by Ted Chiang

I first heard of Ted Chiang when one of his short stories was published in OneZero. In OneZero, his writing style was referred to as “speculative fiction”, which I think is an apt classification. One is tempted to call it science fiction, but his writing is closer to home (more Black Mirror than Star Trek), and at least a few of the stories in this collection take place in the past.

The stories interact with philosophical questions with staggering efficiency and depth, while also providing extremely compelling & entertaining narrative. Reading his writing gave me the uncanny feeling that he was inside my head: I found myself drawing parallels and connections between many other books & topics I’ve been thinking about.

Some references are blatant: a public figure in one story described as having a “reality-distortion field”, and using a PR firm called “Wyatt/Hayes” can only be interpreted as a reference to Steve Job’s famous charisma, and Apple’s PR firm “Chiat/Day”. But others are more subtle: throughout a set of three stories in the middle of the book, Chiang introduces and builds upon the concept self-referential and self-inferential systems, then nods explicitly to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, then uses that foundation to explore non-sequential logic structures and non-causal, anamist worldview in the eponymous story. Reading his work has obliged me to finish the book Gödel, Escher, Bach (I’ve only ever made it through the first part, on Gödel), and helped me understand what now seems like glaringly obvious larger context around other books I’ve recently read, such as You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier and Less is More by Jason Hickel.

I don’t want to sound all galaxy brain and say that reading this book is helping me find new connections and meaning in the world (as the main character in one of his stories does after taking brain-enhancing hormone therapy), but I think it speaks to the universality of the questions that he grapples with that readers are able to use the vehicle of these narratives to explore diverse ideas. Speculative fiction, yes - and also transcendent.

I’m excited to read his other work, soon!