by Chiang, Ted
For those interested in physics, I should note that the story's discussion of Fermat's Principle of Least Time omits all mention of its quantum-mechanical underpinnings. The QM formulation is interesting in its own way, but I preferred the metaphoric possibilities of the classical version.
As for this story's theme, probably the most concise summation of it that I've seen appears in Kurt Vonnegut's introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Slaughterhouse-Five: “Stephen Hawking ... found it tantalizing that we could not remember the future. But remembering the future is child's play for me now. I know what will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are retired or dead now ... To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than myself I say, ‘Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.’”
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"Seventy-Two Letters"
This story came about when I noticed a connection between two ideas I'd previously thought were unrelated. The first one was the golem.
In what's probably the best known story of the golem, Rabbi Loew of Prague brings a clay statue to life to act as a defender of the Jews, protecting them from persecution. It turns out this story is a modern invention, dating back only to 1909. Stories in which the golem is used as a servant to perform chores—with varying degrees of success—originated in the 1500s, but they still aren't the oldest references to the golem. In stories dating back to the second century, rabbis would animate golems not to accomplish anything practical, but rather to demonstrate mastery of the art of permutating letters; they sought to know God better by performing acts of creation.
The whole theme of the creative power of language has been discussed elsewhere, by people smarter than me. What I found particularly interesting about golems was the fact that they're traditionally unable to speak. Since the golem is created through language, this limitation is also a limitation on reproduction. If a golem were able to use language, it would be capable of self-replication, rather like a Von Neumann machine.
The other idea I'd been thinking about was preformation, the theory that organisms exist fully formed in the germ cells of their parents. It's easy for people now to dismiss it as ridiculous, but at the time, preformation made a lot of sense. It was an attempt to solve the problem of how living organisms are able to replicate themselves, which is the same problem that later inspired Von Neumann machines. When I recognized that, it seemed that I was interested in these two ideas for the same reason, and I knew I had to write about them.
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"The Evolution of Human Science"
This short-short was written for the British science journal Nature. Throughout the year 2000, Nature ran a feature called “Futures"; each week a different writer provided a short fictional treatment of a scientific development occurring in the next millenium.
Since the piece would appear in a scientific journal, making it about a scientific journal seemed like a natural choice. I started wondering about what such a journal might look like after the advent of superhuman intelligence. William Gibson once said, “The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed.” Right now there are people in the world who, if they're aware of the computer revolution at all, know of it only as something happening to other people, somewhere else. I expect that will remain true no matter what technological revolutions await us.
(A note about the title: this short-short originally appeared under a title chosen by the editors of Nature; I've chosen to restore its original title for this reprint.)
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"Hell is the Absence of God"
I first wanted to write a story about angels after seeing the movie The Prophecy, a supernatural thriller written and directed by Gregory Widen. For a long time I tried to think of a story in which angels were characters, but couldn't come up with a scenario I liked; it was only when I started thinking about angels as phenomena of terrifying power, whose visitations resembled natural disasters, that I was able to move forward. (Perhaps I was subconsciously thinking of Annie Dillard. Later on I remembered she once wrote that if people had more belief, they'd wear crash helmets when attending church, and lash themselves to the pews.)
Thinking about natural disasters led to thinking about the problem of innocent suffering. An enormous range of advice has been offered from a religious perspective to those who suffer, and it seems clear that no single response can satisfy everyone; what comforts one person inevitably strikes someone else as outrageous. Consider the Book of Job as an example.
For me, one of the unsatisfying things about the Book of Job is that, in the end, God rewards Job. Leave aside the question of whether new children can compensate for the loss of his original ones. Why does God restore Job's fortunes at all? Why the happy ending? One of the basic messages of the book is that virtue isn't always rewarded; bad things happen to good people. Job ultimately accepts this, demonstrating virtue, and is subsequently rewarded. Doesn't this undercut the message?
It seems to me that the Book of Job lacks the courage of its convictions: if the author were really committed to the idea that virtue isn't always rewarded, shouldn't the book have ended with Job still bereft of everything?
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"Liking What You See: A Documentary"
Psychologists once conducted an experiment where they repeatedly left a fake college application in an airport, supposedly forgotten by a traveler. The answers on the application were always the same, but each time they included a different photo of the fictitious applicant. It turned out people were more likely to mail in the application if the applicant was attractive. This is perhaps not surprising, but it illustrates just how thoroughly we're influenced by appearances; we favor attractive people even in a situation where we'll never meet them.
Yet any discussion of beauty's advantages is usually accompanied by a mention of the burden of beauty. I don't doubt that beauty has its drawbacks, but so does everything else. Why do people seem more sympathetic to the idea of burdensome beauty than to, say, the idea of burdensome wealth? It's because beauty is working its magic again: even in a discussion of its drawbacks, beauty is providing its possessors with an advantage.
I expect physical beauty will be around for as long as we have bodies and eyes. But if calliagnosia ever becomes available, I for one will give it a try.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Michelle for being my sister, and thanks to my parents, Fu-Pen and Charlotte, for their sacrifices.
Thanks to the participants of Clarion, Acme Rhetoric, and Sycamore Hill for letting me work with them. Thanks to Tom Disch for the visit, Spider Robinson for the phone call, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm for the guidance, Karen Fowler for the anecdotes, and John Crowley for reopening my eyes. Thanks to Larret Galasyn-Wright for encouragement when I needed it, and Danny Krashin for the lending me his mind. Thanks to Alan Kaplan for all the conversations.
Thanks to Juliet Albertson for love. And thanks to Marcia Glover, for love.
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Publication History
These stories were originally published as follows:
"Tower of Babylon,” Omni, 1990
"Understand,” Asimov's, 1991
"Division by Zero,” Full Spectrum 3, 19912
"Story of Your Life,” Starlight 2, 1998
"Seventy-Two Letters,” Vanishing Acts, 2000
"The Evolution of Human Science,” Nature, 2000
"Hell is the Absence of God,” Starlight 3, 2001
"Liking What You See: A Documentary,” Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002
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Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York and holds a degree in computer science from Brown University. In 1989 he attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. His fiction has won three Hugos, four Nebulas, three Locus awards, a
nd a Sturgeon award. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
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Praise for Ted Chiang's stories:
"Meticulously pieced together, utterly thought through, Chiang's stories emerge slowly ... but with the perfection of slow-growing crystal."
—Lev Grossman, Best of the Decade: Science Fiction and Fantasy, Techland.com
"In Chiang's hands, SF really is the ‘literature of ideas’ it is often held to be, and the genre's traditional “sense of wonder” is paramount. But though one reads Stories of Your Life with a kind of thematic nostalgia for classic philosophical SF such as that of Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, the collection never feels dated. Partly this is because the “wonder” of these stories is a modern, melancholy transcendence, not the naive ‘50s dreams of the genre's golden age. More important, the collection is united by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang's calm passion."
—China Mieville, The Guardian
"Ted is a national treasure ... each of those stories is a goddamned jewel."
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
"Chiang's work confirms that blending science and fine art at this length can produce touching works, tales as intimate as our own blood cells, with the structural strength of just-discovered industrial alloys."—The Seattle Times
"Summarizing these stories does not do justice to Chiang's talent. Seemingly ordinary ideas are pursued ruthlessly, their tendons flayed, their bones exposed. Chiang derides lazy thinking, weasels it out of its hiding place, and leaves it cowering."
—The Washington Post
"Chiang is one of those authors who prove the power of science fiction by looking at things in totally new ways."—The Denver Post
"Abounds with examples of why Ted Chiang's stories have continued to be award winners. From “Understand", which both plays homage to and expands upon Daniel Keyes’ classic “Flowers For Algernon” to “Story of Your Life,” in which a linguist confronts the relationship between language and reality, it will not take readers new to these stories very long to appreciate their quality and beauty. Science fiction has always depended on writers who work best at shorter lengths to continue to examine new ideas and push the boundaries of the field. In the decade plus a few years since he first started publishing, Ted Chiang has shown himself to be more than up to that task."—SF Site
"Reading a Chiang story means juggling multiple conceptions of what is normal and right. Probably this kind of brain twisting can be done with such intensity only in shorter lengths; if these stories were much longer, readers’ heads might explode.... They resemble the work of a less metaphysical Philip K. Dick or a Borges with more characterization and a grasp of cutting-edge science."—Publishers Weekly
"Brilliantly conceived and emotionally moving."—Infinity Plus
"A quirky, inventive and morally sober collection ... Discovering Chiang is one of those pleasures reserved for those of us not snobbish about genre SF. He is an important short-story writer.” Roz Kaveney, Time Out London
"Absolutely mind-blowing and stunningly creative—Ted Chiang is the future of science fiction!"—Jamie M., Powells.com Staff Pick
"This marvelous collection by one of science fiction's most thoughtful and graceful writers belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in literary science fiction ... Chiang has the gift that lies at the heart of good science fiction: a human story, beautifully told, in which the science is an expression of the deeper issues that the characters must confront."—Amazon.com
"The level of ideas and concepts at work are nothing short of breathtaking."—SFX
"Essential. You won't know SF if you don't read Ted Chiang."—Greg Bear
"Can he be the best SF writer to come down the pike in the past thirty years? I honestly believe that he is."—Harry Harrison
"[Chiang] is a master of prose as a precise instrument, or rather a well-stocked toolbox of instruments, subtly choosing and coolly crafting the right style not just to convey the particular content but to suit the particular form."
—Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
"It has often been said that the short story is the heart of sf. On the evidence of Chiang's first collection, the genre heart is beating strongly and in a very healthy state indeed."—Vector
"The qualities for which Ted Chiang is well-known—conceptual originality and dazzling clarify, for starters—are on show throughout."—Foundation
"Sheer originality ... a remarkable collection. Every story amply repays the investment put into reading it."—Interzone
"Chiang is a consummate stylist, and these lyrical tales aren't just great SF; they're great literature."—The Globe and Mail
"Ted Chiang's collection is probably—without exaggeration—the most anticipated short story collection of its generation."—The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
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Greer Gilman, Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales (Tiptree Award Winner)
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Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen; Trampoline (Editor)
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