Fun fact: it got made into the film Arrival.
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On that note, I completely recommend the second compilation of other short stories, Exhalation.
Yes, I read it as part of a collection of his short stories. I enjoyed the philosophical conundrums in all of them.
That collection is great.
“Liking What You See: A Documentary” really struck with me. I think about it a lot when I see what people have done to themselves due to Hollywood, marketing, beauty industry, instagram, TikTok, etc.
Apparently AMC has rights to make a series about that one. I haven’t heard anything about it for years.
Understand or Tower of Babylon were probably my favorites, after Story of Your Life. I loved the cat and mouse game towards the end of Understand, the shirt was such a brilliant concept. Limitless could have been so much better of a movie.
This is making me want to go back and read them again. They seem like the kind of stories I might get even more out of the second time around.
I think most of Chaing’s work really needs multiple reads. Especially Story of Your Life, because of obvious reasons. Having the context of the full picture makes the smaller aspects fuller.
It’s amazing that he wrote these stories over decades, publishing them one at a time in sci-fi periodicals as an “amateur”. All the while he had a day job as a Technical Writer.
Many writer wrote short stories in periodicals while working on another job before they made it big.
Stephen King published many short stories while working in a laundromat and later as a teacher early in his career.
