I am not the biggest short story fan, but I enjoyed this collection. The stories were all interesting, and raised thought provoking questions. I liked the range of writing, one story felt like it came out of Arabian Nights, and another felt like I was reading a Vox article. I did think some of the exposition at times, felt boring and like technobabble. Overall, I would recommend interested in short stories. ( )

This book has so many accolades. I have no idea why.

Generally, I really enjoy short stories. [a:George Sanders|281510|George Sanders|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1453418195p2/281510.jpg] and [a:Alice Munro|6410|Alice Munro|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1494056984p2/6410.jpg] are amazing. And while I'm not a huge science fiction reader, I really really love Black Mirror . . .which are short science fiction vignettes made for television (also loved Star Trek). So, honestly, I thought I'd be really into this book. But alas, no.

The two book end stories, "The Merchent and the Alchemist's Gate" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" were the only two I even enjoyed reading. A little. The first focused on a time travel portal and the latter investigated the idea of having multiple lives (quantum?) where different versions of an individual might take separate life paths making different decisions along the way.

The remaining stories just seemed so flat. The characters weren't interesting. The writing style was straightforward, but has a lot of "telling" and not enough "showing". The endings didn't make me go "wow" like other short story writers often do. There were a few interesting conceptual ideas, and that's all I got out of it. I'd honestly have rather read a series of essays about the concepts. That might have actually been more interesting.

The author has won so many awards, so take this review as one by a reader who just wants to say this book clearly was not for me. Great fiction needs to have some emotional component or an element of surprise . . .I was not feeling these stories at all. I can't even get up the energy to really rant about them . . .just meh. ( )

This anthology confirms that Ted Chiang is one of the most interesting sci-fi writers alive. His short stories feel very relevant to current times and, at the same time, have timeless themes of human nature, free will, and purpose.

All of the stories included in this book are intellectually satisfying, forcing the reader to ask bigger and better questions, challenging assumptions, and showing a new perspective. They explore a variety of topics in different settings just as in Stories of Your Life and Others. However, I missed its diversity of form and style - the journal-like narration gets monotonous after a few stories. Also, I couldn't get invested emotionally as much as I did in the previous anthology. The personal drama of the characters was either not as profound or harder for me to relate to.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book tremendously. I think that no sci-fi fan will be disappointed with it. I'll be definitely looking forward to reading new pieces from Ted Chiang! ( )

Brain food -- this compulsively readable set of short stories plays with time, space, and digitalization, while maintaining a human focus. Chiang is a master of "what if", and the alternative worlds he creates are fascinating and sometimes frightening places. What's just as notable, however, is that his characters are involving if not always admirable: with many of them (digital as well as human) I felt a real emotional connection. ( )

Having read the author's earlier book titled The Stories of Your Life and others, I looked forward to reading this. Sadly I found most of them not to my liking, though it's not to say they were poorly written. I did enjoy the first few but I felt they lacked cohesiveness and one in particular was much longer than needed. ( )