The stories gestated in his brain, and then he shaved and cut the text and the characters until the output would be nothing less than perfect. Representing the fruit of 12 years of labor, every story is a little jewel that took over a year of work for Chiang. He is one of the best science fiction writers working today.Ĭhiang’s first 9 stories, each averaging about 30 pages in length, are now collected in Stories of Your Life and Others. If you are a fan of science fiction but normally only seek out full novels, you’ll easily miss this writer and that would be a shame. Most of his short stories have won a number of prestigious awards. Not many people in this field have received so much praise and awards with so little output. Nevertheless, Ted Chiang is highly regarded and admired amongst his peers, praising his “humane intelligence” and topics of “modern, melancholy transcendence” in the words of China Mieville. His total output over the past 25 years has been around 14 short stories, which is enough to fill one book. Maybe once in a few years he produces a manuscript, and usually it is a short-story or novelette. Ted Chiang is a SF writer who almost never writes. and others.A collection of 9 superb short stories, representing 12 years of craftsmanship and imagination. What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang.

Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far-plus an eighth story written especially for this volume. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF.

Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. Ted Chiang's first published story, 'Tower of Babylon,' won the Nebula Award in 1990.

Chiang stories of your life and others