In 'Seventy-Two Letters', the basis of Victorian industry is kabbalism as a systematised, rational and political science - if one very different from our own. This conception unites all the stories, even those set in universes with different, 'magical' laws. Far from being counterposed as 'cold' to emotion's 'warmth', it is the rationalism of the characters - and the writer - that makes them emotional and human. In Chiang's universe, humanism is inextricable from rationalism. Similarly, in his notes, Chiang describes how 'Story of Your Life' 'grew out of interest in the variational principles of physics': perhaps surprisingly, the tenderness of this story, and its astonishingly moving culmination, are not achieved despite the scientific speculation, but are direct functions of it. This is scientific problem not as puzzle to be solved, but as ontological catastrophe, and human catastrophe too. In 'Division by Zero', for example, we feel painful empathy and pity for the main character only because and insofar as we have understood the crisis in her life occasioned by a mathematical paradox. But the stories are constructed on a bedrock of profound humanism, so the most abstruse philosophical conjectures are experienced as resonant and emotional. More important, the collection is united by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang's calm passion.Ĭomplex issues of language, maths and physics provide the contexts and narrative hooks - precisely the sort of science-fictional concerns that bring a blench to the face of the literary snob.

Partly this is because the 'wonder' of these stories is a modern, melancholy transcendence, not the naive 50s dreams of the genre's golden age. But though one reads Stories of Your Life with a kind of thematic nostalgia for classic philosophical SF such as that of Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, the collection never feels dated. In Chiang's hands, SF really is the 'literature of ideas' it is often held to be, and the genre's traditional 'sense of wonder' is paramount. The eight stories collected here (his entire output over more than a decade) have deservedly notched up three Nebulas and a Hugo - the most prestigious awards in SF. Occasionally the high concepts of his pieces necessitate those undigested lumps of explanation known as info-dumps. His language is precise rather than impressive even, sometimes, a little flat. Chiang, by contrast, is a much more traditional science-fiction writer.

Link's success makes immediate, intuitive sense: she writes bravura experimental prose with a subverted fabular logic that sits well with today's genre-bending sentiment.

Stories from your life and others