"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang [pdf]

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49 pointsgwern16 comments

I highly recommend his collection, "Story of your Life, and others". Probably the best SF collection by a single author I've ever read.

http://amzn.com/1931520720

The novella "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is a great longer Ted Chiang piece, hard to find nowadays but Starship Sofa did an audiobook reading of it (starts at about 2:03 mark):

http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2008/03/23/aural-delights-n...

They also did a good one of "Exhalation":

http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2009/02/27/starshipsofa-bsf...

[got a 404 on Exhalation but found it on Escape Pod: http://escapepod.org/2009/04/10/ep194-exhalation/ ]

Thank you, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate was really enjoyable. I found it on archive.org http://web.archive.org/web/20080214145811/http://www.sfsite....

My personal favourite by Ted Chiang is The Lifecycle of Software Objects. I'm certain a technology paralleling the digients will arrive.

It just blew my mind. It's well written, and one of these thought-provoking pieces you keep thinking about for quite a while. In a very different setting, but still bubbling with interesting ideas, consider Blindsight [1] by Peter Watts. It's available for free online (CC-licensed) and well worth your time.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)

I also thoroughly enjoyed Blindsight. Truly a book that keeps you thinking.

Funny, I read Software Objects, after Blindsight. Is there some kinda speculative fiction digraph that we're all following? My reading graph was build via Goodreads.

You might also enjoy Greg Egan, particularly something like Diaspora. Or if you're in the mood for short stories, the collection "Axiomatic" is chock-full of fantastic ideas.

Edit: Just noticed Axiomatic is available in Kindle format for $3 USD, which is well worth it for 18 amazing stories: http://amzn.com/B00FDWOBZA

See also: Lagrangians, the Principle of Least Action, Greg Egan's "Infinite Assassins", and _Qualia the Purple_

Could you perhaps give links to these? Some of them don't easily come up with a quick Google search.

I loved "Understand" by Ted Chiang; thanks for sharing this one!

Hmm, a PDF hosted on a random personal web site at a University in Brazil. Seems legit.

Can we please not post links to stolen (presumably-)copyrighted materials here?

If you'd like to compensate the author, consider buying the collection it's published in: http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/193...

Story of Your Life is one of the greatest short stories I've ever read. I don't think there's an author in sci-fi who I hope writes a full length novel more than Chiang.

The Heptapods in the story, they're 'right-brain' thinkers! Brilliant story.

I cried like a baby when I read this.

holishitwow.

That was really good.

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