Ted Chiang

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. Stories of your life . . . and others.

an alternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereThe universe began as an enormous breath being held.From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others — the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival — comes a ground-breaking new collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories. These are tales that tackle some of humanity's oldest questions along with new quandaries only Ted Chiang could imagine.In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation", an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic — revelatory.Contents:- The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate (2007)- Exhalation (2008)- What's Expected of Us (2005)- The Lifecycle of Software Objects (2010)- Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny (2011)- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling (2013)- The Great Silence (2015)- Omphalos (2018)- Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom (2018)

What's the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, "Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried."The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. In this new novella, at over 30,000 words, his longest work to date, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It's a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it's an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.

In medieval Baghdad, a penniless man is brought before the most powerful man in the world, the caliph himself, to tell his story. It begins with a walk in the bazaar, but soon grows into a tale unlike any other told in the caliph's empire. It's a story that includes not just buried treasure and a band of thieves, but also men haunted by their past and others trapped by their future; it includes not just a beloved wife and a veiled seductress, but also long journeys taken by caravan and even longer ones taken with a single step. Above all, it's a story about recognizing the will of Allah and accepting it, no matter what form it takes.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection Together with a crew of other miners and cart-pullers, Hillalum is recruited to climb the Tower of Babylon and unearth what lies beyond the vault of heaven. During his journey, Hillalum discovers entire civilizations of tower-dwellers on the tower—there are those who live inside the mists of clouds, those who raise their vegetables above the sun, and those who have spent their lives under the oppressive weight of an endless, white stratum at the top of the universe. “Tower of Babylon” is a rare gem—a winner of the prestigious Nebula award, the first story Ted Chiang ever published, and the brilliant opening piece to Chiang’s much-lauded first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, which is soon to be a major motion picture starring Amy Adams. An eBook short.

In a world much like our own, the existence of Heaven and Hell are objectively proven. Indeed, the souls in Hell can be seen, and angels occasionally come to Earth, typically causing a mixture of miraculous events and capricious disasters.

Leon is a former coma victim, who has gone experimental medical treatment to repair the massive trauma his brain received after he was trapped under ice for more than an hour. He’s regained consciousness, found he has all of his faculties back and a whole lot more. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1991.Approx. 2 Hours

"Ted Chiang’s very short story, 'The Great Silence' adds another set of questions to the Fermi Paradox speculations. Why, he asks, are we so interested in finding intelligence in the stars and so deaf to the many species who manifest it here on earth? And also: why have we demanded that, as proof of intelligence, non-human animals communicate to us in human language, and then dismissed those creatures that actually do so?" - Karen Joy Fowler

What would it mean to know the future? At one level we already know the most important aspect of the future, in that we know that we are mortal; moreover, we know that as long as we're alive, we will experience both happiness and heartbreak. This awareness of what lies ahead of us is an essential aspect of being human. But how much more would we want to know?Is there a limit to the amount of detail we could apprehend before it becomes more than we can bear? In this celebrated novella, the basis for the Oscar-nominated motion picture Arrival, a woman finds herself confronting these questions in a way she never could have expected.

The story is about a future technology called “prisms.” “In colloquial terms, the prism created two newly divergent timelines … and it allowed communication between the two.” The ability to talk to one’s doppelgänger in an alternate timeline has a massive and complex impact on society and individuals, including an epidemic of existential crises: “Many worried that their choices were rendered meaningless because every action they took was counterbalanced by a branch in which they had made the opposite choice.”

A short science fiction story as a part of the collection 'Exhalation' by Ted Chiang.

In the near future, a journalist observes how the world, his daughter, and he himself are affected by "Remem", a form of lifelogging whose advanced search algorithms effectively grant its users eidetic memory of everything that ever happened to them, and the ability to perfectly and objectively share those memories. In a parallel narrative strand, a Tiv man is one of the first of his people to learn to read and write and discovers that this may not be compatible with oral tradition.

Тед Чан - уникальное явление в современной фантастике, та самая звезда НФ, которую обожают в равной степени и читатели и критики. Он собрал самые престижные премии, включая ЧЕТЫРЕ "Небьюлы", ПЯТЬ "Хьюго" и ЧЕТЫРЕ "Локуса", - причем число созданных им произведений не превышает количества заслуженных им призов.В эту книгу вошло практически все, написанное Чаном, - однако помимо произведений, уже признанных классикой жанра, в составе ее есть и никогда ранее не публиковавшаяся на русском языке повесть "Жизненный цикл программных объектов", удостоенная сразу трех литературных наград!..Содержание:Жизненный цикл программных объектов (повесть, перевод М. Вершовского)Купец и волшебные врата (рассказ, перевод В. Гришечкина)Вавилонская башня (рассказ, перевод А. Комаринец)Понимай (рассказ, перевод М. Левина)Деление на ноль (рассказ, перевод А. Комаринец) История твоей жизни (повесть, перевод Л. Щёкотовой)72 буквы (повесть, перевод А. Новикова)Эволюция человеческой науки (микрорассказ, перевод А. Комаринец)Ад — это отсутствие Бога (рассказ, перевод Л. Щёкотовой)Тебе нравится, что ты видишь? (повесть, перевод А. Комаринец)Примечания к рассказам (перевод М. Левина)

Dr. Dorothea Morrell is an archaeologist working on a dig in Arisona. She is scheduled to give a public lecture in the Chicagou area on how tree rings and other artifacts date the creation, which goes well, but afterward she finds evidence of the illegal sale of museum relics.

The story concentrates on different emotional relationships that humans develop with machines. Reginald Dacey argues that a mechanical nanny is much better able to raise a child than a human one. At first, society accepts the idea and many families buy automatic nannies, but when one malfunctions and kills a child, people lose interest. Dacey attempts to prove the machine is still safe by using the machine to raise his own child, but no one is willing to be the child's mother. When his son Lionel finally adopts an infant and raises it exclusively using the automatic nanny, the result is a child who is only capable of interacting with machines and not humans.

Takiej książki Teda Chianga jeszcze nie było. To światowa prapremiera.Drugie wydanie zbioru opowiadań Teda Chianga, najwybitniejszego autora opowiadań w amerykańskiej SF ostatnich lat.Praktycznie każde jego opowiadanie – a publikuje ich niewiele, czasem tylko jedno rocznie – jest wydarzeniem literackim. Jego teksty zdobywają też liczne nagrody.Zbiór „Siedemdziesiąt dwie litery” zawiera wszystkie opowiadania Chianga, jakie opublikował od początku swojej kariery. Zbiór oparto na wydaniu „Historii twojego życia”, znakomicie przyjętej w Polsce książki, zawiera jednak dwa dodatkowe opowiadania (oba nagrodzone) – a jedno z nich nigdy nie zostało w Polsce opublikowane.Zawartość zbioru: * „Wieża Babilonu” * „Zrozum” * „Dzielenie przez zero” * „Historia twojego życia” * „72 litery” * „Ewolucja ludzkiej nauki” * „Piekło to nieobecność Boga” * „Co ma cieszyć oczy” * „Co z nami będzie” * „Kupiec i wrota alchemika” * „Wydech”

Russian Book. Vladimi. 380 pages. Year 2010.

This is the first installment in a new series, “Op-Eds From the Future,” in which science fiction authors, futurists, philosophers and scientists write op-eds that they imagine we might read 10, 20 or even 100 years in the future. The challenges they predict are imaginary — for now — but their arguments illuminate the urgent questions of today and prepare us for tomorrow. The opinion piece below is a work of fiction.

《软件体的生命周期》结集特德·姜最新的六篇作品：《软件体的生命周期》、《赏心悦目》、《商人和炼金术士之门》、《呼吸——宇宙的毁灭》、《前路迢迢》及《达西的新型自动机器保姆》——安娜在蓝色伽马培育数码体，供喜爱之人购买当宠物。随着数码体市场的发展、壮大、冷淡和萧条，数码体们的命运也随之发生变迁。戴上“审美干扰镜”，人们就无法分辨一个人相貌的美丑。这一新技术的诞生是否可以彻底根除相貌歧视，让我们听听那些当事人是怎么说的。穿越时空之门回到过去，能够对既定的事实带来改变吗？每天早上醒来之后，先把用完的肺换掉。来自地下的空气流源源不断，只可惜，我们耐以生存的似乎并不是空气。当你的每一个决定都被他人精确预料，你是欣然接受，还是无助挣扎？把孩子给保姆照料让人不放心，可如果这个保姆是个严格执行命令、百分百听指挥的机器人呢？

This Ted Chiang Bestselling 2 Books Set 1. Exhalation 9781101972083 2. Stories of Your Life and Others 9781101972120

Fiction, Supplement, A creation of the NYT Magazine Labs special on-off projects for the print edion. 12 pages

Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched Ted Chiang 2 Books Collection Set (Stories of Your Life and Others, Exhalation): Stories of Your Life and With Stories of Your Life and Others, his masterful first collection, multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories, all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose.From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality, Chiang’s rigorously imagined fantasias. In ‘The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate’, a portal through time forces a fabric-seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past errors and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary ‘Exhalation’, an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. In ‘Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom’, the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will. In Exhalation, Ted Chiang addresses the most fundamental of issues – What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? – alongside others that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful.9781035038596/9781529014495