I’ve often felt that science-fiction lends itself to shorter stories and novellas – as opposed to the multi-book epics you find with fantasy (and still so odd that these two genres are often lumped together when they couldn’t be more different).
Of course, this is an enormous generalization (‘The Foundation series’ by Isaac Asimov being the obvious exception) but, while fantasy is most often concerned with telling big, sprawling narratives of countries, nations and armies, science-fiction often works better on a smaller scale – an idea or concept explored across a limited number of pages.
With fantasy, you lose yourself in a world - for weeks, months and sometimes years - but with science fiction, you take part in a lecture, where a skilled teacher opens an entirely new way of thinking throughout your short time together.
Ted Chiang’s Stories of your life is a fine example of the latter. Within each of ten stories collected here, Ted Chiang presents us with a single idea, before expanding upon its impact on the world and ultimately on us as people. As the stories unfold, we are lead along with a subtle, but lofty, exploration of topics such as grief, religious faith, and love, to name a few.
Rather than go over the entire collection, I will highlight two of my favourite stories:
The Tower of Babylon reframes the Tower of Babel myth as a construction megaproject that has taken centuries to complete. The world of the short story adheres to the biblical understanding of cosmology, where the flat earth is part of a series of celestial spheres, each encircling the other. The central character is a miner brought to the tower to complete the final phase and begin digging upwards through the Vault of Heaven at the top of the world.
The bulk of the story concerns the trip up the top of the (nearly) completed tower, which takes the central characters three or four months to ascend. Along the way they encounter the former builders and traders who now live, 2 or 3 months climb above the earth. The story details the lives of those living so far above the earth, from farming practices and child-raising to general law and order.
The Nebula-winning Story of your life is probably the best known of the collection thanks to the film adaption by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams (renamed Arrival). While the film changes some of the details and adds more of a standard ‘climax’, for the most part, it’s a faithful adaption, which focuses primarily on the role and interpretations of physics and language acquisition that can change our understanding of the world around us.
The dual stories are narrated by linguist Dr Louise Banks, who plays a pivotal role in deciphering the language of alien visitors that appear in ships across the globe. At the same time, she recounts the events of her daughter's life, both past and future, and the slow intertwining of these two narratives gives way to an effectively moving resolution that brings together its themes of choice and predestination.
Throughout the story, the alien language, which is central to so much of how the story progresses, is detailed in precise and intricate detail, but never at the expense of the readers understanding - which is one of the greatest strengths of the collection. While sometimes the writing can be a little too distant, for the most part, the various stories deal with complex scientific concepts with a degree of warmth and understanding which makes them approachable and accessible for almost any reader. Stories of your Life and Others sits comfortably alongside titles like Never Let me Go and Annihilation as some of the most approachable sci-fi for readers interested in, but unsure of the genre as a whole.
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