Stories of Your Life and Others

STORY OF YOUR LIFE


Your father is about to ask me the question. This is the most important moment in our lives, and I want to pay attention, note every detail. Your dad and I have just come back from an evening out, dinner and a show; it s after midnight. We came out onto the patio to look at the full moon; then I told your dad I wanted to dance, so he humors me and now we re slow-dancing, a pair of thirtysomethings swaying back and forth in the moonlight like kids. I don t feel the night chill at all. And then your dad says, Do you want to make a baby?

Right now your dad and I have been married for about two years, living on Ellis Avenue; when we move out you ll still be too young to remember the house, but we ll show you pictures of it, tell you stories about it. I d love to tell you the story of this evening, the night you re conceived, but the right time to do that would be when you re ready to have children of your own, and we ll never get that chance.

Telling it to you any earlier wouldn t do any good; for most of your life you won t sit still to hear such a romantic -- you d say sappy -- story. I remember the scenario of your origin you ll suggest when you re twelve.

The only reason you had me was so you could get a maid you wouldn t have to pay, you ll say bitterly, dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the closet.

That s right, I ll say. Thirteen years ago I knew the carpets would need vacuuming around now, and having a baby seemed to be the cheapest and easiest way to get the job done. Now kindly get on with it.

If you weren t my mother, this would be illegal, you ll say, seething as you unwind the power cord and plug it into the wall outlet.

That will be in the house on Belmont Street. I ll live to see strangers occupy both houses: the one you re conceived in and the one you grow up in. Your dad and I will sell the first a couple years after your arrival. I ll sell the second shortly after your departure. By then Nelson and I

Tower of Babylon
Understand
Division by Zero
Story of Your Life
Seventy-Two Letters
The Evolution of Human Science
Hell Is the Absence of God
Liking What You See: A Documentary

Story Notes 
Acknowledgments 

Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and holds a degree in computer science. In 1989 he attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop. His fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards, and he is the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Stories of Your Life and Others has been translated into ten languages. He lives near Seattle, Washington.

A swell movie adaptation always sends me to the source material, so Arrival had me pick up Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others: lean, relentless, and incandescent. Colson Whitehead, GQ
 
Chiang writes with a gruff and ready heart that brings to mind George Saunders and Steven Millhauser, but he s uncompromisingly cerebral. The New Yorker
 
Blend[s] absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space. . . . raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human. The New York Times
 
Shines with a brutal, minimalist elegance. Every sentence is the perfect incision in the dissection of the idea at hand. The Guardian

Meticulously pieced together, utterly thought through, Chiang s stories emerge slowly . . . but with the perfection of slow-growing crystal. Lev Grossman, Best of the Decade: Science Fiction and Fantasy, Techland

"Ted Chiang is one of the best and smartest writers working today. If you don't know his name, let's fix that. Now." Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

"Ted Chiang astonishes. You must read him." Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

United by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang s calm passion. China Mieville, The Guardian

Ted is a national treasure . . . each of those stories is a goddamned jewel. Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

Confirms that blending science and fine art at this length can produce touching works, tales as intimate as our own blood cells, with the structural strength of just-discovered industrial alloys. Seattle Times

Chiang derides lazy thinking, weasels it out of its hiding place, and leaves it cowering. Washington Post

Essential. You won t know SF if you don t read Ted Chiang.