Ted Chiang: Realist of a Larger Reality | Hacker News Reader

Ted Chiang: Realist of a Larger Reality

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167 pointsapollinaire36 comments

Ted Chiang is the reason I started writing fiction. A few months ago I got the chance to meet him and have him critique one of my stories, as well as pick his brain on his process. I wrote about it here for those that are curious:

https://tinyletter.com/jamesyu/letters/meeting-ted-chiang-an...

Do you still enjoy it and how do you keep your love for it? I took up writing for a bit years ago because I love stories and reading, but I quickly found out I hated actually writing. I enjoyed ideas, intros, getting started...but none of the rest of it and it felt like work and a bother. I stick to reading now and wonder how common it is to have fun ruined by work when you aren't realistic about what its like on the other side. Like people who love taking photos...then learn to hate cameras as they struggle to earn shooting weddings and instagram models.

I love Chiang and wish he had more and longer stuff. Quality over quantity I guess.

do you jump right into writing? Do you write long or short stories? Do you scribble stuff just for fun?

writing is a continuous process as well as a developed skill. You should write stuff just for fun, just for picking up your own language and structure. Then write short stories that are easy to manage.

For larger books you have to create a solid structure first. Characters traits, genealogy and interactions, world lore for fantasy, timeline flowcharts, anyway all the backstage setup so you don't get lost or contradict yourself. It is a lot of effort, but is just a natural continuation of the first two exercises (writing for the fun of it and writing short pieces).

There are lots of successful authors who just jump into longer works and make it up as they go. Building background can help, but is not mandatory. There are very few absolutes in writing.

That said, writing for an audience beyond yourself is work, just like anything worthwhile.

sure, but I wrote that in the context of someone jumping in and feeling overwhelmed

Agreed here. You must love the material/story or you’ll never write it.

Also writing is revision, and revision is hard, even for professionals. But it’s the process of going through the hard parts that make the story good.

Staying passionate can be a challenge, especially if you’re writing long form like a novel. And sometimes, even for short stories. The thing to remember is that writing is rarely a linear process. If you’re trying to force a story out, it won’t work. The readers will also sense this immediately. You need to take breaks from the material and come back with fresh eyes, especially when you’ve lost the spark.

I'm always impressed by those who follow their more creative side. Best of luck to you in your endeavors.

Do you have a recommended reading list and order for ted chiang?

Just get his two anthologies: Story of Your Life and Others, and Exhalation. They’re not long, but you’ll find that his stories are worth rereading.

I’d recommend starting with Tower of Babylon or Understand, then jumping into Story of Your Life.

Ted Chiang's two collections of short stories are near the top of my list for best fiction of this century.

Anyone with an interest in technology and humanity will find them to be a phenomenal read.

It's really the humanity of the books that gets me. Division by Zero is one of his pieces that I find myself thinking about all the time for that very reason. It just captures this somberness about how relationships can grow and change and sometimes end.

I do now have a Ted Chiang shaped hole in my life after finishing his collections. I just haven't found another author that really gets into the heart of what sci-fi can be.

Try Greg Egan's Axiomatic. I picked it up from a free books charity knowing nothing about it, and found the author to be a little "harder" than Chiang but with the same focus on the humanity to be found in sci-fi.

For a taste, make sure to check out Closer, available here: http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer

Michael Crichton is very good too, and of course Ray Bradbury.

You could try reading something from Jorge Luis Borges. It may not be as sci-fi-y, generally more in the atmosphere of "Tower of Babylon", but great in its treatment of human nature and its relationship with universe.

seconding, i found borges through a recommendation after reading chiang and he (borges) became my favorite author

Some of Ken Liu's stories in The Paper Menagerie filled that gap for me. They are fabulous in their own right, though, maybe a lot more "dream"-like.

Links to Amazon pages? I almost exclusively follow software engineering books since 2012 when I started my career as SWE. Had little knowledge in outside areas...

Agreed, they are both really enjoyable reads with some very clever, thought provoking stories. Highly recommended.

If you're undecided on reading Chiang's work, I would suggest checking out the movie Arrival based on one of his short stories.

I found it to be a wonderful adaptation and inspired me to dive into his works. I've found a joy reading his work that I haven't experienced in reading sci-fi since coming across Philip K. Dick when I was much younger.

One interesting thing about the movie Arrival is that they actually completely flipped the message of the story in their adaptation!

An explanation of the differences is ROT13 encoded below to avoid spoilers:

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Very interesting. I loved both but for some reason I did enjoy the short story better (I'm definitely not always a "The book was better"-type person either), and I think this explains why. I'll have to go and check them both out again and keep this in mind.

It is a pretty great adaptation, and pretty difficult if you think about how you can express things in a book vs movie. I really enjoyed this video essay breakdown of the adaptation process: https://youtu.be/QTxvzkwVsQE

These stories are all amazing (talking about the anthology with story of your life) and out of them came one of the best sci-fi movies in a long time.

My favorite story though is the one with the two people who become super intelligent and go to war amongst each other. That one was crazy.

It ended rather abruptly but possibly fittingly.

The narrator on the audiobook (Todd MacLaren) is the same as the one who narrated Altered Carbon, one of my favorite listens.

It takes an incredible skill set to create a short story and hold a reader's attention, all the more so when science-fiction is involved. Given the relative paucity of his output, he clearly approaches his work like a master craftsman - slowly building and removing all the excess.

I find his stories really cut to the core of an idea with so little excess, as you put it. The ideas he explores are so well chosen too.

I love Ted Chiang. My favourite is "Hell is the absence of God" from the collection "Stories of your life". It drew me in.

Basically every story in that book is a gem.

He is a good writer. I love the story "Tower of Babylon".

I used to avoid sci-fi because of non-realism. Not my cup of tea to read insanely powerful tech used in really disappointing ways (e.g. Sophons from Three Body Problem writing timestamps), or for example societies in 2030 that are culturally unchanged from 2010.

Then I tried Blind Date with a Book, which is where the book gets wrapped in brown paper and labelled with some hints about the book, so you know what kind of book you're buying but not the title or author. I ended up unwrapping Chiang's Story of Your Life, the short story collection. Chiang ended up pulling me back into sci-fi. Every story had sci-fi elements that were thought-provoking without being unbelievable, not to mention phenomenal worldbuilding, which I am a real sucker for.

Even if you're not a sci-fi fan I'd recommend several of the stories in Story of Your Life -- Tower of Babylon really left an impression in my friend group, to say the least.

I really enjoyed Ursula Le Guin's scifi for those reasons. The technology in Le Guin's stories basically doesn't matter; her stories revolve around relationships and culture. As an example, a story that focuses on a 2 planet system that has a slavery based society. On one planet, the slaves rebel. But even after their successful rebellion, the freed slaves fail to acknowledge that their women are essentially still slaves since they lack all basic human rights. Another story is about a planet/moon system where a few hundred years prior an anarchist culture secedes from the planets staunchly capitalistic culture, and then moves to the moon. The story follows a physicist/mathematicians life in an anarchist society. Another story deals with the toll that war has on people with telepathy. They have empathy for their enemies, but none the less they are in a situation in which they must kill those they have a telepathic connection with.

All the plot lines I talk about are in the collection of books belonging to the "Hainish cycle" series. Every book in the series is very good.

I'm going to counterpoint. I didn't dislike Chiang's stories, but none of them really blew me away either.

Generally the feeling I always get from his stories is the writing is very good, but the stories have always been executed by others, better.

I read his stories and didn't mind them. But I don't see myself going back and rereading them like I would for Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, etc.

I happily passed the collection on to someone else and don't feel any need to replace it.

I loves his new collection of a short stories, some are better than others, but overall there are a ton of unique ideas on display. The Merchant and The Alchemist's Gate is such a great time travel story in particular. I didn't enjoy the one about digital creatures (it went on for way too long!) or the one about the child-bearing device.

"Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" was really stunning for me, personally. Also enjoyed the titular story, though I had already read it before the collection came out.

A short story of his in audiobook form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLsGfN-F2rs

Not /the/ best narration, but I enjoyed it all the same.

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