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Matthew's Reviews > Stories of Your Life and Others
Stories of Your Life and Others
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Stories of Your Life and Others is a very interesting collection of stories. I think you really need to be into the “Sci” part of Sci-fi to truly enjoy them; they are thick with scientific terminology and theorems. For me, that reduced my enjoyment of a few of the stories while others had the perfect balance for me.
My favorites were Tower of Babylon, Hell is the Absence of God, and Liking What You See: A Documentary. One story (The Evolution of Human Science) was only 3 pages and, therefore, too short to rate. My least favorite story was The Story of Your Life, which is disappointing as it is the story the movie Arrival is based on and I was looking forward to seeing that.
I took all my ratings for each story and got the average – I give this book 4 stars even!
Tower of Babylon - 4.5 stars - A very strong start. The writing is great and comfortable to read. Chiang's speculative fiction set in biblical mythology is thought provoking and fascinating!
Understand - 4 stars - An interesting but complex and heavy story. This what-if? scenario just might drive you insane! Limitless anyone?
Division By Zero - 3 stars - Another story of mathematics and madness. I didn't really feel like a while lot happened here, but it was kind of interesting to think about what would happen if everything you have always fundamentally believed was proven, without a doubt, to be wrong. I believe if I was a little more into math, I would have connected to it more.
The Story of Your Life - 2.5 Stars - Quite drawn out for so little resolution. Mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. Interesting premise, but the confusion that comes when it gets really technical is not balanced by an enthralling story.
Seventy-two Letters - 4 stars - the premise of this story was fascinating and it was the first story in this collection with something that could be considered an action sequence. Still heavy on complex theorems, but still interesting when not too confusing.
The Evolution of Human Science - no rating - 3 pages so too short to rate. Lots of big complicated words crammed together. I believe the concept is that the world where it takes place is so advanced, they have to restrict development so humans don't get too smart.
Hell is the Absence of God – 5 Stars - Best story so far - pacing was great and the premise was fascinating: what if Heaven and Hell existed on the same plane as Earth and we had the potential to interact with angels on a frequent basis? This one got my brain juices flowing the most.
Liking What You See: A Documentary - 5 stars - my favorite out of the collection. A perfect balance of speculative science and storytelling. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . . or is it?
My favorites were Tower of Babylon, Hell is the Absence of God, and Liking What You See: A Documentary. One story (The Evolution of Human Science) was only 3 pages and, therefore, too short to rate. My least favorite story was The Story of Your Life, which is disappointing as it is the story the movie Arrival is based on and I was looking forward to seeing that.
I took all my ratings for each story and got the average – I give this book 4 stars even!
Tower of Babylon - 4.5 stars - A very strong start. The writing is great and comfortable to read. Chiang's speculative fiction set in biblical mythology is thought provoking and fascinating!
Understand - 4 stars - An interesting but complex and heavy story. This what-if? scenario just might drive you insane! Limitless anyone?
Division By Zero - 3 stars - Another story of mathematics and madness. I didn't really feel like a while lot happened here, but it was kind of interesting to think about what would happen if everything you have always fundamentally believed was proven, without a doubt, to be wrong. I believe if I was a little more into math, I would have connected to it more.
The Story of Your Life - 2.5 Stars - Quite drawn out for so little resolution. Mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. Interesting premise, but the confusion that comes when it gets really technical is not balanced by an enthralling story.
Seventy-two Letters - 4 stars - the premise of this story was fascinating and it was the first story in this collection with something that could be considered an action sequence. Still heavy on complex theorems, but still interesting when not too confusing.
The Evolution of Human Science - no rating - 3 pages so too short to rate. Lots of big complicated words crammed together. I believe the concept is that the world where it takes place is so advanced, they have to restrict development so humans don't get too smart.
Hell is the Absence of God – 5 Stars - Best story so far - pacing was great and the premise was fascinating: what if Heaven and Hell existed on the same plane as Earth and we had the potential to interact with angels on a frequent basis? This one got my brain juices flowing the most.
Liking What You See: A Documentary - 5 stars - my favorite out of the collection. A perfect balance of speculative science and storytelling. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . . or is it?
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Reading Progress
November 26, 2016
– Shelved
November 26, 2016
– Shelved as:
to-read
February 1, 2017
–
Started Reading
February 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
2017
February 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
book-a-book-club
February 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
kindle
February 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
short-stories
February 1, 2017
– Shelved as:
own
February 1, 2017
–
11.23%
"Tower of Babylon - 4.5 stars - A very strong start. The writing is great and comfortable to read. Chiang's speculative fiction set in biblical mythology is thought provoking and fascinating!"
page
32
February 3, 2017
–
26.67%
"Understand - 4 stars - An interesting but complex and heavy story. This what-if? scenario just might drive you insane! Limitless anyone?"
page
76
February 4, 2017
–
32.98%
"Division By Zero - 3 stars - Another story of mathematics and madness. I didn't really feel like a while lot happened here, but it was kind of interesting to think about what would happen if everything you have always fundamentally believed was proven, without a doubt, to be wrong. I believe if I was a little more into math, I would have connected to it more."
page
94
February 9, 2017
–
53.33%
"The Story of Your Life - 2.5 Stars - Quite drawn out for so little resolution. Mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. Interesting premise, but the confusion that comes when it gets really technical is not balanced by an enthralling story."
page
152
February 13, 2017
–
73.68%
"Seventy-two Letters - 4 stars - the premise of this story was fascinating and it was the first story in this collection with something that could be considered an action sequence. Still heavy on complex theorems, but still interesting when not too confusing."
page
210
February 14, 2017
–
74.74%
"The Evolution of Human Science - no rating - 3 pages so too short to rate. Lots of big complicated words crammed together. I believe the concept is that the world where it takes place is so advanced, they have to restrict development so humans don't get too smart."
page
213
February 16, 2017
–
85.96%
"Hell is the Absence of God - Best story so far - pacing was great and the premise was fascinating: what if Heaven and Hell existed on the same plane as Earth and we had the potential to interact with angels on a frequent basis? This one got my brain juices flowing the most."
page
245
February 17, 2017
–
100%
"Liking What You See: A Documentary - 5 stars - my favorite out of the collection. A perfect balance of speculative science and storytelling. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder . . . or is it?"
page
298
February 17, 2017
–
Finished Reading
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message 1:
by
Saul
(new)
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rated it 3 stars
Feb 04, 2017 11:01AM
Hi Mathew, just in case, there is the film Arrival nominated with several Oscar based on T. Chiang's Story of my Life.
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Thanks, Saul! That was one of the reasons I chose to read this one now. I always try and read the book before seeing the movie!
Great review! Maybe I should see if sci-fi is really my thing before I try this one...
Sarah wrote: "Great review! Maybe I should see if sci-fi is really my thing before I try this one..."Yeah - I dont think this one would be a great place to start unless you are really into long, complicated, and repetitive scientific explanations.
Excellent review, Matthew. This sounds like my sort of thing!
Paul wrote: "Excellent review, Matthew. This sounds like my sort of thing!"Thanks! Hope you enjoy - I will keep my eye out for your review if you decide to read it.
Nice breakdown of this collection. Liking What You See was one of my favourites, too. Your opening caveat was interesting: I thought of these more as math(s)-fi than sci-fi, but even though I'm no mathematician, I didn't find that an off-putting impediment.
Cecily wrote: "Nice breakdown of this collection. Liking What You See was one of my favourites, too. Your opening caveat was interesting: I thought of these more as math(s)-fi than sci-fi, but even though I'm n..."
Thanks! And thanks for the feedback - I like that "math-fi". Sometimes that sort of thing doesn't get in my way, but for some reason it did here a little bit.
Love the rating per story
Amit wrote: "Love the rating per story"Thanks, Amit! A few years ago I started approaching short story collections this way and it felt right.
As someone who's really into math (it's my field of study) I definitely connected with Division By Zero, but I saw myself more in her colleague who understood the proof but was like "Dang that's crazy! Publish it!" and then moved on with his life lol. Math itself gets so crazy and fundamentally leads to weird places and causes you to think in some weird ways, to the point where it wouldn't phase me at all to learn that our rules of math are just one interpretation of something else. That probably doesn't make sense. It's hard to explain.
Catherine Taft wrote: "As someone who's really into math (it's my field of study) I definitely connected with Division By Zero, but I saw myself more in her colleague who understood the proof but was like "Dang that's cr..."😃 It’s confusing, but I get it! This whole collection gets the brain juices flowing! Gotta love a book that makes you think in unusual ways.
Matthew wrote: "Catherine Taft wrote: "As someone who's really into math (it's my field of study) I definitely connected with Division By Zero, but I saw myself more in her colleague who understood the proof but w..."Yeah I tend to read fast and I had to really force myself to slow down with this one because there are some profound concepts in it that you need to sort of marinate in. I don't really love his sparse writing style but I love the ideas he puts forward. This is one I might give a re-read to later on. I'm only about 1/3 the way through a larger collection of his stuff that contains this sub-collection. So much Chiang to go haha
Catherine Taft wrote: "Yeah I tend to read fast and I had to really force myself to slow down with this one because there are some profound concepts in it that you need to sort of marinate in. I don't really love his sparse writing style but I love the ideas he puts forward. This is one I might give a re-read to later on. I'm only about 1/3 the way through a larger collection of his stuff that contains this sub-collection. So much Chiang to go haha"I thought I saw recently he had a new collection - but maybe that was just this larger collection you are referring to?
How could you like Tower of Babylon, given that in it we hear of a tower about sixty kilometers high to the higher parts of which men move bricks by hand?
