"Stories of Your Life and Others"

I finished reading the Ted Chiang collection a while back, and loved it.

Science fiction is sometimes called "the literature of ideas", and, well, some of it fits that description. What Chiang writes definitely does. "Understand" is the story of a clash between two hyperintelligent men; but it also raises questions about the relation between aesthetics and ethics, and between the individual and society. "Story of Your Life" is about an attempt to communicate with some very different aliens, but it's also an extended meditation on free will and predestination. (The film, "Arrival", found it necessary to provide answers to some questions that the original leaves open.) "Seventy-Two Letters" is a story of alternate science: what if some of the esoteric philosophies of the Middle Ages and Renaissance had been correct? What would the consequences be, in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution? "Hell Is the Absence of God" is a response to the Book of Job, more precisely to its ending; the story left a bad taste in my mouth, but in the Story Notes at the end Chiang explains how and why he wrote the stories in the collection, and his explanation of this one makes sense to me. "Liking What You See: A Documentary", the last story in the collection, is... hard to describe, but extremely thought-provoking. Truth, beauty, the mind...

Chiang deserves his reputation. I want more.