This is the first work of Ted Chiang I’ve read, and I’ve immediately turned into a fan. He writes the kind of science fiction that really explores alternative realities deeply. The creativity and imagination in these short stories are unparalleled.
”Tower of Babylon” is a lovely story of adventure which reminded me of Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. I really love how much a simple idea is pushed to its absolute limit. It creates a feeling of awe in a way I feel not many things can.
In “Understand” Chiang explores concepts of hyperintelligence. He is far from the first to do this, but his approach definitely is inspiring and creative. Particularly the ideas of metaprogramming one’s own mind and coming up with a gestalt-based language perfectly suited for thought, rather than for writing, were very interesting. The depth in this one is great.
One of Chiang’s more ambitious stories is “Division by Zero”, where a mathematician discovers that we were entirely wrong about division by zero being an illegal operation. In fact, it turns out it is a legal operation, and as a consequence all numbers are equal to one another. Of course this is entirely impossible, but to try and come up with a world where we discover division by zero is in fact possible, and imagining this world in such a way that the consequences at least make some weird kind of sense is incredible. I really liked the psychological ramifications as well.
”Story of Your Life” is definitely one of the better stories in this collection. Again Chiang demonstrates great understanding of linguistics, and puts this into practice by exploring nothing less than established contact with extraterrestial life. The correspondence between the type of language one knows and how the world is perceived by that person is highlighted beautifully, in particular through showing the evolution of the linguist’s minds when they teach themselves the alien language. Fantastic story.
The story that I found the hardest to appreciate, but which is also among the ones that showed the most courageous deviations from reality is “Seventy-Two Letters”. Breathing life into automata using the power of correctly chose “names” and saving mankind’s procreation using those same lexical forces is something very, very strange to me. The story grew on me because of the sheer depth of Chiang’s wide-reaching explorations, but it’s a hard one.
”The Evolution of Human Science” is an interesting thought experiment in which Chiang asks the question: what would happen to scientific journals once regular humans are surpassed by intelligence far greater than ours? It’s marvelous how he manages to amaze me in these three pages. Especially the insight that regular humans might still be into science trying to understand what the metahumans come up with, and making that understood, is really interesting. It almost feels like a relative Platonic world, where scientific theries and discoveries are available for us to discover.
Another story that that went quite out of its way in its ground assumptions about reality is “Hell Is the Absence of God”. This is basically a very smart treatise of the famous Problem of Suffering. However, thanks to the specifics of Neil Fisk’s life story, some very interesting challenges arise. This is a really captivating story that’s one of the more easier ones to read. I think the ending is quite brilliant.
Last, but definitely not least, is “Liking What You See: A Documentary”. This is a documentary style story that tries to fight out the pros and cons of a treatment called calli (calliagnosia), in which neural pathways responsible for judging faces on their beauty are disabled. This effectively makes people no longer distinguish between categories of beautiful and ugly when seeing faces. Proponents mention benefits such as equity, improved focus and more fair working places. Opponents on the other hand claim, among other things, it dulls an aesthetic appreciation that is part of the joys of life that make us human. Chiang does a great job representing both sides of this debate, and puts in a few highly relevant ‘sub stories’ that give the whole more character.
Overall, this was a fantastic read. Chiang is a great writer who has a fantastic imagination.
Rating: ★★★★☆