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starladyChiang, 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.
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.
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Date: 2010-03-24 01:39 (UTC)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.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-24 04:24 (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-24 19:41 (UTC)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.