Just finished the book Stories of your life and Others by Ted Chiang, which like the later Exhalation I deeply enjoyed. The book was published in 2001, with some of its stories appearing as early as 1990, hence this book review is of little relevance when many reviews and commentaries have been published, including academic reviews. (No chance for CHANCE, then!)
“Perhaps you have not noticed that the lower classes are reproducing at a rate exceeding that of the nobility and gentry (…) Consequently, our nation would eventually drown in coarse dullards.” (p.186)
While the original cover seems to cater to old-fashion science-fictions books and magazine of the 1950’s, like Amazing Stories, the contents are much more philosophical than science-fiction-al, even when the universe (or the physical laws that) Chiang creates relies on elaborate construction based on science. (Same thing happens with Exhalation.) With a take on religions and their logical loopholes that I particularly enjoy, like Hell is the Absence of God, where the central character is no given the choice of Pascal’s wager. And the nonsense of attributing handicaps and hardships to dog’s testing impacted individuals, as well as the involuntary humour in the innocent casualties resulting from angels visiting Earth. Some stories I liked less, like Understand, about a superhuman emerging from drug tests since the end cannot keep up with the premises. But others I really appreciated, from Babel, set in a naïve (very medieval) version of the World, with a flat Earth and a solid sky. To Division by Zero, where a Gödelian mathematician pushes the impossibility theorem to ruin all of mathematics, and to the superb Seventy Two Letters, that mixes cybernetics, Kabbalists’ golem, genetics and eugenics, in a Victorian setting that could make it pass for a steampunk story, but I disagree with this label since the novella somewhat runs backwards by returning to a freedom of choice that trumps eugenic goals, while aligned with the Victorian perception of science. The same with Story of Your Life, about constructing communication channels with a perplexing if peaceful alien race, whose purpose for this attempt is never clear, which is not an issue with enjoying the built-up of an understanding, as well as the disrupted time-frame of the narration. Or even the short (Nature) story, The Evolution of Human Science, which reflects the very real concern that AI could take over research, into directions that would escape human understanding (not a good signal for i!). Leaving hermeneutics (of AI research) to humans. And the final Liking what you see, a clever variation on the issues of “lookism”, the “burden” of beauty, and an imagined condition called calliagnosia that makes people insensitive to beauty or lack thereof in a person.
