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Review: Ted Chiang’s ‘Stories of your Life and Others’

Now, this book. At this point when I am writing this post, I haven’t finished reading the entirety of it, yet I feel that I am prepared to give it a review nonetheless. 

For those of you who have not heard of Ted Chiang, he is one of the most widely approved and praised science fiction writers of the past century. Receiving an education at Brown University, the man has received four Hugo awards, four Nebula awards, four Locus awards (at this point I am just directly quoting his profile from Wikipedia hehe) and a bunch of other awards that I do not quite know the significance of, but show that he has made a large contribution to the science fiction genre. Around April, I stumbled across a film called “Arrival,” and was so intrigued by the concept of it that I grabbed the book which laid its foundation,Ted Chiang’s “Stories of your Life and Others.” 

The book is comprised of 8 short stories, all of different backgrounds and tackling different aspects of science in a fictional manner. Of course, I started off with “Story of your Life,” the story “Arrival” was based on, and allowed myself to be amazed by its content. 

The story circles around the life of linguist Dr. Banks, who is summoned by the government to investigate the arrival of aliens upon earth. These aliens, heptapods, have their own language, completed by the use of simultaneous signals and circles without a specific order, unlike human communication. Between the chapters, there are short flashbacks, or should I say flashforwards, of Dr. Banks and her daughter, who is soon found out to be dead due to a climbing accident. The important part that is interesting, though, is that Dr. Banks never had a daughter. Yet these are manifests of her certain future. (I’ll attempt to explain this in the most simple way) While humans view time with a past, present and future on a linear scale, with a cause and effect sequence, heptapods view time simultaneously. As life is given to them, so is the ending of it, and their mission is to find the most effective way to complete their actions laid in front of them. They are aware of what had happen and what is to happen. As Dr. Banks picks up their language, she is soon able to view time simultaneously as well. 

As a person with experience of having learnt refraction of light last year, the comparison with the concept and time was quite interesting. The statement of the story is that, if light is able to refract in different angles through mediums in the shortest distance possible, then it must be that it is aware of its destination. This idea literally blew my mind. My head hurt because of the many contradictions that followed my thoughts, but I was amazed by it anyway. 

This mind-blowing action was done to me repeatedly after reading the other stories of this book, all in different ways that got me thinking, “Ted Chiang is a genius.” 

“Their nonchalant cruelty, their instinctive ability to locate the weaknesses in a victim’s emotional armour, the way their own friendships were reinforced by their sadism: he recognised these as examples of human behaviour, not divine.” 

This is a simple, one of the most ordinary quotes in the book, from the story “Hell is the Absence of God.” I don’t quite know why, but it me sad to read it. The quote describes one of the characters’ experience of being bullied due to his handicap, and the capability of humans being cruel to others is so well captured, I pondered where the destiny of humanity leads. 

This post is too short for me to sum up each of the stories in the book, but I strongly suggest that you try it for a read. The only stories I couldn’t finish were “Seventy-two letters” and “Understand,” simply due to my disinterest and lacking effort to understand the concept of automatons and nomenclature, but I blame my immature knowledge for that. They are surely wonderful, and I’ll try them in a few years when I’m not 16. 

In the end, Ted Chiang reminds that science fiction, if nothing, is a moral of humanity. In it are surreal beings, aliens and other supernatural occurrences, but all controlled by the nature and behaviour of humans. I think that’s why it relates so well to the readers while simultaneously being in a realm of foreign scientific concepts. 

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Book Review:  The Female of the Species

I was not impressed about this book at first. I borrowed it from the library in hopes of a quirky, light-hearted coming-of-age story that would appetize me enough to dive back into a smooth and effortless streak of reading again.

Boy, was I wrong. Let me tell you, the volt cover of the book with its cute little drawings of animals does not fail to fool the reader of the context of what is actually inside. 

Alex Craft’s sister is murdered in cold blood a few years before, leaving her with nothing but pain. But Alex learns to convert that pain and misery into her own manners of coping, and serves justice in her own terms, starting off with killing her sister Anna’s rapist and murderer. But Jack and Peekay, two kids from her school, stop her from just falling into the abyss of agony and brutality, giving her reasons to smile and breathe again. 

The reason that I loved this book made quite clear sense to me once I was finished with the book. It was the reason that I could complete this nearly 350-page book in a hurried frenzy of swiping pages in 3 days. The book is centered around the perspective of each of the three characters, Peekay, Jack, and Alex herself. Each of them are undoubtedly flawed teenagers just as they should naturally be, and it is captivating to read through their vivid descriptions of each experience they pass through, and how they digest it to further develop and grow their character. By the end of the book, it is clearly evident how each of the characters had changed for the better, and for the worse. Each character’s relationship and emotions are so heartfelt, and I felt myself really attached to Peekay and her view of her life. And Alex and Jack’s romance is really the cutest thing!!

As for the theme of feminism, aka the title itself “The Female of the Species,” I loved that the characters were mature enough to see past their boy/girl love problems and form friendships and trust. Alex and Peekay is the most iconic friendship throughout the book, but Peekay’s developing bond with Branley, her boyfriend’s new girlfriend, was definitely unexpected. 

The continuous questions of equality and rape for students of the 21st century really got me thinking, and I loved how challenged I felt throughout reading. One quote for example: 

“I live in a society where not being molested as a child is considered lucky.” Something about the ordinary impression of this sentence makes it even more impactful and horrifying. 

Anyways, I was glad that the book was far more entertaining than what I had bargained for. Highly recommend, refreshing. Hopefully I can read another book for next week, even though I have like 9 more exams coming up.