Book Cover

Well if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you?

# Review

This book features 8 (award-winning) short stories by Ted Chiang (plus an extra chapter of commentary). The stories range both in length and in content, ranging from the biblical fables to speculations about the not-so-distant future.

I first encountered Chiang's work through one of my favourite podcasts, LeVar Burton Reads; what drew me to Chiang's stories is his unconventional background. Unlike many of his peers, Chiang has a highly technical education (in computer science) which shows through many of his stories, in interesting tidbits surrounding technical subjects such as physics and math.

One of my favourite themes in many of his stories is the power of language; in the story, language is used express a higher consciousness, control inanimate objects, or even to see the future. His exploration of different aspects of language really resonated with me as a coder, because different programming languages are typically specialized for different uses. It's interesting to speculate about the evolution of our non-coding languages. Perhaps, as we as a species become more technological, our language may be more and more similar to that of machines. I watched a very interesting talk recently about using code to express different ideas (in a non-pragmatic manner); I'd be curious, if in the future, we can use code language to express complex and abstract ideas such as human emotions and poetry.

# Conclusion

An excellent collection of short stories.

# Overall rating: 8.2

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