Vanishing Acts

by Ellen Datlow (editor), Daniel Abraham (Contributor), M. Shayne Bell (Contributor)

When he was a child, Robert’s favorite toy was a simple one, a clay doll that could do nothing but walk forward. While his parents entertained their guests in the garden outside, discussing Victoria’s ascension to the throne or the Chartist reforms, Robert would follow the doll as it marched down the corridors of the family home, turning it around corners or back where it came from.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Anthologies, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series, The Doll Collection, Mad Hatters and March Hares, The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Edited By, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles.
She's won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre," was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewing "Seventy-Two Letters", by Ted Chiang.
I read this one story as part of his Stories of Your Life, see my review HERE, all of which I enjoyed way more than this. GR has reclassified this story so it is shown as part of a different collection, the rest of which I have not read.

Anyway, Chiang's story...

It’s just a small step from ensuring a species’ survival to improving it. Sounds good. But is it?

Steampunk biotech, with a good dose of ethical dilemmas and resulting life and death feuds and chases, but this short story felt long, certainly far longer than my interest. It’s about what it is that makes us human, the mystical power of names, replication versus sterility, gender and the potential redundancy of men, plus a bit of eugenics and… bleugh. I think it would work better on screen than it did on the page.



Robert Stratton is a Victorian child with a passion for science. At university, he studies nomenclature, which is a sort of kabbalistic alchemy whereby inanimate things can be animated by the power of a very specific name (like golems). As an altruistic idealist, he founds a business to produce a variety of automata, with the aim of making them affordable for all, so easing the life of the working class. Dextrous automata are his target. Of course, some of those people fear automata will worsen their lives, by putting them out of work. And kabbalists don’t approve of the “secularization of a sacred ritual”.



Meanwhile, others are secretly growing mega-foetuses in jars (from sperm, without eggs), investigating the doctrine of preformation, which assumes all living things were created at the moment of creation and therefore contain the necessary essence for all future generations. But they make a shocking discovery about the fate of humanity.

“Men are no different from your automata; slip a bloke a piece of paper with the proper figures on it, and he’ll do your bidding.”


Image sources:
Steampunk gauntlet: http://thedarkpower.com/blog/wp-conte...
Things in jars: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BLNYdnwIOe0/hq...

[Negativni · Rating 5 out of 5]

And Now for Something Completely Different

U prvim rečenicama priče saznajemo o lutki od gline koja se može micati samo naprijed zbog ograničenja njezina imena koje joj i daje tu mogućnost. It gets weird after that.

Mislio sam da jedino China Miéville može smisliti ovako nešto pomaknuto. Volim čitati "čudne" priče kao ove, koje su smještene u neobične i originalne svjetove. Chiang se ovdje stvarno potrudio sa svojom alternativnom teorijom o masovnim izumiranjima i evoluciji* i potpuno drugačijim zakonima termodinamike, koji su logični u tom pomaknutom svijetu, svijetu u kojem sve teži redu, a ne entropiji.

Nema novog života, nego samo postojeći raste ili u ekstremnim uvijetima mutira. Na primjer, spermatozid raste u odraslu jedinku, a jajna stanica je samo "ljuska", te žena samo svojom osobnošću može uticati na razvoj djeteta... da sad ne idem u detalje, komplicirano je! Tu je i doktrina imena: svako ime je odraz božjeg imena, a ime koje najbolje opisuje kako neki predmet odražava božansku snagu omogućava tom predmetu obavljanje određenih radnji... da sad ne idem u detalje, komplicirano je!

Radnjom smještenom u alternativnu viktorijansku Englesku, Chiang piše o problemima koji su prisutni i danas: o neravnopravnosti žena, pravu na umjetnu oplodnju za sve - ne samo za parove u braku - i iskorištavanju siromašnih i djece kao jeftine radne snage; keramički automatoni umjesto robota uzimaju poslove obrtnicima, a sve pomalo podsjeća na sprdnju sa suludim temeljima scientologije.

Ipak, uz toliku pažnju oko detalja tog svemira malo je zapostavio samu priču. Rasplet je nekako na silu vođen prema željenom završetku. Unatoč tome, ocijena je petica jer me je odveo u svijet koji poput neobičnog i upečatljivog sna neću dugo zaboraviti.




* - "The events postulated by Catastrophists—floods, volcanic eruptions, cometary impacts—would entail the release of great energies. Perhaps such energies affect matter so profoundly as to cause the spontaneous generation of an entire race of organisms, nested within a few progenitors. If so, cataclysms are not responsible for mass extinctions, but rather generate new species in their wake."

[Ximing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the Victorian background of the story. The story is about a technique called nomenclature, which functions similar to a magic spell that can animate nonliving and possibly living beings. The idea of an animal can be developed from a lattice of single cells seems a fallacy to me, knowing that cells need to differentiate to form tissues then to organs and to a complete individual. Nevertheless, the story is a fiction and I like the logic coherence in the story line.

Apply nomenclature in living cells to enable cell growth. I call this technique as programmable cell biology. Nomenclature sounds essentially programming to me. Automatons, which are widely used in the story, are controllable robots. The author outlines the association among nomenclature, thermodynamics and life. Thermodynamically, life is a form of low degree of chaos and high degree of order. Likewise, nomenclature creates order in a lexical level. That's why people in the story believe that apply nomenclature allows to facilitate life.

It reminds me how programming allows order to be created, such as virtual apps, websites, etc. No one has ever explained this effect of lexical order in terms of thermodynamics, though it does make sense. Information can be explained in terms of thermodynamics, as we know from Shannon's information theory. Like any language, lexical order creates information. Then the question is, will information help create life?

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit this is my least favorite story in this collection so far, and mainly because I really didn't "get" it. Honestly, it was only 50 pages long, but it took me several days to finish it because I really didn't understand what the story was even getting at. Nomenclature, and naming.
Golem and robots made to come alive by writing a name on paper and placing it in a slot in them. , Ova and sperm, collected from people, which can be made to develop just by "naming" them, by touching them with a needle with a name, but then the generations they can produce are limited, because of the name, or because of the limits of the name? Sorry, but I don't get it.....

[Faiza Sattar · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★☆☆ (3/5)

Ted Chiang’s “Seventy-Two Letters” from his short story collection “Stories of Your Life and Others” represents the steampunk genre in which nineteenth century capitalism is exploited under the light of science fiction. This requires amendments in inherent rules of history which has already played out in reality. Much like in “Tower of Babylon”, this story resides in a universe with new set of rules, using a Victorian background to embolden technology which dictates societal change from the fringes. In this fictional Victorian world, magical theories which might be attributed to being unscientific or simply supernatural are fully functional.

Robert Stratton is a Victorian-era scientist working on the science of robotics and nomenclatures. The concept of “names” works akin to a magic spell, rendering an inanimate work of ceramics or clay (golems) with an essence or soul, so to speak. As a researcher, Robert has discovered such spells to give robotic hands an almost human-like dexterity. He aims to create automatons that can assist the poor with their labour, but this idea is met with resistance. Later he is acquainted with Lord Fieldhurst, an influential nobleman, who recruits Robert on a clandestine project he has been working on which aims to, essentially, create animated human beings just by using the spell. Having forecasted earlier the limit of generations human beings can survive to, new ways of procuring “names” are to be employed if human survival is to be ensured. From thereon, the direction in which human evolution proceeds can be dictated by those who hold the power to these “names.”

The reasons for employing the concept of nomenclatures in this narrative is two-fold. Firstly, it gives rise to the interminable debate of mass-production versus unemployment and labour rights. Secondly, it solicits consideration for the line between Creator and Creation which may be blurred due to rapid technological advancements. Stratton infers that human beings would lose their ability to procreate naturally about the same time machinery would gain capabilities for self-induced reproduction. The primal threat of this science is humanity losing its essence to automatons.

Once again, Ted Chiang synthesis hard science with narrative skill to play on human anxieties which have remained more or less similar in all of history. Since this was my first brush with the steampunk genre, dense usage of some concepts left me in the dark for which I had to do ample research (but not extensive enough to warrant me credible in a discussion). However, the string of debate pitting science in light of religion and vice versa is stimulating. Without delving deeper into religious examples, Ted Chiang sets religion as a back-story upon which fundamentals of science are questioned. Many would disagree with this assessment but the continuous strain of religion in his stories so far show the author’s inclinations towards accepting it as a truth rather than formally negating it all together. Religion and science coalesce to give human form their essence of intrigue and curiosity, and discrediting either leads to nothing but manifestation of ignorance.

[Sachin Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewing 72 letters by Ted Chiang.

" He scrutinized the names themselves, looking for some simple
substitutions that might distinguish two-leggedness from four-
leggedness, or make the body obey simple commands. But the
names looked entirely different; on each scrap of parchment
were inscribed seventy-two tiny Hebrew letters, arranged in
twelve rows of six, and so far as he could tell, the order of the
letters was utterly random. "

The genre of steampunk is rather new to me, but Ted Chiang isn't. One of his finest, this story describes a fairly coherent alternate near-past with its own fundamental laws but still has a striking similarity to our current situation. The story addresses the themes of sexuality, population control, automatons and the impact of scientific discovery on the population. The science of nomenclature, which is the key principle involved, is explored through the eyes of the central character, Robert Stratton, who is a promising nomenclator with humanitarian goals. The philosophical aspects of reproduction in or by automatons are explored, which is somewhat similar to the artificial reproduction research in the current circumstances.

The nature of automatons and the laws of thermodynamics governing them is discussed and its feasibility in that reality justified. The political air and the nature of humans being very similar to present times not only suggests this to be a story of an alternate past but also a conceivable near future. By-and-large this story provides a metaphor to every aspect of our times, but the ones which only science fiction can provide in its light.

[Jacques Bezuidenhout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as part of Stories of Your Life and Others.

Looking at other reviews, people didn't seem to enjoy this one so much.
I actually thought it was quite cool.

It seems to tie in with some ideas I've seen in other books. Like Name of the Wind and Rithmatist.

The ending seems to have been quite abrupt, but this seems to be common in the Chiang shorts.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-known for editing the popular Year’s Best SF & Horror anthologies, Datlow here has created an anthology based around the concept of extinction - one of the areas, in my perception, where science-fiction so easily crosses over into the truly horrific…

Suzy McKee Charnas - Listening to Brahms
An alien race of lizard-people has become obsessed with human popular culture through listening to our radio (&etc) transmissions… Filled with enthusiasm, they send an interstellar mission to greet humanity – but by the time they arrive, humanity has self-destructed, and the only humans left alive are the crew of a space mission. The lizards bring the survivors back to their own planet, where they are feted as celebrities… but this does not save the survivors from depression and insanity… Meanwhile, the lizards’ culture, taken over my their love of all things human, seems to be going the same way as humanity’s has… Told from the perspective of one of the survivors, a none-too-stable individual who clings to the classical music of Earth as his touchstone.

Paul McAuley – The Rift
An ill-conceived expedition made up of a motley mix of adventurers, scientists, and media hounds has set out to explore one of the last wildernesses on Earth – a rift valley/canyon hidden deep in the Amazon. What they might find there could be stranger than they could guess… Well-written, but I didn’t really find the disorganization and incompetence of the expedition believable, from what I’ve read about such (non-fictional) ventures elsewhere…

Bruce McAllister – The Girl Who Loved Animals
A social worker, in between dealing with her own issues (including a troubled, addicted daughter), deals with one of her clients – a none-too-bright young woman in an abusive relationship – who has now caught the attention of religiously-motivated assassins and the press for agreeing to do something some people find terribly offensive – carrying the fetus of an all-but-extinct animal in her womb, to term. The issues here are sensitively dealt with, but I found the side-plot about the narrator’s own daughter and her problems to be somewhat unnecessary.

Ian McDowell – Sunflowers
In a small Midwestern town, there’s a field that has come down through one family’s hands without ever being developed or plowed over. And that one field is a link to plains of the past, where huge flocks of passenger pigeons fly overhead and extinct sunflowers sway in the breeze… as writer and ex-punk Kelly discovers when she comes to visit her younger, goth cousin, who’s been having a hard time of it, in a town infested with jocks and the Klan, especially because she’s gotten very close to one of those jock’s sister… Better than most fiction that tries to deal with contemporary subculture (and usually makes an offensive botch of it…).

Brian Stableford – Tenebrio
This one’s pretty much straightforward supernatural horror. A professor is reluctantly dragged out to inspect a remote site by his former student, an ecological protester. Although the site (an uninspiring stand of trees) does not seem to have anything unusual going for it – except an strangely high number of common beetles – when one of the protesters dies in a freak accident, things get weirder than expected…

William Shunn – Dance of the Yellow Breasted Luddites
Working with endangered species as a kind of ‘community service’ punishment in an interstellar civilization, debtor Hannah Specter encounters a bit of trouble when the birdlike creatures her team is supposed to introduce into a wildlife preserve seem to have an unreasonable hatred of the automated prospecting machines that also occupy the preserve. Teamwork and a bit of thinking outside the box may save the day…

David J. Schow - Blessed Event
Cop thriller meets “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as two policemen investigate a man who killed his pregnant girlfriend, believing that the fetus was an alien monster…

Karen Joy Fowler – Faded Roses
A melancholy story (and an all-too-believable one) set in a future ‘zoo’ that points out that not only do we not really appreciate what we have – neither will we realize what we’ve lost when it’s gone.

Mark W. Tiedemann – Links
Historical piece, set in the time of Darwin. A friend of the naturalist tries to buy an unusual creature for scientific examination.

Daniel Abraham – Chimera 8
In a future time, scientists try to reconstruct ruined ecosystems by introducing creatures created through gene splicing and hybridization. But with unauthorized experimentation, more may have been unleashed on the world than was intended.

Michael Cadnum – Bite the Hand
A short and weird little piece about an eccentric collector who buys what appears to be a mummified specimen of a mythological centaur. But is it really dead?

M. Shayne Bell – The Thing About Benny
After the destruction of the rainforests, the hunt is on to find any last remnants of plants that may have somehow survived – preserved among common houseplants in private gardens or offices. Benny is a slightly eccentric young man who is obsessed with ABBA (yes, the Swedish pop group) and has an almost preternatural ability to find these rare specimens. Oddly charming.

A.R. Morlan – Fast Glaciers
A heretofore undiscovered tribe who communicate through whistling are found, and a group of anthropologists are sent to study them. However, a student researcher believes that contact with the team is hopelessly destroying the tribe’s culture; even triggering physical changes to their morphology. However, when she takes matters into her own hands, in a well-meaning gambit, the results may be worse than anything she could have imagined.

Avram Davidson – Now Let us Sleep
This is the oldest story in this volume, and the only one I’d read before. It still packs a punch… probably because, if instead of taking place on a planet that just happens to be on an interstellar route, it were set on, say, some islands that just happened to be a stopping point between Europe and Australia in the days of sailing ships, you could easily convince me that it was factual. In this portrayal of the human capacity for not only callous and wanton destruction, but for planned and ‘justified’ cruelty and genocide – this is one of the bleakest statements about human nature that one could find in literature. It’s an excellent story.

Ted Chiang – Seventy-Two Letters
Some other reviews of this volume have said that it would be worth buying for this story alone. I would have to agree. As far as I can tell, Ted Chiang was only published (so far) eight stories. (This was his third) However, he has won 3 Nebula Awards, the Hugo, the Sidewise award for Alternate History (for this story), the John W. Campbell Award , the Asimov's Reader's Choice Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a Locus Poll award, and has been nominated for both the Mythopoeic award and the World Fantasy award…. Wow. This guy does not let a story out of his hands until it is perfect, apparently.
At least, this story is pretty close!
It posits an England where the golems of Jewish mythology are not merely the province of rabbis, and not ‘magic.’ Rather, they follow natural laws, and research and development is ongoing in the technological field of producing golems. However, when a young researcher’s advances in improving the dexterity of golems is seen as a threat to human workers, he’s shunned by the ‘Union’ – but picked up by a wealthy patron who has discovered a more serious threat to the future of humanity – a threat which could only possibly be solved by the most brilliant nomenclators of the day…
The setting is vivid, the issues are current, the ideas are brilliant – I can’t praise this story too much!

Joe Haldeman – Endangered Species
A short poem about war and religion.

[Tanaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a really enjoyable read. The notion of names and automata was a bit of a learning curve; the mythology of the book required that I read a bit in before I truly understood the story, but once I did I really enjoyed it. The story isn't at all what I expected it to be. It ended too soon.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short story in Stories of your life and others

This story occurs in a world where certain natural laws are based on how people used to think the world worked during biblical times, specifically the Jewish version. There are multiple concepts that are focused on with the two main ones being nomenclature and human reproduction. The former ties in with the idea of golems while the latter is somehow even more fanciful with notions of finite species reproduction and fetal development. All these aspects are explored and the consequences for each subsequent discovery move the story forward in equally interesting directions.

There's too much to actually write about, but I found it all very well written and interesting. While the content wasn't very relatable, I still found it thought-provoking in terms of more relatable or general terms. A lot of the "science" is told through dialogue, which does get a bit heavy at times, but I managed to follow along well enough. This was probably my favourite short story so far in the collection.

[Ravindu Gamage · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rules are different in this world. This is a world where nomenclature is used to animate inanimate things, and where male sperm contributes to the shape of the foetus and the female ovum contributes to the life and the traits of the foetus. In this universe, at the creation of a species, they were given the ability to reproduce only for a finite number of generations. When this number is reached the males become sterile eventually resulting in the extinction of the species. A group of scientists are trying to recreate reproduction, by using the nomenclatural methods used in animating automatons, to fertilize human ova and to counteract the inevitable extinction of the species. The story follows through the journey of a nomenclator who found a nomenclature which could induce dexterity in automatons and as a result of his discovery, was a part of this group searching for a suitable lexicon to fertilize human ova.

It was a very interesting read.

[Christian West · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Victorian-era England, Robert Stratton is a man with a vision, to alter automata (machine-like golems) so that they can perform tasks to help the lower classes. Along the way he meets resistance from the guild of statue makers and becomes a member of a secret society set up to stop the eventual demise of the human race.

This book was interesting because it deals with the way a golem is created (fashioned from clay and given a mystical name on a piece of paper). The seventy-two letters title refers to the number of letters written on the paper to automate the golem.

It philosophically rambled on a bit, but was an interesting mix of alternative history and mysticism used as technology.

[Phoenixfalls · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed the premise for this collection, but unfortunately the stories were uniformly bland. A few had clever ideas, a couple were moderately thought-provoking, but the only one with any of the emotional punch I associate with the theme of species death was one of the reprints, Avram Davidson's "Now Let Us Sleep." None of the stories were poorly written, but I had half forgotten them the very next day.

[Rakesh M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somebody please explain it to me.
one of the least enjoyable story from Ted.

[Yuan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing my review for "Seventy-Two Letters", which Goodreads put the ISBN as same as this.

1. This story wrapped up kinda fast. There is a lot of topics it doesnt develop. E.g. How about just replacing the race with automatons? They are so much easier to create.
2. What are the seventy-two letters?

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great stories, some average. Only one I didn't care for.

[Srikkanth G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I somehow finished what is one of the most dragging, boring but intellectually simulating short story from the book Story of Life and others by Ted Chiang.

What I struggled the most was the termonologies used, like 'name', 'automata', 'nomenclature' etc. It was only half way through the story line, when I grabbed a bit of what was happening in the story, I did my research about this topic. My research helped me in clearing my confusion, it didn't help me in terms of reducing the boredom I felt while reading the story.

To help people, who like me struggled with terminologies, let me give you a guide to read the story.

Replace 'name' with the term 'magic' or 'spell' or 'instructions'. When you apply the 'magic' or 'spell' an inanimate object with get animated. It also can help change the behaviour of the object to which the 'spell' is applied.

'Automata' is a robot and in this story it has excellent ability to work with it's hand (or I guess tin this story it's only a robotic hand instead of a whole robot). Anyways, the Automata has excellent dexterity. Think about modern machine than can perform complicated surgery. Such an invention can cause alarm in society because of it's ability to replace humans.

Today we speak about AI replacing humans and two decades back we spoke about computers replacing humans. In this story, the sculptors are worried that the Robot may replace them to which Mr Robert states that the Robot doesn't have the ability to apply design, think and imagine. The sculptors are not convinced and feel threatened by Robert's invention.

In the mean time, a group of scientists or biologists or some 'ists' discover, through complicated mechanism that humans are going to be extinct in 4 generations time. This mean we have life of another 200 yrs tops. Alarmed at this danger, scientists discover a method to grow humans without sexual intercourse or the need for a fertile man. The challenge is that they don't have the mechanism to give life to the human. It's just a body without any intellect.

These scientists rope in Robert Stratton, whose ability to generate 'magic spell' can animate the human body. In other words, give the human body an intellect. Of course there are challenges to this method, but that's the best solution they have.

Robert Stratton agrees to join the experiement with a noble intention that, as per their promise, the funding received can help him develop more robot's to help low skill workers with their sculpting work. Think of how computers were invented to help people simplify their paper work (we all know how that ended up), Robert has the same intention. He believes that with his Robot, workers can focus on design, creativity and other stuff while manual labour can be done by the robots. While the story didn't come to that, it's what motivates Robert to join the mission.

What happens next revolves around the use of these magically developed Humans and their ability to produce and who will have the power to produce and so forth.

This debate revolves around current debate around cloning attempts, immortality drugs creation sort of stuff. Who control creation? As humans, are we equipped to do what is done by God's? Should we take over from the God and manage the birth and death of humans apart from natural creational method (I mean sex).

Religion is challenged by science and vice versa and the question remain unanswered.

The story line is so dragging that this story was for me a major roadblock from completing the book. I was moving from one story to another till I hit this wall. I had to read it slowly and periodically to get what the hell the author was communicating.

While the content is intellectually stimulating, the way it's written is, as I have already mentioned, boring.

Enjoy your read.

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever ideas and richly developed. I could see this world having several full-length novels in it. Parts did drag but still a good story.

[Matthew Gilpin · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the entire Stories of Your Life collection, this story was the most frustrating. Like every other story, it built an engaging world of fantasy and science, with a story centred around an intellectual protagonist making an earth-shattering breakthrough. Like every other story, it is filled with allegories for problems of the modern world (in fact, many of these work better than in other stories). However, the world that has been built is so cohesive, and the characters so compelling, and the narrative so full of momentum that ending it like every other story in this book (namely with a realisation that changes a characters way of thinking about the entire world), just doesn't pay off.

This is, in part, due to how detached his realisation is from the real world, but it's biggest problem is how unresolved this leaves the story. For every other story, the realisation was the end of the journey, for Stratton, if feels like the start. These pages feel like the opening of a novella, not an entire short story in it's own right.

The last two pages are spent messily wrapping up the concept, with no conclusion to any of the various threads of narrative and character that kept me interested through it's short run time. That being said, these concepts were fascinating, and the characters engaging. It was definitely worth the read, even if the story was cut down in it's prime.

[Mónica Espinoza Cangahuala · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this short story. I highly recommend it if you are interested in science and know a bit about Jewish folklore.

The story takes place in a alternate world where science doesn't follow from observing natural phenomena but rather is based on mysticism. In that world ''science' is basically a form of secular mysticism. It may sound like an oxymoron but the author plays around with that idea very well by contrasting it to our world's social-economical dillemas. Overpopulation, elitism, scientific research, ethics, and politics all viewed from this alternate universe. I just wish the end wasn't open.

[Tina Hendron Pagetranquility · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite short story collection of all time. It was picked up on a whim at a bargain bookstore and turned out to be a hidden treasure. The stories are deeply moving, and in alot of ways I would say life changing. They provoke serious thought and reflection on the fragile balance of nature and what can be lost forever out of carelessness and ignorance. Just about every single story is equally exceptional and to find that in an anthology is not impossible but much more uncommon. I hope this book finds it's way into the hands of a great number of people throughout the future.

[Saul Escalona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seventy Two Letters

3.0 stars
Read as part of Chiang's " Stories of Your Life and Others".
Like in The Story of Your Life, this tale is also based on a high usage of technical terms. Not so easy to grasp.
This story deals with the way a golem is created, fashioned from clay and given a mystical name on a piece of paper with seventy-two letters.
It was an interesting mix of fiction history and mysticism used as technology.

[Joseph Knecht · Rating 2 out of 5]

So far this is the least favorite of Ted's short stories. It talks about the creation of automata in the times when the human ability to reproduce is numbered to only five generations.

-It seemed unfair that automata were so much easier to reproduce than humans. It was as if the problem of reproducing automata need be solved only once, while that of reproducing humans was a Sisyphean task, with every additional generation increasing the complexity of the name required.

[David Meditationseed · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise is very interesting: creation, science and Kabbalah mingle in a science fiction about divinity, species preservation and social domain. This tale is a kind of sociological and mystical Frankstein. However the practical result has become difficult and very confusing to read. In my opinion, this tale rewritten and edited could get an incredible result.

[Sergei Tsimbalist · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this particular blend of technology and magic/mysticism from Ted Chiang. I know, of course, that his main profession is a technical writer, yet still reading some passages of his, like in this case the one describing the process of creating a glass needle embedded with a name, I find myself asking: how do you come up with that exactly?

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this in order to teach it. The characters and narrative are MUCH weaker than I remember (which, I worry, might be a pattern if I was to go back to Ted Chiang's collection), but the ideas in this story are incredible.

[DaughterDaDa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extinction is the theme of this collection of science fiction short stories. Some are rather grim, as might be expected, while others are touching.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent story. Chiang really does something neat here by giving the sci-fi treatment to some Jewish folklore, much like Wildbow has down to Frankenstein with Twig.

[Luis Pérez · Rating 4 out of 5]

El mundo que plantea es genial, pero la resolución deja mucho que desear.

[Sem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but it deserved a much longer treatment, a more detailed teasing out of the ideas, and better world-building.