Ted Chiang has the incredible ability to paint extraordinarily compelling speculative fictional worlds in such a condensed package, and in a way that ties in a philosophical component while still hewing towards the "concludes in a way that is surprising yet always inevitable."
While my favorite is probably Story of Your Life, Understand is damn near my second favorite, or rather probably was before I got to Exhalation and realized just what he had done there. (To pull at the thin threads of what constitutes consciousness so deftly...)
But there are so many great examples of building these compelling, rich tapestries, with enough world building and exploration to draw you all the way in. Tower of Babylon, Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate... just phenomenal pieces that stick with you long after you've read them, and are something to savor.
Separately, I was so pleased with how Denis Villeneuve (and specifically, Eric Heisserer) adapted the screenplay for Story of Your Life, to create such a phenomenal transition to film in Arrival... it seemed such a complex concept that could easily collapse for want of oversimplification or trying too hard, and instead it was such a faithful reproduction... ended up being one of my favorite science fiction films of all time.
What to me stands out about Chiang is that at the core of his stories he is always deeply humanistic. I think that actually shows in Arrival, which unlike a lot of Villeneuve's adaptions is not emotionally cold and I think that's largely due to the source material.
My favourite Ted Chiangs are those where he takes a piece of assumed knowledge or mythology from an earlier era and builds a compelling world where it is scientific reality - homunculus theory, the golem, the sky as a physical firmament, creation 6,000 years ago.
Here’s another one — What’s expected of us — I posted last month after it was mentioned in an article. It’s one page long. The literary equivalent of a startup chime.
This is one of my favorite sci-fi short stories, period. Up there would be the one that inspired Arrival (I don't recall the name), and The Last Question.
This one was great, because it's not clear until the very end whether the character is going through increasing levels of paranoia, or dealing with an adversary. The way the dénouement is stitched together (literally) was such a shock. I love it.
> the one that inspired Arrival (I don't recall the name),
It's called "Stories of your life". Highly recommend both the book that includes it ("Stories of your life and others") as well as Exhalation. Ted Chiang is superb.
For the longest time, I was wondering if thw stock market schemes, feeling followed, seeing things in patterns, was just paranoia and paraeidolia. Would be plausible within the story!
> it's not clear until the very end whether the character is going through increasing levels of paranoia, or dealing with an adversary
Er, which one do you think it resolved as? Your phrasing suggests you went from doubt to believing the narrator is reliable and sane. I was and am convinced in his reliability; yet, he fell for a painfully obvious ploy by the adversary, which is not terribly consistent with superintelligence. Nevertheless I understand the story to be, in-universe, reliable, but from outside, intentionally following narrative tropes consistent with mental illness. Other tropes include "there's something in the jab", "CIA is after me", "I have become the renfield of a hidden adversary".
So there's a lot of evidence for the opposite interpretation, that the protagonist is simply ill the whole time. This interpretation has the distinct advantage that falling for the attack was truly a flaw on the part of the protagonist (qua confabulator, I suppose) rather than the narrative or the author. In fact I can't really say why I don't adopt this as my preferred interpretation; perhaps a bias for my original interpretation, or skill on Chiang's part in convincing the reader of the less plausible explanation through, what, sheer sympathy?
I can recall reading this for the first time two years ago. I opened the book and started reading at 11:00p as I was winding down for the evening, thinking that I'd spend 30 minutes reading before I got too tired to keep my eyes open and turn in for the night.
I very quickly got sucked in and found myself LEANING into the story. Within 45 minutes I was energized and sitting upright in my bed. I was fully alert and HAD to keep going. It was invigorating. After I completed the story I stayed awake for another 2 hours. Coasting on the inertia of this story. I was wired and inspired.
Who needs drugs when you've got masterful storytelling like this?
A superb writer. My favorite story of his is Hell is the Absence of God, which I think is one of the few science fiction stories to actually engage with religion in a meaningful way.
Please, am I the only one who found the last few pages of this story as meaningless word salad? I enjoyed Flowers for Algernon so much more, it moved me and OK, made me cry. This one started with the same premise but had to force myself to finish it. However I did enjoy Tower of Babylon by this author.
This is my favorite Sci Fiction of all time, long or short.
Why? It really paints a visceral picture of how learning happens and how superhuman intelligence is achieved through both neuron and physhiological transformations.
Thinking and reading about how smarter things than us think is one of my favorite things. It’s usually a useless exercise but somehow Chiang managed to give us a taste of it. … like a principal component analysis of a smarter brain that we can comprehend, at least a little. Not that we understand our own brain but you know what I mean.
when i see ted chiang i think of his blurry jpeg LLM take in the new yorker. i'm not a fan of that take. i think it was one of the worst LLM takes, competing with the stochastic parrot take. i heard he wrote some amazing science fiction stories though i should read them some time.
What don't you like about the article? A lot of people don't understand the limitations of ChatGPT and I think it's worth talking about. I like "blurry jpeg" a lot better than "hallucination".
> "What don't you like about the [blurry jpeg] article?"
It's valid at some technical level but I dislike it so much. There are so many things. If I had to pick only a few, it's that it encourages to see LLMs as a worse and static rendering of an 'ideal' piece of data that we already have. This is not how the LLMs are useful. An LLM can be at its best when it's explaining or imagining for example something like 'how could x be combined with y in the context of z.' The LLM uses its imagination to answer it. Some would say 'hallucination' which isn't so good description. But in the metaphor of 'blurry jpeg' its answer could only be described as a 'jpeg artifact'. Which is bad. The most useful help that an LLM provides is analogous to the worst aspect of a blurry jpeg. Ughhh I hate it so much.
Also I can easily believe that Ted Chiang is an excellent science fiction story author I have read almost none of his stories but I heard they are great and I want to read them soon.
On a related note: Tchiakovsky's novel Children of Memory has some characters of dubious sentience that almost seem based on LLMs. Book is 3rd in a trilogy, but anyone who likes Chiang will like the series.
I've read both, and honestly Chiang's on another level. Each story is a jewel constructed by a watchmaker, in the "change one parameter and think through the consequences" tradition of SF. I think you can see this most clearly in What's Expected of Us.
The Children novels are from another tradition - space opera. They focus on big canvases, rather than big ideas. That's not to imply the big ideas aren't there, but they're not the focal point in the same way. They're comparable to Alastair Reynolds or Iain Banks, not Ted Chiang.
It is very possible (and I'd wager even common) to be a master in some things and suck at others. If you find a good author, it's OK not to agree with what they say or do while still thinking they write good books.
《SPOILERS 》There is some idea that if conceived can destroy you. Greco wants to use it to attack the protagonist. The protagonist defends himself by delaying his perception and passing all inputs through a simulated concept so that when Greco communicates the idea it would destroy the sandbox and not himself. But Greco never tells the protagonist the idea. It just lets the protagonist formulate it themselves as a reaction to all the triggers Greco planted beforehand. Before in the story the prot limits his mind not to think "dangerous" things but the limitation of that model is that you need to have a way to describe what not to think about without thinking about them actively. Since hes not aware of the idea existing beforehand he has no limits in place against that. And so they lose their mind.
I had a slightly different take that there was no highly advanced "attack". Greco merely encouraged the protagonist to drop their ego boundary, causing the protagonist self-centered mental breakdown to occur. It seemed clear to me that throughout the story the main form of the protagonist unhappiness and stress stemmed from an egocentric orientation (total separation from society and nature).
Loved this story. In my head I pictured it taking place to the beat of techno music that reaches a pounding, rapid tempo crescendo right before the end.
>wielding one's body is a mental activity. While my strength hasn't increased, my coordination is now well above average...
First part is true and it brings up the question why Professor Xavier did not controlled his body with his telepathic powers?
The second part is not true. If one can coordinate to fire more muscle fibers at once, one can exert more power.
I also do not like that two superintelligent beings are fighting. It is such a bad trope. From what I know, these of intelligence quotient above 160 usually are interested in their work and life and rarely exhibit any, let me say, non-normal behavior.
>From what I know, these of intelligence quotient above 160 usually are interested in their work and life and rarely exhibit any, let me say, non-normal behavior.
Even academic mathematics has its share of Dramas. Engaging in conflict is a core evolutionary neccessity, being very smart does not remove you from that.
