Michael Finocchiaro's Reviews > Stories of Your Life and Others

[UPDATED] This collection of short stories was quite insightful. There are seven stories here:

Tower of Babylon was probably my favorite. It is based on the Biblical story but with great twists and insights about human pretentious at higher knowledge and how the universe conspires silently to confound them.
Understand was an interesting one, but for me ended kind of abruptly. The idea of augmented intelligence was addressed famously (and better IMHO) in Keyes' Flowers for Algernon, but still this story does have some interesting ideas about the dangers of isolation and paranoia for particularly enhanced individuals.
Story of Your Life was a beautiful, moving story about language and extra-terrestrials and different ways at looking at phenomena in the natural world. My second favorite. Apparently, it was shot as a movie in "Arrival", but I missed that one in the theaters. I watched it in an airplane and enjoyed it a lot despite the Hollywood modifications to the plot. I thought visually they did a good job of rendering the aliens, but they overplayed the military aspect that was not really a factor in the short story. The lesson was more about finding common ground. The coolest aspect of the story, besides the linguistic aspect, was the bit about non-linear time. No spoilers though, you’ll have to read it for yourself!
Seventy-Two Letters was a sort of interesting story but I got hung up on the names idea and never really was fascinated with golems and cabalistic philosophy. Not my cup of tea perhaps, or over my head? Not sure: I really wanted to like this one, but it eluded me.
The Evolution of Human Science is a really short report from a meta-human of human science. Kind of bizarre.
Hell Is the Absence of God was a great story about angels and belief in God and I really enjoyed it. I used a similar idea in my first book, so it was nice to see someone else thinking along similar lines.
Liking What You See: A Documentary was the last story in the collection about a calli, a technique for combatting what the author calls "lookism" or the discrimination against folks based on their looks. Set on a college campus, the debate rages over the benefits vs the costs of this technology. Interesting, but for me, not compelling.

The stories are followed by story notes which provided insight into what inspired Ted Chiang to write each story. I find his writing fresh and interesting and will probably seek out other work (but not after making a dent in my current reading list). That being said, as interesting as his ideas are, for short fiction in the sci-fi arena, I still prefer Ken Liu and his The Paper Menagerie.