REVIEW: Stories of Your Life and Other Stories - Ted Chieng

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781101972120
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  technically, 3.5625 (you'll see why in a moment...)

You might remember from my blog on types of short story collections that Stories of Your Life is the example I gave for a collection of unrelated short stories.

It's actually rather difficult to give a fair rating to a collection of unrelated short stories. The stories are all so different. In this case, they're all sci-fi-ish, but that's really the only connection between them. No frame story, no recurring characters or themes, etc. How do you rate that overall? It wasn't so hard with The Stories of Ibis, because, even though that was a series of short stories as well, there was a gravity to that book which tied everything together. No such gravity exists in Stories of Your Life (which isn't a bad thing, of course: this is simply a different type of short story collection, one which doesn't call for such a gravity).

In fact, it's been a few weeks now since I've read Stories of Your Life, and I've tried more than once to sit down and attempt to write a review for you. I just couldn’t figure out the right way to do it, though. 

Now I decided I'll just start by saying that. 

The only things I can really say about the collection as a whole is that Ted Chieng is incredibly imaginative. His stories are highly unique and generally well-written. And, of the two stories that had unique settings (rather than, say, everyday modern cities), I quite enjoyed those settings.

That said, here's just a quick rating and glimpse of each individual story:

• Tower of Babylon - 3.5. Very cool premise, and the setting was positively outstanding. The ending was just a bit too vague to really drive the point home, unfortunately. (I had to read the last page about three times before I fully grasped the point/what was going on.)
• Understand - 2. Definitely the least interesting and inventive of the collection. It's basically Chieng's version of the 2011 Bradley Cooper movie Limitless (which isn't really a good thing - although, to be fair, Understand first appeared 20 years before Limitless).
• Division by Zero - 3. The way the pieces of the plot weaved in and out of each other was an interesting approach (and, personally, I love when authors use complicated mathematics in stories), but ultimately it felt a bit too unfocused to really be great.
• Story of Your Life - 4. This is the short story that the 2016 Amy Adams movie The Arrival is based on. Loved the ideas, and the word play was great. It didn't really prompt much of an emotional investment in the characters, though, which made it feel just a little bit more hollow than I would have liked.
• Seventy-Two Letters - 4. Steampunk meets Kaballah? - yes, please. I loved the premise and the setting. Overall a great idea, but it felt unnecessarily long.
• The Evolution of Human Science - 3. Actually a short essay (a very short essay) rather than a story. Though it was expounded decently, it didn’t cover any ground that was altogether that new.
• Hell is the Absence of God - 4.5. Definitely my favorite of the collection. It had a terrific theme and resolve, and touched a couple personal chords in me. (I'd consider explaining what those are, but they'd involve spoilers.)
• Liking What You See - 4.5. The most unique story of the collection in its tone, structure, and theme. The entire story reads like a documentary of a controversial - but clever - new technology, with various people and companies from all sides debating it. I appreciated how realistic the entire thing was - I could absolutely see this being a real documentary.

How can I give you an overall review of this? If I come up with the average score of everything, it comes out to 3.5625 – so there's that, I guess. But of course a review is much, much more than just a number. 

I could say something like, "Read all the stories that I rated X or higher," but that doesn't feel right either. On the one hand, I'd say that you'd be missing the least if you skipped Understand, but I also don't think it's reasonable to say, "If you only read one story out of this collection, it should be Absence!"  Partly, I'm suspicious that Absence is my favorite from the book precisely because I felt a personal connection to it, for my own reasons and experiences. And very likely you won't feel that connection. Also, I certainly wouldn't say that Absence is the most representative of the collection as a whole. Therefore, even though it's my favorite, it's not necessarily the one that I'd feel the most comfortable driving you towards, at the cost of the others. (If you're wondering, I'd say that Story of Your Life is, appropriately, probably the most representative of the book overall.)

At any rate, I enjoyed my time with Stories of Your Life, and could, in fact, see myself coming back to it down the road - even if I only pick out certain stories next time around. There are lots of great ideas in here that are worth spending time with. I'll certainly be happy to check out more of Chieng's work in the future.