 | |
| Author | Ted Chiang |
|---|---|
| Original title | Stories of Your Life and Others |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction,Fantasy |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
Publication date | July 2002 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 333 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | 0-7653-0418-X (first edition, hardback) |
| 813/.6 | |
Stories of Your Life and Others is a collection ofscience fiction andfantasyshort stories by American writerTed Chiang[1] published in 2002 byTor Books. It collects Chiang's first eight stories. All of the stories except "Liking What You See: A Documentary" were previously published individually elsewhere.
The collection won theLocus Award for Best Collection in 2003.[2]
It was reprinted in 2016 asArrival to coincide with the adaptation of "Story of Your Life" as the filmArrival.[3][4] Chiang's second collection,Exhalation: Stories was released in 2019.[5]
Reviewing the book at theSF Site, Greg L. Johnson said that this collection shows why Chiang's stories continue to win awards. Johnson wrote that "it will not take readers new to these stories very long to appreciate their quality and beauty".[6] He added that science fiction relies on short fiction writers to "examine new ideas and push the boundaries of the field", and Chiang has demonstrated he is "more than up to that task".[6]
English fantasy authorChina Miéville wrote in a review inThe Guardian that Chiang's stories in this collection "unfold with a logic that is ineluctable and compassionate". Here "humanism is inextricable from rationalism", and "it is the rationalism of the characters – and the writer – that makes them emotional and human". Miéville further said that despite the extensive use of mathematics, physics and language in the stories, they are infused with a "profound humanism" that makes "the most abstruse philosophical conjectures ... resonant and emotional".[7]
The Guardian rankedStories of Your Life and OthersNo. 80 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.[8]