Ted Chiang

"Ted Chiang is one of those authors who doesn't publish much - so far, just a bunch of short stories, recently collected in Stories of Your Life and Others - but what he does write tends to be very good indeed. Pretty much every story he's published has been nominated for some award or other; his first, 'Tower of Babylon', won the NebulaAward?, and his most recent, 'Hell Is The Absence Of God', won a HugoAward. His work is an interesting mix of genres; conceptually, several of them are straight-up fantasy, but they are written with a rigorousness or logical progression more reminiscent of Hard SF (which is probably where the comparisons with GregEgan come from)." -- http://urchin.earth.li/cgi-bin/twic/wiki/view.pl?page=TedChiang

Stories of Your Life and Others: ISBN 076530418X

Some of Chiang's stories are certainly hard ScienceFiction ('Understand' and 'Liking What You See: A Documentary'), but others (like 'Hell Is The Absence Of God' and 'Tower Of Babylon'), whilst devoid of any actual scientific content, are definitely in the hard SF mode. Perhaps these are simply hard F.

TedChiang is one of the few writers whose books I buy hardcover on the day they're published. (Others on the short list include KenMacLeod & GregEgan). If I'd ever aspired to write, "Story of Your Life" made me give up the notion, as I refuse to compete with such a fine story.

CategoryAuthor CategoryScienceFiction