Stories of Your Life and Others: Ted Chiang
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Description
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality, Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasias invite us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
Book Information
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Ted Chiang writes Science Fiction about new and relevant topics for a modern audience, often finding a good balance between science and the social impacts. I have to admid, the stories in his new collection, Exhalation, spoke more to me than most of these ones, but that doesn't change that, for me, Chiangs stories are the perfect example for modern sci-fi. There was a little politics, religion, discussions of justice and alternative universes / histories. I like how different from each other his stories can read but still being recognizably his. Sometimes, Chiang can be a little to sciency for me, but the overall impression is that his stories are phenomenal in content and execution.
Ich lese sehr selten Kurzgeschichten, da ich dabei oft das Gefühl habe sobald ich richtig in die Geschichte rein gekommen bin ist sie auch schon zu Ende. Doch Ted Chiang schafft es auf wenigen Seiten komplexe und ausgereifte Welten zu schaffen und auch wenn ich bei gewissen Geschichten gerne noch weiter gelesen hätte, hatte ich nie das Gefühl als würde etwas fehlen. Am besten gefallen hat mir die Geschichte Story of Your Life, auf der auch der Film Arrival basiert, den ich auch richtig toll fand. Während alle Geschichten in diesem Buch zum Nachdenken anregen, hat mich diese emotional am meisten berührt. Die Geschichte beschäftigt sich mit Aliens, Sprache, Zeit und der Frage ob wir einen freien Willen haben. Doch auch andere Geschichten beschäftigen sich mit grossen Fragen und sind voller spannender Ideen. Alle Geschichten waren dabei einzigartigen und Chiang schreibt wirklich unglaublich toll. Ich fand auch sehr interessant dass am Ende des Buches noch kurze Erklärungen des Autors zu seinen Ideen hinter den Geschichten gibt.
I have VERY mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, all stories are well-written, with a healthy amount of research and everything else which makes out a good story. But on the other hand, and this is of course due to my personal taste, most of the them were too scientific/mathematical, which made them hard to relate to. I guess relation is not the author's primary goal, rather thought provocation, but it is a criteria that I look out for. I liked 3 stories out of the 8, all with characters that are easy to grasp over this short page span, with easy topics like linguistic, lookism and something like religious satire. But deep physics and maths just didn't do it for me xD.
Description
From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality, Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasias invite us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
Book Information
Posts
Ted Chiang writes Science Fiction about new and relevant topics for a modern audience, often finding a good balance between science and the social impacts. I have to admid, the stories in his new collection, Exhalation, spoke more to me than most of these ones, but that doesn't change that, for me, Chiangs stories are the perfect example for modern sci-fi. There was a little politics, religion, discussions of justice and alternative universes / histories. I like how different from each other his stories can read but still being recognizably his. Sometimes, Chiang can be a little to sciency for me, but the overall impression is that his stories are phenomenal in content and execution.
Ich lese sehr selten Kurzgeschichten, da ich dabei oft das Gefühl habe sobald ich richtig in die Geschichte rein gekommen bin ist sie auch schon zu Ende. Doch Ted Chiang schafft es auf wenigen Seiten komplexe und ausgereifte Welten zu schaffen und auch wenn ich bei gewissen Geschichten gerne noch weiter gelesen hätte, hatte ich nie das Gefühl als würde etwas fehlen. Am besten gefallen hat mir die Geschichte Story of Your Life, auf der auch der Film Arrival basiert, den ich auch richtig toll fand. Während alle Geschichten in diesem Buch zum Nachdenken anregen, hat mich diese emotional am meisten berührt. Die Geschichte beschäftigt sich mit Aliens, Sprache, Zeit und der Frage ob wir einen freien Willen haben. Doch auch andere Geschichten beschäftigen sich mit grossen Fragen und sind voller spannender Ideen. Alle Geschichten waren dabei einzigartigen und Chiang schreibt wirklich unglaublich toll. Ich fand auch sehr interessant dass am Ende des Buches noch kurze Erklärungen des Autors zu seinen Ideen hinter den Geschichten gibt.
I have VERY mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, all stories are well-written, with a healthy amount of research and everything else which makes out a good story. But on the other hand, and this is of course due to my personal taste, most of the them were too scientific/mathematical, which made them hard to relate to. I guess relation is not the author's primary goal, rather thought provocation, but it is a criteria that I look out for. I liked 3 stories out of the 8, all with characters that are easy to grasp over this short page span, with easy topics like linguistic, lookism and something like religious satire. But deep physics and maths just didn't do it for me xD.