conceit, but it totally worked even though it would have been handwave-y at any greater length.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

Huh. I think of myself as a very character-focused reader, and I love (most of) Chiang's work. I'll admit that his characters aren't as deep as some other writers', but part of that is down to the fact that Chiang writes short fiction rather than novels, I think; anyway, I don't find his characterization nearly as flat as you do.

It may make a difference that my other favorite thing, along with characterization, is worldbuilding, and I think Chiang's worldbuilding (which includes his ideas) is gorgeous.

If you haven't read Chiang's The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate (http://web.archive.org/web/20080214145811/http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/tc01.htm), which won the 2008 Hugo and Nebula for Best Novelette, you might want to give it a try (the link goes to an archived full text). It's a bit more characterization-centered than some of Chiang's other work, as well as being an awesome idea-exploration.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remembered you saying that you liked this book.

I'd agree about the worldbuilding for the most part, particularly for "Tower of Babylon." But, yeah; I wasn't thrilled with the rest of it. I will check out that novelette though.