The beauty of science and the science of beauty

Title: Stories of Your Life and Others
Author: Ted Chiang
Publisher: Small Beer Press

5/5

Science can be beautiful, but you don't always have to be a scientist to appreciate its beauty.

Anyone can appreciate a mandelbrot set, the mathematical designs on a mosque dome, the earth-rise over the moon, the impossible staircases of MC Escher. Add to this list the works of Ted Chiang.



If you're already a science-fiction fan, likely Mr Chiang will need no introduction. Despite producing just 12 short stories in his career, Mr Chiang has amassed about a dozen literary awards and a cult following of enthusiasts. If you're not a fan, Mr Chiang is one of the best arguments for becoming one.

"Stories of Your Life and Others" is a collection of eight short stories, relentlessly inventive, wildly diverse in content but strongly unified in spirit. Whether he's talking about building the Tower of Babel or being able to predict the future, Mr Chiang builds rational, internally consistent worlds that unify scientific thinking with humanistic sensitivity.

The capstone of this construct is undoubtedly "Story of Your Life". In it, a linguist named Louise Banks learns an alien language, and this new frame of reference enables her to see into the future. Intellectually, the story is a marvel, as Mr Chiang concocts a plausible basis for foretelling the future, and a philosophical theory as to how fate and free will could coexist.

But the real punch is emotional. Banks is a mother (or was, or will be--it's complicated) and knowing the future gives a new twist to the questions faced by any would-be parent: Are we ready for this? Will our child be healthy, happy, successful? The kicker of course is that Banks already knows the answers.

For stories with such strongly rational overtones, there is a surprising fascination with religion and faith in Mr Chiang's stories, and God pops up (or conspicuously fails to) in one form or another in several of the stories, the best of which is "Hell is the Absence of God". Here, Mr Chiang wrestles with the age-old chestnut, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, by does so by making the mystical commonplace.

In this story, Acts of God, in the insurance sense, really are literal Acts of God, as every earthly manifestation of the heavenly host sets off lightning storms, tidal waves or hurricanes. Not surprisingly, some innocent people get hurt or even killed, and among them is the wife of the protagonist, Neil Fisk. Fisk then faces the impossible task of trying to love the God who killed his wife, and the story follows the increasingly desperate steps he takes to be reunited with his wife in heaven.

In lesser hands, such a story could come off as mere church-bashing, but here you get a strong sense of a sensitive man struggling to accept the random cruelty of existence, and the fact that "God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion."

That said, Mr Chiang's writing is somewhat hampered by his apparent discomfort with dialogue. Instead of getting the character's words verbatim, we often get stories related almost entirely by narrators. While in some ways this further underlines the veneer of rationality over these fantastical stories, it somewhat dulls the emotional impact. Also, in one or two stories, Mr Chiang manages the balance between head and heart, intellect and emotion, rather less well, and throws at you such complex concepts that the story becomes head-scratching rather than heart-warming.

Still, "Stories of Your Life and Others" is a literary accomplishment no mere harpings of mine can diminish. Art is not always appreciated in its own lifetime, but here's your chance to put that to rights.