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.