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Review: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (2002)
Like many others, I first learned of Ted Chiang after I watched Arrival. It was convenient that he wrote stories that were more easily consumable, so I binged a bunch of his short stories in a few days.
As a disclaimer, I read a compilation of some of his stories rather than the official version of Stories of Your Life and Others. However, I will still only comment on the short stories that are included in this collection.
Massive spoilers below.
Chiang made use of the first person perspective in his stories, but I think it helped his stories "get to the point." In many of Chiang's stories, he gave relatively few details when it came to the new technologies in his worlds, and preferred to let them reveal themselves naturally through conversations or narratives. Since the introductions were less demonstrative/performative, I really felt that the technologies or situations described in the stories were very natural to the characters themselves.
It was very cool that Chiang set some of his stories in non-conventional settings. The most obvious example would probably be The Tower of Babylon, which was set in ancient times, but dealt with a concept that we wouldn't be surprised to see in more conventional space settings.
I really felt that each one of Chiang's stories were suitable to be adapted into movies. Each one of his stories, regardless of length, managed to cover a few topics in sufficient depth. I really did walk away from each story feeling like I'd read a good discussion of questions that arose as a result of the events in the story.
When I Googled Ted Chiang, one of the top search results was an article from the New Yorker entitled "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." I didn't read the article, but I do agree with the headline. I've started associating science fiction with Black Mirror, but as we know, Black Mirror tends to walk the path of showing how things could get really bad. While reading Ted Chiang's stories, I was always on guard, waiting for a gruesome or shocking ending to pop out at me at the last moment. Most of the time, that didn't come. Instead, I found that Chiang's stories usually ended with realizations, rather than any definitive actions for individuals or people as a whole. In a way, I liked that approach. Science fiction as a genre at its best promotes discussion, and discussions don't always have to end in a call to action.
As I read Chiang's short stories, I was also looking for online discussions and seeing what ideas other people had about each story. So I acknowledge that some of my thoughts may have been influenced by others.
Stories
Tower of Babylon
The Tower of Babylon was built by humans who had wanted to reach God. In the original myth, God didn't like this, and made the humans speak different languages so that they couldn't communicate with each other and finish building the tower. In Chiang's story, one miner eventually reached what he thought was heaven, only to realize he was back on the earth that he came from. The revelation was that their world was shaped like a "seal cylinder," so essentially, the humans' "up" axis was along the circle-shaped edge of the cylinder, and the ground axis was along the flat edge of the cylinder.
With this story, the thing that struck me the most was how Chiang used an ancient myth and turned it into a science fiction story. We usually think of science fiction as stories taking place in the future with space ships or on other planets. However, this story did something much simpler. It just distorted the science of our world and explored how people from another time period, with less technology, would have interpreted that world.
The top of the tower had reached "God's vault." Hillalum was one of the miners who travelled for months up the tower to reach the vault, because miners were required to drill through that vault. When the miners reached the vault, they had commented on how huge the vault was, since it stretched forever. At that point in the story, I was thinking that to the miners, it might've felt like they were floating above ground. The vault was so huge that it could've looked and felt like the ground. However, it was above the miners and not below them, so in that moment, the miners might've felt like gravity was working in the opposite direction.
Another concept that was explored in this short story was the idea that whole economies thrived on the Tower of Babylon. The town of Babylon itself was pretty much deserted because everyone was living on the Tower. It reminded me a bit of the concept of Planet B. Babylonians were perhaps hoping that life on the tower was closer to God and therefore better, and they'd rather strive for that hope instead of bettering their lives down on earth.
There was gossip that no one batted an eye if a man fell from the tower, but a huge deal was made if a brick fell from the tower. This was cleared up later that bricks were regularly sent up the tower, so it wasn't a huge deal. What was a huge deal would be if the bricklayers' tools fell from the tower, because that rendered the bricklayer useless. I don't think this was meant to be a huge point of discussion, but rather, I think it gave us an idea of how serious everybody was about building the Tower of Babylon.
Understand
This story reminded me a lot of Flowers for Algernon and Limitless. Leon had suffered brain damage and was given trial drugs. As a result of the drug, his brain functions grew to superhuman levels. The government wanted to continue studying him, probably for their military program, but Leon refused, and then went on the run. He later took another dose of the drug and at that point he was godlike in both mind and body. He was contacted by another person, Reynolds, who had also taken that extra dose of drugs. Leon wanted to continue life as a kind of hermit. He was content continuing his intellectual pursuits in seclusion. Reynolds, on the other hand, has plans for world domination. The two break out into some sort of brain battle when Reynolds reveals his secret weapon, which ultimately defeats Leon.
The secret weapon was a word that would cause the listener to basically self destruct. For Leon, the word was "understand." According to Leon, the word was a "memory trigger." This is how I understand it. Once Reynolds said "understand," Leon's brain was automatically led to a number of memories, and that sequence of memories would cause him to think himself into some sort of trap, thus causing self destruction. Like some other readers, I too believe that we as the readers weren't supposed to understand the actual mechanics of the word. Leon and Reynolds were already at an extremely heightened brain functon, and thus what was understood between them, probably shouldn't be understandable to us.
Throughout the story, Leon explained how he outmaneuvered the authorities. He explained what he did in ways that weren't too confusing. For the most part, he didn't go into detailed descriptions which I felt kept the readers engaged. Instead, he explained them from a higher level and that's totally fine by me. I thought it was interesting that not only were Leon's brain functions elevated, but he had better control of his body. I think the connection between mind and body was something that never occurred to me would happen when brain functions were increased.
I think the story got more interesting when Leon was finally interacting with Reynolds, another individual whose knowledge could match his. The thing is, Reynolds had taken the drug 15 days before him and had a head start. It was interesting that they were at such an elevated intellectual state that they could express all they needed to in a form of spoken short hand.
This story technically had a bad end, because Leon was trapped in the memory trigger, and thus Reynolds could proceed with his plan to take over the world. However, that never occurred to me. Instead, I was focused on Leon as an individual, and what he was dealing with in the moment.
Division by Zero
Renee was a math professor who wrote a proof that showed that all numbers were equal to one another. This severely affected her mental state. Her husband Carl was trying to help her through her mental issues, but eventually fell out of love with her.
I felt this was the most "human" of the stories in this collection. This story focused on Renee's relationship with numbers as well as Carl's relationship with Renee. Those two relationships reflected one another.
Renee, in her journey to understand numbers, came to a conclusion that numbers didn't matter anymore. As a result, Renee felt that nothing in life mattered anymore. As for Carl, he was always an understanding person. He had his own share of mental health struggles and was always willing to lend an ear. Throughout the story, the reader could tell that he was really trying to see things from Renee's perspective. Carl was also a professor and he understood that Renee needed to understand things from a formal perspective. However, in trying to understand Renee (and his inability to connect with her struggles), he stopped caring.
Despite having a personal interest in math, I think Renee's math was probably too abstract for me lol. Her proof showed that 1=2, but like Carl, I instinctively associate numbers with physical manifestations rather than abstract concepts. So I would look at one finger and two fingers and say that they were NOT equal no matter what Renee had on paper. Renee was trying to prove that math was consistent and in doing so, proved that math was inconsistent. I'm not smart enough to come up with any proof for this, but I think if anybody ever proved that math was inconsistent, I would probably ignore it and move on XD
Story of Your Life
This is the story that Arrival was based on. Aliens came to earth and Louise, a linguist, was tasked with communicating with them. Louise came to learn the alien language, and by learning the language, Louise came to be able to view time in its entirety rather than in only one direction.
In terms of the linguistics, I thought it was interesting how the heptatpods had a writing and speaking system that did not directly correspond. The idea was that having a writing system for a spoken language would have been redundant. In practice, this would be hard to implement for us humans, but it was an interesting concept to explore.
When Gary and Louise were having dinner, they discussed the concept that light always travels on the path of least resistance. The thing is, no light travels on the other paths, like it knows which journey is the shortest before it even starts its journey. This got Louise thinking about the relationship between the heptapod language and the concept of time.
I think the movie delved a little more into the idea of free will, that perhaps beings of a higher level of thinking don't value free will, because they realize that what will happen will happen and there is nothing we can do to stop it. I don't think the short story delved as much into this, but focused more on Louise learning to interpret the heptapod language.
I think the short story focused more on the science and research aspects of things, the "meat" or the "middle" of the discovery process. The film focused more on the initial linguistics (grammar and vocabulary, which is more applied and less abstract) and then the aftereffects of Louise learning the heptapod language (the "bread" parts of the research sandwich). Basically, I think the movie focused more on the before and after of the science parts.
I don't think that either one of movie or short story version were necessarily better. Rather, I think they were two versions of the same story.
Seventy-Two Letters
This story took place in a steampunk world. We were thrown into the situation right away. Humans were able to to put names into golems or automatons to animate them (the field was known as nomenclature). Robert became an expert in such a field, and was recruited into a secret project. This project discovered that humans were close to becoming infertile en masse, and their plan was to continue human reproduction via nomenclature. This project turned sinister as the head revealed that he wanted to use nomenclature to control births (i.e. allow lower classes to have fewer children). After a series of events, Robert realized there was another way for humans to have children via nomenclature without needing help from the authorities.
I thought the topics in this story were varied, which was cool.
The first thing of note was that this science fiction story involved a bit of magic. The concept of putting a name in an object to animate it was very godlike and mystical. The technical aspect of it was never explained, and I don't think it needed to be.
Robert's childhood friend Lionel introduced us to the concept of beings with form but no life. This came back when Robert went to the secret project where scientists sped up the growth for sperm but did not fertilize them with an egg. I'd never really associated either sperm or egg of ever having a form. Whenever I thought of an unborn child, I would always think of a foetus, an unborn baby inside a mother's womb, rather than an ovum or sperm. In Seventy-Two Letters, I think sperm was described as form with no life, and ova were described as life with no form. It's a very interesting analogy.
The secret operations found out that humans would become infertile in about five generations. Basically, they sped up the growth of the sperm that would be male, and found that by the fifth generation, their sperm count was zero. So humans were dealing with extinction. It's interesting to think that species came into this world with a set expiry date. It's impossible to "see" how much sperm an unborn man may have, but it's interesting to find that in a certain number of generations, all men will have zero sperm left in their bodies. I can't think of why this would biologically make sense (i.e. why a species would be created with an expiry date despite being given the ability to mutate and improve via natural selection), but it's an interesting thought to ponder nonetheless. How would a species act if they knew that they would all die out in a limited number of generations? Would humans see time differently if it was measured in generations rather than years?
The head of the secret program wanted to basically artificially inseminate women by inserting names into their ova. The men would basically be written out of the equation, and would only be there for parenting reasons. However, the head also saw this as an opportunity to play god, and to wipe out the "undesirables." Robert found this horrific and didn't agree, but he didn't say anything to his boss at the time. Stories involving artificially creating babies have always given way to discussion of government-controlled populations, so this discussion is not new. However, I didn't mind it being brought up because it was a very obvious and glaring issue that arose from this secret project.
Robert was visited by a kabbalist who wanted to study some of Robert's names for religious purposes (Robert's names tended to be very dexterous). Robert refused because his names were mostly for labour purposes and he also preferred to have full control over automatons bearing his names. I recall first hearing about "the name of God" in Pi, the 1998 film, so this was not a particularly new concept to me. What Robert failed to notice at first was what the kabbalist could offer him in return. The kabbalist had a name that could allow the automaton/golem to write its own name.
Robert was attacked by an assassin. If I remember correctly, the assassin was sent from a corporation who basically didn't want Robert to keep coming up with names that would affect their business. The assassin had run into and killed the kabbalist who was trying to steal Robert's names from his office. As a result of the murder, Robert had possession of the kabbalist's notes, and realized that there was a way for him to induce humans to reproduce without requiring the help of the authorities.
My understanding is that the sperm would have the name that would allow it to write a name. When met with the ova, the sperm would write a name on the ova which would animate the ova and make it a person, though it was technically a life form that had been animated by a name.
I thought the intersection of magic and science in this story was VERY cool. It was a very creative way of dealing with the reproduction problem.
The Evolution of Human Science
This was an extremely short piece, but interesting nonetheless. In the author's note, Chiang said that this was a story that was written for a science journal, and so he decided to write it in the style of a journal editorial. The article discusses whether human science was obsolete given the rise of metahuman research. Journals themselves were the communication tools of humans, and so even as a form of communication is may be obsolete. But of course the more pressing matter was that metahumans were making much more impressive breakthroughs in science that pretty much no human could meet.
In the article, Chiang alikened the journal's articles on human science to native research efforts into bronze smelting, when steel tools were being manufactured. Here, I think the author was resigning to the fact that human research would inevitably become useless.
The last paragrah of the article was a reassurance that humans need not fear metahuman research because humans were the original developers of metahumans to begin with. Rather than optimistic, I actually felt that this paragraph was a little combative and defensive. Its last sentence was that metahumans were "no smarter than we." We were never told in what way these metahumans were better, but if metahuman scientists were doing more productive research than human scientists, then I had to think that they were smarter than huamn scientists on average. Thus, I felt the last sentence was giving a false sense of reassurance in order to please the egos of the human scientists who would soon become obsolete.
Hell is the Absence of God
This didn't seem like a science fiction story, but rather, an alternative universe. In this world, Christianity was pretty much true. Angels appeared on earth, usually causing huge damage and granting miracles but also "curses" without much explanation. Heaven and hell were also very real, and when people died, others around them could see whether they ascended to heaven or descended to hell.
Neil was never a devout man, but his devout wife died in an angel visitation and ascended to heaven. Neil loved his wife very much and knew that he had to get into heaven to be with her. The thing was, trying to get on God's good side to get into heaven in itself was an insincere act. Word was that no matter how sinful a human was, if they saw Heaven's Light, they would go to Heaven regardless. So Neil went in search of Heaven's light. He was struck by Heaven's light and lost his sight, but also gained understanding why he should love God, but was sent to hell anyway.
Janice was born with no legs as a result of an angel visitation. However, she was very positive and became a motivational speaker for those suffering from aftereffects of angel visitations. Then, she was visited again by an angel and was given legs. Because she had regained legs, she lost credibility as a motivational speaker. She went on a pilgrimage because as a devout believer, she needed to know what her calling was. She was struck by Heaven's light (in the same instance that Neil was) and lost her sight. Afterwards, she basically went back to being the same devout motivational speaker that she was when she didn't have legs.
Ethan didn't come from a devout family but he was always looking for a sign from God. He followed Janice on her pilgrimage (against the wishes of his wife and family) and saw Neil and Janice get struck by Heaven's light. Being the only one who wasn't struck blind, he saw Neil descend into Hell despite being struck by Heaven's light. Ethan decided his calling in life was to speak to people about how Heaven's Light didn't guarantee ascension into heaven.
In the story notes, Chiang discussed the Book of Job, where he found a glaring contradiction. The moral of the story was supposed to be that virtue wasn't rewarded, but Job was rewarded for his virtue. So it seems Chiang wanted to write a story about virtues (devoutness) and rewards (going to heaven or hell).
I thought it was interesting how objectively some people could view Heaven or Hell. Many people in this world didn't mind going to Hell if their spouses were there. To Neil, Hell didn't seem that much different from the regular world. Before his wife's death, he'd selfishly wished that his wife would come to Hell with him when she died because he knew that he had no shot at getting into Heaven. He also recognized hwo impossible his task was. His goal was to love God so that he could get into Heaven to be with his wife, and not because he wanted to love God. So he knew he had to use the loophole. Perhaps God had considered his insincere means and that was why he was sent to Hell despite being struck by Heaven's Light and finally understanding the greatness of God.
For Janice, it seemed that she was most at peace when she'd been harmed by God/the Angels. She was doing great as a motivational speaker when she didn't have legs, and it's assumed that she resumed this position when she lost her sight. Ironicaly, it was the most difficult for her to propagate God's love when she had benefited from it; rather, it was more believable to people that she loved God when she had actually been harmed by the angel visitations.
I didn't understand Ethan's journey as much. He was looking for a sign, and in the end, he was willing to give up his family for what he believed was his calling.
Liking What You See: A Documentary
The format of this short story was very interesting. It was written like a documentary, giving the impression that the focus was shifting between characters throughout the campaign for calli to be mandatory on campus. Calli was a brain implement that would stop people from associating faces with positive or negative thoughts. Basically, people could recognize faces, but would not have an opinion of whether it was beautiful or not. The documentary also followed Tamara, a girl who'd been raised with calli, and decided to have it turned off after she turned 18. In the end, calli was voted to not be mandatory on campus, and Tamara turned her calli back on.
One of the scientists interviewed in the documentary talked about some of the initial difficulties in developing calli. It was difficult to have people not associate aesthetic opinions to faces but retain the ability to differentiate between faces. This is a known condition, and it was discussed a bit. The scientist also mentioned that some people after getting calli were unable to differentiate between cows or cars.
One of the discussions around calli was that it would only work if everyone had it. I think this proved true when we saw how Tamara and Garrett had to adapt to new schools where they'd have classmates who didn't have calli. Some people believed that calli was only for people who didn't like the way they looked, so they would've wanted to be viewed through calli. However, in the short story, we did see that some people gained self confidence as a result of getting calli for themselves. In particular, one guy felt less self conscious around a girl because he didn't find her as attractive anymore. I think people with calli would stop viewing their own faces negatively as well.
During the campaign on campus, it was revealed that some of the protesters against calli were paid by cosmetic companies. If people stopped caring about their appearanes, then cosmetic companies would be out of business.
Tamara attended a school where all the kids had calli. She and her friends would try to guess who the good-looking actors in a movie were, but they were only able to take cues from the narrative. I thought getting Tamara's perspective was very interesting because of course, she'd never known anything else.
Tamara's story was really about how physical appearances affected relationships. She still had feelings for her ex-boyfriend, Garrett. Tamara's roommate told her that she was out of Garrett's league, but that didn't stop Tamara from loving Garrett, because it was the things other than his apperance that made her love him. After she got her calli removed, and after coming into contact with people who didn't have calli, Tamara came to terms with the fact that she was conventionally attractive. She acknowledged that she wanted Garrett to have his calli removed so that maybe he could find another reason to love her. After she found out that Garrett had his calli reinstalled, she had it reinstalled too. While Tamara learned some new things in the new world without calli, I think she wanted to go back to a world that was comfortable, a world that she and Garrett were used to, so that they could fall in love the same way that they did the first time.
In the author's notes, Ted Chiang said that he would give calli a try if it ever became a possibility. I thought that was interesting that he was so in support of trying it out. That being said, calli wasn't totally fleshed out, so I suppose calli means something different to everyone. For me, I worry that calli would affect my ability to see beauty in other things (such as artwork, nature, etc.).
Story Notes
I really liked that author's notes were included at the end to give us context of what ideas led Chiang to think of these stories. I love that many of these ideas come from real world things, like conversations with friends, and from other stories.
For example, in Chiang's notes for Hell is the Absence of God, he said that he wanted to write a story where the characters were angels, but couldn't think of any story he liked. I, too, have played around with the idea of angels as characters, but it's interesting how different everyone's own interpretation can be.
Overall
Overall, a really, really great read. Each story is so thought provoking, but not in the edgelord kind of way, if that makes sense. It really felt like Chiang was trying to explore each topic in a softer sense, without going for the worst-case scenario first every time.
I'm well on my way to finishing the stories in Chiang's Exhalation: Stories, and I'm excited. Ted Chiang doesn't have a lot of short stories published, but for him, I think it's definitely about quality over quantity. I would highly recommend this book!
As a disclaimer, I read a compilation of some of his stories rather than the official version of Stories of Your Life and Others. However, I will still only comment on the short stories that are included in this collection.
Massive spoilers below.
Chiang made use of the first person perspective in his stories, but I think it helped his stories "get to the point." In many of Chiang's stories, he gave relatively few details when it came to the new technologies in his worlds, and preferred to let them reveal themselves naturally through conversations or narratives. Since the introductions were less demonstrative/performative, I really felt that the technologies or situations described in the stories were very natural to the characters themselves.
It was very cool that Chiang set some of his stories in non-conventional settings. The most obvious example would probably be The Tower of Babylon, which was set in ancient times, but dealt with a concept that we wouldn't be surprised to see in more conventional space settings.
I really felt that each one of Chiang's stories were suitable to be adapted into movies. Each one of his stories, regardless of length, managed to cover a few topics in sufficient depth. I really did walk away from each story feeling like I'd read a good discussion of questions that arose as a result of the events in the story.
When I Googled Ted Chiang, one of the top search results was an article from the New Yorker entitled "Science Fiction Doesn't Have to be Dystopian." I didn't read the article, but I do agree with the headline. I've started associating science fiction with Black Mirror, but as we know, Black Mirror tends to walk the path of showing how things could get really bad. While reading Ted Chiang's stories, I was always on guard, waiting for a gruesome or shocking ending to pop out at me at the last moment. Most of the time, that didn't come. Instead, I found that Chiang's stories usually ended with realizations, rather than any definitive actions for individuals or people as a whole. In a way, I liked that approach. Science fiction as a genre at its best promotes discussion, and discussions don't always have to end in a call to action.
As I read Chiang's short stories, I was also looking for online discussions and seeing what ideas other people had about each story. So I acknowledge that some of my thoughts may have been influenced by others.
Stories
Tower of Babylon
The Tower of Babylon was built by humans who had wanted to reach God. In the original myth, God didn't like this, and made the humans speak different languages so that they couldn't communicate with each other and finish building the tower. In Chiang's story, one miner eventually reached what he thought was heaven, only to realize he was back on the earth that he came from. The revelation was that their world was shaped like a "seal cylinder," so essentially, the humans' "up" axis was along the circle-shaped edge of the cylinder, and the ground axis was along the flat edge of the cylinder.
With this story, the thing that struck me the most was how Chiang used an ancient myth and turned it into a science fiction story. We usually think of science fiction as stories taking place in the future with space ships or on other planets. However, this story did something much simpler. It just distorted the science of our world and explored how people from another time period, with less technology, would have interpreted that world.
The top of the tower had reached "God's vault." Hillalum was one of the miners who travelled for months up the tower to reach the vault, because miners were required to drill through that vault. When the miners reached the vault, they had commented on how huge the vault was, since it stretched forever. At that point in the story, I was thinking that to the miners, it might've felt like they were floating above ground. The vault was so huge that it could've looked and felt like the ground. However, it was above the miners and not below them, so in that moment, the miners might've felt like gravity was working in the opposite direction.
Another concept that was explored in this short story was the idea that whole economies thrived on the Tower of Babylon. The town of Babylon itself was pretty much deserted because everyone was living on the Tower. It reminded me a bit of the concept of Planet B. Babylonians were perhaps hoping that life on the tower was closer to God and therefore better, and they'd rather strive for that hope instead of bettering their lives down on earth.
There was gossip that no one batted an eye if a man fell from the tower, but a huge deal was made if a brick fell from the tower. This was cleared up later that bricks were regularly sent up the tower, so it wasn't a huge deal. What was a huge deal would be if the bricklayers' tools fell from the tower, because that rendered the bricklayer useless. I don't think this was meant to be a huge point of discussion, but rather, I think it gave us an idea of how serious everybody was about building the Tower of Babylon.
Understand
This story reminded me a lot of Flowers for Algernon and Limitless. Leon had suffered brain damage and was given trial drugs. As a result of the drug, his brain functions grew to superhuman levels. The government wanted to continue studying him, probably for their military program, but Leon refused, and then went on the run. He later took another dose of the drug and at that point he was godlike in both mind and body. He was contacted by another person, Reynolds, who had also taken that extra dose of drugs. Leon wanted to continue life as a kind of hermit. He was content continuing his intellectual pursuits in seclusion. Reynolds, on the other hand, has plans for world domination. The two break out into some sort of brain battle when Reynolds reveals his secret weapon, which ultimately defeats Leon.
The secret weapon was a word that would cause the listener to basically self destruct. For Leon, the word was "understand." According to Leon, the word was a "memory trigger." This is how I understand it. Once Reynolds said "understand," Leon's brain was automatically led to a number of memories, and that sequence of memories would cause him to think himself into some sort of trap, thus causing self destruction. Like some other readers, I too believe that we as the readers weren't supposed to understand the actual mechanics of the word. Leon and Reynolds were already at an extremely heightened brain functon, and thus what was understood between them, probably shouldn't be understandable to us.
Throughout the story, Leon explained how he outmaneuvered the authorities. He explained what he did in ways that weren't too confusing. For the most part, he didn't go into detailed descriptions which I felt kept the readers engaged. Instead, he explained them from a higher level and that's totally fine by me. I thought it was interesting that not only were Leon's brain functions elevated, but he had better control of his body. I think the connection between mind and body was something that never occurred to me would happen when brain functions were increased.
I think the story got more interesting when Leon was finally interacting with Reynolds, another individual whose knowledge could match his. The thing is, Reynolds had taken the drug 15 days before him and had a head start. It was interesting that they were at such an elevated intellectual state that they could express all they needed to in a form of spoken short hand.
This story technically had a bad end, because Leon was trapped in the memory trigger, and thus Reynolds could proceed with his plan to take over the world. However, that never occurred to me. Instead, I was focused on Leon as an individual, and what he was dealing with in the moment.
Division by Zero
Renee was a math professor who wrote a proof that showed that all numbers were equal to one another. This severely affected her mental state. Her husband Carl was trying to help her through her mental issues, but eventually fell out of love with her.
I felt this was the most "human" of the stories in this collection. This story focused on Renee's relationship with numbers as well as Carl's relationship with Renee. Those two relationships reflected one another.
Renee, in her journey to understand numbers, came to a conclusion that numbers didn't matter anymore. As a result, Renee felt that nothing in life mattered anymore. As for Carl, he was always an understanding person. He had his own share of mental health struggles and was always willing to lend an ear. Throughout the story, the reader could tell that he was really trying to see things from Renee's perspective. Carl was also a professor and he understood that Renee needed to understand things from a formal perspective. However, in trying to understand Renee (and his inability to connect with her struggles), he stopped caring.
Despite having a personal interest in math, I think Renee's math was probably too abstract for me lol. Her proof showed that 1=2, but like Carl, I instinctively associate numbers with physical manifestations rather than abstract concepts. So I would look at one finger and two fingers and say that they were NOT equal no matter what Renee had on paper. Renee was trying to prove that math was consistent and in doing so, proved that math was inconsistent. I'm not smart enough to come up with any proof for this, but I think if anybody ever proved that math was inconsistent, I would probably ignore it and move on XD
Story of Your Life
This is the story that Arrival was based on. Aliens came to earth and Louise, a linguist, was tasked with communicating with them. Louise came to learn the alien language, and by learning the language, Louise came to be able to view time in its entirety rather than in only one direction.
In terms of the linguistics, I thought it was interesting how the heptatpods had a writing and speaking system that did not directly correspond. The idea was that having a writing system for a spoken language would have been redundant. In practice, this would be hard to implement for us humans, but it was an interesting concept to explore.
When Gary and Louise were having dinner, they discussed the concept that light always travels on the path of least resistance. The thing is, no light travels on the other paths, like it knows which journey is the shortest before it even starts its journey. This got Louise thinking about the relationship between the heptapod language and the concept of time.
I think the movie delved a little more into the idea of free will, that perhaps beings of a higher level of thinking don't value free will, because they realize that what will happen will happen and there is nothing we can do to stop it. I don't think the short story delved as much into this, but focused more on Louise learning to interpret the heptapod language.
I think the short story focused more on the science and research aspects of things, the "meat" or the "middle" of the discovery process. The film focused more on the initial linguistics (grammar and vocabulary, which is more applied and less abstract) and then the aftereffects of Louise learning the heptapod language (the "bread" parts of the research sandwich). Basically, I think the movie focused more on the before and after of the science parts.
I don't think that either one of movie or short story version were necessarily better. Rather, I think they were two versions of the same story.
Seventy-Two Letters
This story took place in a steampunk world. We were thrown into the situation right away. Humans were able to to put names into golems or automatons to animate them (the field was known as nomenclature). Robert became an expert in such a field, and was recruited into a secret project. This project discovered that humans were close to becoming infertile en masse, and their plan was to continue human reproduction via nomenclature. This project turned sinister as the head revealed that he wanted to use nomenclature to control births (i.e. allow lower classes to have fewer children). After a series of events, Robert realized there was another way for humans to have children via nomenclature without needing help from the authorities.
I thought the topics in this story were varied, which was cool.
The first thing of note was that this science fiction story involved a bit of magic. The concept of putting a name in an object to animate it was very godlike and mystical. The technical aspect of it was never explained, and I don't think it needed to be.
Robert's childhood friend Lionel introduced us to the concept of beings with form but no life. This came back when Robert went to the secret project where scientists sped up the growth for sperm but did not fertilize them with an egg. I'd never really associated either sperm or egg of ever having a form. Whenever I thought of an unborn child, I would always think of a foetus, an unborn baby inside a mother's womb, rather than an ovum or sperm. In Seventy-Two Letters, I think sperm was described as form with no life, and ova were described as life with no form. It's a very interesting analogy.
The secret operations found out that humans would become infertile in about five generations. Basically, they sped up the growth of the sperm that would be male, and found that by the fifth generation, their sperm count was zero. So humans were dealing with extinction. It's interesting to think that species came into this world with a set expiry date. It's impossible to "see" how much sperm an unborn man may have, but it's interesting to find that in a certain number of generations, all men will have zero sperm left in their bodies. I can't think of why this would biologically make sense (i.e. why a species would be created with an expiry date despite being given the ability to mutate and improve via natural selection), but it's an interesting thought to ponder nonetheless. How would a species act if they knew that they would all die out in a limited number of generations? Would humans see time differently if it was measured in generations rather than years?
The head of the secret program wanted to basically artificially inseminate women by inserting names into their ova. The men would basically be written out of the equation, and would only be there for parenting reasons. However, the head also saw this as an opportunity to play god, and to wipe out the "undesirables." Robert found this horrific and didn't agree, but he didn't say anything to his boss at the time. Stories involving artificially creating babies have always given way to discussion of government-controlled populations, so this discussion is not new. However, I didn't mind it being brought up because it was a very obvious and glaring issue that arose from this secret project.
Robert was visited by a kabbalist who wanted to study some of Robert's names for religious purposes (Robert's names tended to be very dexterous). Robert refused because his names were mostly for labour purposes and he also preferred to have full control over automatons bearing his names. I recall first hearing about "the name of God" in Pi, the 1998 film, so this was not a particularly new concept to me. What Robert failed to notice at first was what the kabbalist could offer him in return. The kabbalist had a name that could allow the automaton/golem to write its own name.
Robert was attacked by an assassin. If I remember correctly, the assassin was sent from a corporation who basically didn't want Robert to keep coming up with names that would affect their business. The assassin had run into and killed the kabbalist who was trying to steal Robert's names from his office. As a result of the murder, Robert had possession of the kabbalist's notes, and realized that there was a way for him to induce humans to reproduce without requiring the help of the authorities.
My understanding is that the sperm would have the name that would allow it to write a name. When met with the ova, the sperm would write a name on the ova which would animate the ova and make it a person, though it was technically a life form that had been animated by a name.
I thought the intersection of magic and science in this story was VERY cool. It was a very creative way of dealing with the reproduction problem.
The Evolution of Human Science
This was an extremely short piece, but interesting nonetheless. In the author's note, Chiang said that this was a story that was written for a science journal, and so he decided to write it in the style of a journal editorial. The article discusses whether human science was obsolete given the rise of metahuman research. Journals themselves were the communication tools of humans, and so even as a form of communication is may be obsolete. But of course the more pressing matter was that metahumans were making much more impressive breakthroughs in science that pretty much no human could meet.
In the article, Chiang alikened the journal's articles on human science to native research efforts into bronze smelting, when steel tools were being manufactured. Here, I think the author was resigning to the fact that human research would inevitably become useless.
The last paragrah of the article was a reassurance that humans need not fear metahuman research because humans were the original developers of metahumans to begin with. Rather than optimistic, I actually felt that this paragraph was a little combative and defensive. Its last sentence was that metahumans were "no smarter than we." We were never told in what way these metahumans were better, but if metahuman scientists were doing more productive research than human scientists, then I had to think that they were smarter than huamn scientists on average. Thus, I felt the last sentence was giving a false sense of reassurance in order to please the egos of the human scientists who would soon become obsolete.
Hell is the Absence of God
This didn't seem like a science fiction story, but rather, an alternative universe. In this world, Christianity was pretty much true. Angels appeared on earth, usually causing huge damage and granting miracles but also "curses" without much explanation. Heaven and hell were also very real, and when people died, others around them could see whether they ascended to heaven or descended to hell.
Neil was never a devout man, but his devout wife died in an angel visitation and ascended to heaven. Neil loved his wife very much and knew that he had to get into heaven to be with her. The thing was, trying to get on God's good side to get into heaven in itself was an insincere act. Word was that no matter how sinful a human was, if they saw Heaven's Light, they would go to Heaven regardless. So Neil went in search of Heaven's light. He was struck by Heaven's light and lost his sight, but also gained understanding why he should love God, but was sent to hell anyway.
Janice was born with no legs as a result of an angel visitation. However, she was very positive and became a motivational speaker for those suffering from aftereffects of angel visitations. Then, she was visited again by an angel and was given legs. Because she had regained legs, she lost credibility as a motivational speaker. She went on a pilgrimage because as a devout believer, she needed to know what her calling was. She was struck by Heaven's light (in the same instance that Neil was) and lost her sight. Afterwards, she basically went back to being the same devout motivational speaker that she was when she didn't have legs.
Ethan didn't come from a devout family but he was always looking for a sign from God. He followed Janice on her pilgrimage (against the wishes of his wife and family) and saw Neil and Janice get struck by Heaven's light. Being the only one who wasn't struck blind, he saw Neil descend into Hell despite being struck by Heaven's light. Ethan decided his calling in life was to speak to people about how Heaven's Light didn't guarantee ascension into heaven.
In the story notes, Chiang discussed the Book of Job, where he found a glaring contradiction. The moral of the story was supposed to be that virtue wasn't rewarded, but Job was rewarded for his virtue. So it seems Chiang wanted to write a story about virtues (devoutness) and rewards (going to heaven or hell).
I thought it was interesting how objectively some people could view Heaven or Hell. Many people in this world didn't mind going to Hell if their spouses were there. To Neil, Hell didn't seem that much different from the regular world. Before his wife's death, he'd selfishly wished that his wife would come to Hell with him when she died because he knew that he had no shot at getting into Heaven. He also recognized hwo impossible his task was. His goal was to love God so that he could get into Heaven to be with his wife, and not because he wanted to love God. So he knew he had to use the loophole. Perhaps God had considered his insincere means and that was why he was sent to Hell despite being struck by Heaven's Light and finally understanding the greatness of God.
For Janice, it seemed that she was most at peace when she'd been harmed by God/the Angels. She was doing great as a motivational speaker when she didn't have legs, and it's assumed that she resumed this position when she lost her sight. Ironicaly, it was the most difficult for her to propagate God's love when she had benefited from it; rather, it was more believable to people that she loved God when she had actually been harmed by the angel visitations.
I didn't understand Ethan's journey as much. He was looking for a sign, and in the end, he was willing to give up his family for what he believed was his calling.
Liking What You See: A Documentary
The format of this short story was very interesting. It was written like a documentary, giving the impression that the focus was shifting between characters throughout the campaign for calli to be mandatory on campus. Calli was a brain implement that would stop people from associating faces with positive or negative thoughts. Basically, people could recognize faces, but would not have an opinion of whether it was beautiful or not. The documentary also followed Tamara, a girl who'd been raised with calli, and decided to have it turned off after she turned 18. In the end, calli was voted to not be mandatory on campus, and Tamara turned her calli back on.
One of the scientists interviewed in the documentary talked about some of the initial difficulties in developing calli. It was difficult to have people not associate aesthetic opinions to faces but retain the ability to differentiate between faces. This is a known condition, and it was discussed a bit. The scientist also mentioned that some people after getting calli were unable to differentiate between cows or cars.
One of the discussions around calli was that it would only work if everyone had it. I think this proved true when we saw how Tamara and Garrett had to adapt to new schools where they'd have classmates who didn't have calli. Some people believed that calli was only for people who didn't like the way they looked, so they would've wanted to be viewed through calli. However, in the short story, we did see that some people gained self confidence as a result of getting calli for themselves. In particular, one guy felt less self conscious around a girl because he didn't find her as attractive anymore. I think people with calli would stop viewing their own faces negatively as well.
During the campaign on campus, it was revealed that some of the protesters against calli were paid by cosmetic companies. If people stopped caring about their appearanes, then cosmetic companies would be out of business.
Tamara attended a school where all the kids had calli. She and her friends would try to guess who the good-looking actors in a movie were, but they were only able to take cues from the narrative. I thought getting Tamara's perspective was very interesting because of course, she'd never known anything else.
Tamara's story was really about how physical appearances affected relationships. She still had feelings for her ex-boyfriend, Garrett. Tamara's roommate told her that she was out of Garrett's league, but that didn't stop Tamara from loving Garrett, because it was the things other than his apperance that made her love him. After she got her calli removed, and after coming into contact with people who didn't have calli, Tamara came to terms with the fact that she was conventionally attractive. She acknowledged that she wanted Garrett to have his calli removed so that maybe he could find another reason to love her. After she found out that Garrett had his calli reinstalled, she had it reinstalled too. While Tamara learned some new things in the new world without calli, I think she wanted to go back to a world that was comfortable, a world that she and Garrett were used to, so that they could fall in love the same way that they did the first time.
In the author's notes, Ted Chiang said that he would give calli a try if it ever became a possibility. I thought that was interesting that he was so in support of trying it out. That being said, calli wasn't totally fleshed out, so I suppose calli means something different to everyone. For me, I worry that calli would affect my ability to see beauty in other things (such as artwork, nature, etc.).
Story Notes
I really liked that author's notes were included at the end to give us context of what ideas led Chiang to think of these stories. I love that many of these ideas come from real world things, like conversations with friends, and from other stories.
For example, in Chiang's notes for Hell is the Absence of God, he said that he wanted to write a story where the characters were angels, but couldn't think of any story he liked. I, too, have played around with the idea of angels as characters, but it's interesting how different everyone's own interpretation can be.
Overall
Overall, a really, really great read. Each story is so thought provoking, but not in the edgelord kind of way, if that makes sense. It really felt like Chiang was trying to explore each topic in a softer sense, without going for the worst-case scenario first every time.
I'm well on my way to finishing the stories in Chiang's Exhalation: Stories, and I'm excited. Ted Chiang doesn't have a lot of short stories published, but for him, I think it's definitely about quality over quantity. I would highly recommend this book!