Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far-plus an eighth story written especially for this volume. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. Dick or a Borges with more characterization and a grasp of cutting-edge science.Ted Chiang's first published story, " Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. They resemble the work of a less metaphysical Philip K. Whether their initial subject is ancient Babylonians building a tower that reaches the base of Heaven, translation of an alien language that shows a woman a new way to view her life as a mother, or mass-producing golems in an alternative Victorian England, Chiang's stories are audacious, challenging and moving. Still, the most surprising thing is how much feeling accompanies the intellectual exercises. Probably this kind of brain twisting can be done with such intensity only in shorter lengths if these stories were much longer, readers' heads might explode.
Reading a Chiang story means juggling multiple conceptions of what is normal and right. He begins with a startling bit of oddity, then, as readers figure out what part of the familiar world has been twisted, they realize that it was just a small part of a much larger structure of marvelous, threatening strangeness. Chiang has mastered an extremely tricky type of SF story. In this case, though, the hype is deserved. This collection contains all six previously published tales, including the Nebula Award winning "Tower of Babylon," plus a new story, "Liking What You See: A Documentary." It's rare for a writer to become so prominent so fast.
Chiang has acquired a massive reputation on the basis of very few pieces of short fiction. Here's the first must-read SF book of the year.
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