He graduated from Brown University with a Computer Science degree. Ted Chiang is an American speculative fiction writer. What if men built a tower from Earth to Heaven-and broke through to Heaven's other side? What if we discovered that the fundamentals of mathematics were arbitrary and inconsistent? What if there were a science of naming things that calls life into being from inanimate matter? What if exposure to an alien language forever changed our perception of time? What if all the beliefs of fundamentalist Christianity were literally true, and the sight of sinners being swallowed into fiery pits were a routine event on city streets? These are the kinds of outrageous questions posed by the stories of Ted Chiang. Now, collected here for the first time are all seven of this extraordinary writer's stories so far-plus an eighth story written especially for this volume. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF.

Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. Chiang’s real interest is less with AI, than with life as a whole – perhaps rare for an author in the SF genre.Ted Chiang's first published story, ' Tower of Babylon,' won the Nebula Award in 1990. A tech startup develops learning algorithms as virtual pets, and two engineers find themselves looking after these software objects over the decades that follow. The Life Cycle of Software Objects traces the accidental emergence and evolution of artificial intelligence. The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, which scooped both the Hugo and Nebula awards, is a Silk Road fantasy about a simple merchant who stumbles upon a gateway to the future in the market place of old Baghdad. Photograph: Penguin Random House If there is a recurrent theme, it's squaring the circle between fantasies of belief and the scientific worldviewīut why stop here, Hollywood? Chiang’s 2002 short story, Hell Is the Absence of God is a restrained, brilliant demolition of fundamentalist religious belief that explores the possibilities of a reality where biblical angels roam suburbia.

‘His rigour and logic take him to a point of mysticism’.

Arrival short story ted chiang