Understand - A novelette by Ted Chiang | Hacker News Reader

Understand - A novelette by Ted Chiang

infinityplus.co.uk

76 pointsgwern15 comments

Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" novella was read (by J.J. Campanella) on Starship Sofa back in 2008, it is one of the best things I've read/listened:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/2008/03/23/aural-delights-no-15-...

"Understand" is available on archive.org:

http://archive.org/details/TedChiangUnderstand

More stuff is here: http://www.sffaudio.com/?page_id=4811

Also good for keeping track of Ted:

http://tedchiang.blogspot.ca

which mentions that "Story of your Life" was optioned for a film directed by Nic Matthieu (also working on Robotech) and adapted by Eric Heisserer.

Not sure how good that resource is. It was last updated on 2012, and things happened since then :)

It doesn't mention his new story The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, available at http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of...

Or a recent appearance at the EXPO 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_632pic1PlU

Oh my God, a new Ted Chiang story.

I have to say, having read everything he's written, I'm curious what a full novel would look like, though I'd be happily content if he just came out with a short story/novellete/novella a year forever. He just puts so much thought into his world-building it's incredible.

Ted Chiang's short story collection, "Stories of your life and others", contains some of the best writing I've read in my life.

Ted Chiang writes some amazing stuff. "Lifecycle of Software Objects" is a personal favourite.

All his short stories are worth reading. My favourites are this one, Story of Your Life, and Tower of Babylon.

I couldn't stand Story of Your Life. I felt it made no sense from a physics point of view, and if you're not going to do that then why write science fiction at all? (Whereas I very much enjoyed Lifecycles of Software Objects)

It's also posted on Subterranean's site: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_...

Was also recently available on BBC Radio Four Extra. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jtyf) Sadly, not still available there. (But probably available on Usenet or in a torrent.)

I thought this was an interesting story, but in the end, it was also completely pointless. The premise was good, but instead of following the premise to its logical conclusions based on our current understanding of the world, he proceeded to just make up everything. But what really killed it for me was that the ending was terrible. I don't want to spoil anything, but the events that led to the ending pretty badly contradicted the abilities of the protagonist (notably the self-awareness and "meta-programming").

While "Understand" is nice, "72 letters" seem even more brilliant.

Ted Ching usually puts into a short story an amount of ideas some other authors would expend on a trilogy.

I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for a Ted Chiang novel - "Story of Your Life" is one of the greatest short stories I have ever read, and others like "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" are spectacular as well.

He isn't very prolific, but each thing he writes is incredible.

Inspiring, seductive... I sound like the back of any book reviewed by the main stream, but _the work is good_!

To me, at least...

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