In my tween and teen years, I devoured science fiction like Godzilla devoured Tokyo train cars. I read all the great authors and all the classic titles until I found myself, around age 19, sated. No more science fiction for me. I got it. Space. Aliens. The Future.
A year or so ago, I subscribed to our Library’s NextReads newsletter service and decided to return to science fiction (or speculative fiction, in this case) to see what was new out there. While there were a few good choices, many reminded me of what I’d read so many years ago, just updated with things like the Internet and bioengineering. But there was one author who lit my mind on fire with stories that deal with the limits of our humanity in the face of the new and the unknown: Ted Chiang. He’s written just two books, and each one is a gem.
His first book, Stories of Your Life and Others, collects the ten stories he has written into one book. One follows one of the builders of the Tower of Babylon as he ascends the fabled tower and approaches heaven, only to discover that God has a surprise in store for humanity; another story considers what happens to a brilliant mathematician who discovers a glaring error in the equation that describes reality itself. Another premise is that golems, activated by sacred Hebrew letters, really work and form a working basis for a stable Victorian society, until one of their makers discovers that the golems may be able to reproduce themselves independently of human intention.
His second book, a novelette called The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, won the 2007 Nebula Award, and it’s not hard to see why. Fuwaad, a fabric merchant in ancient Baghdad, meets an alchemist who has invented a gate that can transport a person 20 years into the future (and from there back to the present). After the merchant regales him with stories of how three other people affected their own futures, Fuwaad goes to Cairo to change his past and redeem his soul.
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