Stories of Your Life and Others – Cannonball Read 17

Should he climb such a thing?

Stories of your Life by Ted Chiang

December 28, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I read the second Ted Chiang collection of stories, Exhalation, earlier this year and thought it was very good. But I would be lying if I said I recalled a lot of the specific stories. I think this one will prove to be similar. I think the experience of the stories was riveting, but the consequences will be slight. All of this in light of the fact that I also think this story collection is also very good. So there’s a long section of author’s notes […]

Sci-Fi Short Stories hit and miss

February 17, 2018 by Thumper 1 Comment

I really enjoyed Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival which led me to tracking down the source material, a short story titled Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. This was originally published in 1998 in Starlight 2 and then again as the titular short story in a collection of eight short stories by Chiang in 2002. It begins strongly with Tower of Babylon, about building a tower to reach the heavens that has an interesting philosophical bent. This is followed by another intriguing story titled Understand, detailing the progress of […]

The Black Mirror vibes are strong with this one

June 1, 2017 by The Book Omnivore Leave a Comment

”Stories of your life and others” by Ted Chiang is a collection of fictional short stories about such diverse topics as the tower of Babylon, superintelligence, and automata. It also includes the story that the movie ”Arrival” was based on, so add ”aliens” to this list of topics. Considering how wide the thematic spectrum of the book is, it comes as no surprise that the language and tone varies. Some of the stories are so horrifyingly dystopian that they could be easily turned into […]

Thought-provoking and … kind of freaky

January 23, 2017 by denesteak 2 Comments

I purchased Story of Your Life and Others after I saw Arrival in theaters, which rocked me to my core, and I wanted to see just how it translated from the page to the screen. The answer? Very differently. For one, Chiang is a lot more technical in his descriptions, and I really appreciate the sparse-ness of his language. He does not use wordy descriptions to manipulate emotions out of his readers; he simply lets the readers draw the parallels between the science-y concepts he talking about […]

Great Collection of Short Stories for the Most Part

January 4, 2017 by Classic 8 Comments

Please note that I gave this book 4.5 stars and rounded it up to 5 here on Cannonball Read 9. So I got this book via the library and boy was there a long wait. I think the movie “Arrival” is the main reason why this one took so long to get via Overdrive. I saw Arrival right after the elections and seriously, that was the movie I needed to see at that point. In a big theater with several hundred people getting to watch […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

Help Our Mission