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Overall Summary
The collection is a compilation of eight short stories and novellas by Ted Chiang. It includes his first seven works, six of which were previously published before the book was released in 2002. The author has received four Nebula Awards, four Hugos, four Locus Awards, and multiple James Tiptree Jr. Awards for his writing skills. One story from this collection inspired the 2016 film Arrival.
The first story in the collection, “Tower of Babylon,” is a reinterpretation of the Biblical story about building a tower to reach Heaven. In this version, Hillalum and his crew are digging through the Vault of Heaven in order to find Yahweh’s creations. Only Hillalum makes it through, but he gets lost and ends up far away from where they were working on the Tower.
In the second story, “Understand”, a man is given an experimental drug to regenerate his brain tissue. The drug works better than anticipated and he becomes smarter and smarter. It turns out that he’s being pursued by government agencies because of his intelligence, which makes him conflict with another super-smart human test subject.
Division by Zero is a movie about a mathematician who discovers that basic arithmetic isn’t consistent. She begins to question the meaning of life after this discovery, and her husband becomes increasingly frustrated with her as she spirals deeper into despair. The movie ends with them in the hospital as Renee tries to explain her existential crisis to Carl, and he realizes that he doesn’t love her anymore.
The title story of the collection is about a linguist named Louise Banks who tells her unborn daughter the story of what happened to her on that day as well as an account of how she came to know about the future. The premise is that aliens have come and warned humans about their impending demise, which was predicted by Dr. Banks because she can understand language in a way that allows her to know the future. This ability has disturbed Dr. Banks, causing her great distress and making it hard for her to deal with life’s challenges.
The stories in this collection are similar to the first few, which deal with themes that question our knowledge and how we know things. The next story is about the evolution of human science, which is a theme related to language. In another story, people struggle with God after they lose loved ones because of angelic visits. Another woman who was born without legs gets help from angels in order to walk again. A boy named Ethan tries to find meaning in his bizarre interaction with an angel.
Ted Chiang’s stories often deal with ideas of meaning and meaning-making, stemming from his degree in computer science. He has a job as a technical writer while writing fantasy and science fiction short stories and novellas. His interest in the way humans think about thinking likely comes from that experience. His second collection of stories is titled Exhalation.
