Stories of Your Life and Others

Chiang writes slowly and publishes rarely, and these stories show why his reputation is so high. The title story follows Louise Banks, a linguist called in when mysterious visitors arrive, as she learns their written language and begins to perceive time differently, while addressing her daughter. It won the Nebula Award and became the film Arrival. Tower of Babylon, his first published story, imagines a world where an enormous tower really can reach the top of the sky, and describes the long climb as a feat of engineering.

Other stories range just as widely. In Understand, a man treated with an experimental drug becomes so intelligent that he can no longer relate to anyone, until he meets an equal. Division by Zero contrasts a mathematician's crisis with her husband's attempt to understand it. Seventy-Two Letters places a story about creating life in an alternate Victorian England where names can animate clay figures. Liking What You See is written as a documentary about a technology that switches off people's ability to perceive beauty. The stories are quiet and careful, but often deeply moving.

Best read slowly, one story at a time. About 304 pages in the Vintage paperback.