Stories of Your Life and Others

Ted Chiang's first eight stories were gathered in 2002, seven of them previously published elsewhere and one new to the volume. The premises range widely: men build a tower toward Heaven, mathematics turns out to be inconsistent, a science of names brings inanimate matter to life, and aliens appear and humans set out to learn their language. Between them the stories have won Nebula, Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon and Sidewise awards, with Hell Is the Absence of God taking three major prizes. The volume also took the Locus Award for Best Collection, and it was reissued as Arrival when one of its stories was adapted for film.

Andrej Karpathy called it required reading and named Division by Zero, Understand and Story of Your Life as his three favorites, and Naval Ravikant said he was rereading it and counted it among his favorite science fiction. It also appears on Patrick Collison's bookshelf.