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Comment by atgctg | Hacker News Reader

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atgctg·

Delightful intro, turns out it's written by the master storyteller, Ted Chiang.

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Some related threads:

Ted Chiang: Realist of a Larger Reality - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657304 - Aug 2019 (36 comments)

Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13989588 - March 2017 (79 comments)

Ted Chiang on Seeing His Stories Adapted and the Ever-Expanding Popularity of SF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13053377 - Nov 2016 (51 comments)

Interview with Ted Chiang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957302 - Nov 2016 (59 comments)

Profile of Ted Chiang: The Perfectionist - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8837488 - Jan 2015 (20 comments)

In case folks don't know who he is, Ted Chiang wrote the short story collection "Stories of your Life and Others", and one of the stories was "Story of your Life", on which the movie Arrival was based.

It is an amazing book, not just for science fiction fans. The first story, "Tower of Babylon" somehow is like a science fiction story but based on ancient people's cosmology. Great book.

Best story in the book, imo. The first and last story (about the angels) are the best. I was a little underwhelmed by _Story Of Your Life_ and _Understand_, given their reputation.

The stories are insanely creative and leave you thinking: Hell is the absence of God is a fantastic genre-bender I can imagine few other authors writing. Exhalation is also great, but it's in a different anthology.

Perhaps one of the greatest fiction writers of all time. Somehow I have a feeling that black mirror is inspired by Chiang's stories.

"Understand" is a short story that I often ponder on. There's riddles within riddles to parse the story meanings.

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