Stories Of Your Life And Others review

A couple of weeks ago, I read the winning entries of the last SFX short story competition and was remarkably uninspired.

So, when Dave gave me a book of short stories by science-fiction author Ted Chiang, I wasn't that keen to read them.  However, I'm glad I did, because they were some of the best short stories I've ever read.  The difference was not only in the quality of the writing, but the focus of the stories.  The SFX stories were all based on very clever concepts, and they knew it - all their focus was on how clever the idea was, to the detriment of everything else.  Ted Chiang's stories managed to be incredibly clever without being arrogant about it, but also focused very much on the personal side of each story, how the circumstances affected the characters.  I've always been more of a character than a plot person, so making the characters well-rounded and interesting made all the difference to me.

Excellent stuff.