{"id":2787,"date":"2021-10-19T15:00:19","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T21:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2787"},"modified":"2021-08-19T21:32:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T03:32:15","slug":"book-stories-of-your-life-and-others-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2021\/10\/19\/book-stories-of-your-life-and-others-2002\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StoriesStories of Your Life and Others
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2002
Author: Ted Chiang
Length: 623 minutes \/ 10.38 hours<\/p>\n

After reading Exhalation<\/em><\/a>, I found myself in search of more stories by Ted Chiang. This led me to Stories of Your Life and Others<\/em>. Partly because this collection included many of Chiang\u2019s earlier stories, not all of them were great pieces of literature like the ones in Exhalation<\/em>. I could tell that Chiang was still trying to find his voice as a writer as he explored many science fiction topics common to the genre. While not all of the stories are fantastic, there are enough good ones to warrant reading this collection.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a little disappointing is how some of the ideas Chiang explores in this book are truly interesting topics, but the execution of these stories feels a little too erudite for the common reader. I appreciate Chiang\u2019s later ability to humanize these ideas (as shown by my love of Exhalation<\/em>), but he just wasn\u2019t quite there yet with these early works. Still, there are a handful of award-winning stories in this book, including \u201cTower of Babylon\u201d and \u201cHell Is the Absence of God.\u201d Chiang\u2019s ability to combine science and religion is second to none, and these stories prove as much.<\/p>\n

One story in this book stands out from the rest. It makes sense that \u201cStory of Your Life\u201d was the titular choice for this book. For those unaware, the movie Arrival<\/em><\/a> (2016) is based on this short story (and is a pretty close adaptation). Even if you only read \u201cStory of Your Life,\u201d I think you\u2019ll get something out of this collection. It is by far the most approachable of these stories, and it deserved all of the awards bestowed upon it when it was originally published in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

A good collection of Ted Chiang\u2019s early works that contains a few sparkling gems, I give Stories of Your Life and Others<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stories of Your Life and OthersYear: 2002Author: Ted ChiangLength: 623 minutes \/ 10.38 hours After reading Exhalation, I found myself in search of more stories by Ted Chiang. This led me to Stories of Your Life and Others. Partly because this collection included many of Chiang\u2019s earlier stories, not all of them were great pieces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,54],"tags":[1746,416,55,2830,2056,8,525,2828,2621,2829],"class_list":["post-2787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-book","tag-1746","tag-arrival","tag-book","tag-hell-is-the-absence-of-god","tag-novellas","tag-review","tag-short-stories","tag-stories-of-your-life-and-others","tag-ted-chiang","tag-tower-of-babylon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2802,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2787\/revisions\/2802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}