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lightreadsStories of Your Life and Others
I now officially have to STFU about how I don't like short stories. Because that? That was awesome.
Collection of skiffyish pieces from an author whose only serious flaw from where I'm sitting is that he doesn't write enough dammit. If there's a thread binding the set together, it's the way Chiang comes at you every time and asks, "okay, but what would the world be like if we changed this one little rule? Nothing major, you understand -- just cosmology or cause-and-effect or the existence of mathematics. You'll hardly notice. Except when you do."
Standouts for me were, well, all of them, actually, to some degree. But to cherry-pick: "Division by Zero" - risky as all hell, and more than paid off. Math and empathy and sympathy, yeah. "Story of Your Life" - I think I got my brain right way up again, but I'm not sure. "Hell Is the Absence of God" - perfect style, all about suffering. Hell is just there sometimes, but angels are bigger than natural disasters.
They're pretty much all like that, big risks that he just lands over and over again. A few wobbles, like I care right now.
File under: will read everything the man ever writes.
I now officially have to STFU about how I don't like short stories. Because that? That was awesome.
Collection of skiffyish pieces from an author whose only serious flaw from where I'm sitting is that he doesn't write enough dammit. If there's a thread binding the set together, it's the way Chiang comes at you every time and asks, "okay, but what would the world be like if we changed this one little rule? Nothing major, you understand -- just cosmology or cause-and-effect or the existence of mathematics. You'll hardly notice. Except when you do."
Standouts for me were, well, all of them, actually, to some degree. But to cherry-pick: "Division by Zero" - risky as all hell, and more than paid off. Math and empathy and sympathy, yeah. "Story of Your Life" - I think I got my brain right way up again, but I'm not sure. "Hell Is the Absence of God" - perfect style, all about suffering. Hell is just there sometimes, but angels are bigger than natural disasters.
They're pretty much all like that, big risks that he just lands over and over again. A few wobbles, like I care right now.
File under: will read everything the man ever writes.
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Date: 2008-10-17 05:35 pm (UTC)I love all the stories, though "Story" is my favorite, and I have a sneaky fondness for "Seventy-Two Letters," probably because I remember learning about the theory that reproduction did work that way. Oh, and "Division by Zero" breaks my heart-- it's so perceptive. The only one I think is wobbly-so's-I-notice is "Understand," which may also be because I don't do well in general with stories where the protagonist is supposed to be smarter than me. ("Hey, I saw that plot twist coming fifty pages ago, what's your problem?")
(My husband also pointed out a physics flaw in "Tower of Babel," but I love it madly anyway, so there.)
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Date: 2008-11-22 03:58 am (UTC)I have "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" tucked away for a day when I really need something I know will be awesome.