Stories of Your Life and Others

Feel terrible giving this two stars but, well, it was OK. These stories are my first and only exposure to Chiang, and I'm not sure I like his style. It's very much of the "take one sci-fi idea and explore what a weird world it would be if it were true", a throwback to the 1950s. He does this style very well, and his ideas are interesting, and the comparisons to (say) Asimov are fair. But then the stories lack for the characters and humanist themes I'm looking for these days.

That said, there are two great stories in this collection. "Story of Your Life" is fantastic and I'm looking forward to the movie adaptation (Arrival) coming this year. It's a very cerebral story, very His Master's Voice, and I'm curious whether they'll successfully make that into a movie without wrecking it. I also thought "Hell Is the Absence of God" was just terrific, I'd love to read a whole novel or more in that version of religion. Or maybe a TV show? I feel like The Leftovers must have been influenced by it.