scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/1y5x3k.md

Everything By Ted Chiang

• Author: u/embrodski *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/1y5x3k/everything_by_ted_chiang/

• Score: 16

• Created: 2014-02-17T18:30:15

Post:

I know two other works by Ted Chiang have already been posted, but seriously, almost everything he writes is amazing. Rationalist, and extremely well written. He's my favorite short story writer, and it's a damned shame he's unwilling to write novels. :(

If you're looking for just one great story, my second-favorite is "Liking What You See: A Documentary". GREAT exploration of beauty bias and the Halo Effect, and about choosing whether or not to suppress those. Unfortunately not available online though. (my favorite is "Hell is the Absence of God", but I don't think that counts as rationalist fiction)

Anyway, several of his pieces are up for free online, and a large collection of his work can be found in Stories of Your Life and Others

Comments:

u/cinnamontoastPUNCH [+6] (28 minutes later)

I agree! Chiang's a great writer and lots of his stuff could be called rational fic. I think 'Hell is the Absence of God' totally counts, and so do the rest of the biblical stories. The central idea of all of those is to try and build self-consistent rules out of all of the craziest shit in the bible. The stories about golems and the tower of babel both feature rational protagonists who are able to gain a deeper understanding of their world through observation, even though their world runs on totally different laws than ours. It's kinda the Old Testament and the Methods of Rationality.

u/embrodski [+4] (21 hours later)

I dunno. I took a night to think about this, but I still don't think Hell is rationalist fiction. It's really good, and it's thoughtful, but it doesn't fit the criteria. Honestly, there is very little fiction out there that counts as rationalist, which is probably why this subreddit exists. Just the fact that half (or so) of Chiang's stuff counts as rationalist is pretty amazing, IMHO. Even getting that stuff published is a challenge.

u/cinnamontoastPUNCH [+1] (a day later)

You may be right; it's been a while since I read that one. I stand by my endorsement of the other biblical stories though.

u/KJ6BWB [+1] (13 hours later)

I'd never heard of this guy, so I looked up this Hell is the Absence of God story and I don't think it's rational fiction. A universe has been set up where Hell and Heaven are real, actualy biblical "fear not (even though you presumably have good reason to fear upon seeing me)" angelic visitations occur, and a man's wife is killed by an angelic visitation, and then goes to Heaven on account of her devotion. This man needs to love God to get into Heaven, otherwise he'll go to Hell. So he comes up with this plan to either see the light of heaven during an angelic visitation and be changed into someone who loves God, or die trying and go to Hell. He ends up dying, wishes he hadn't chosen to do that, sees the light, becomes utterly devoted to God, dies, and goes to Hell. Another character uses the first guy as evidence that God doesn't care, that whether you go to Hello or Heaven is random, and that you should love God anyway. Where are the smart people making smart choices? Where are the "rules of life or the universe that are perhaps completely undefined initially, perhaps even completely misunderstood or backwards from what one thought, but ultimately knowable" when we learn that the whole point in the story's universe is that there aren't really any rules?

Look over on the right of this page, at the general characteristics of rational fiction.

1. The main character is stupid. He takes an admittedly risky shot chance of "convert or die" because he's caught in the throes of grief instead of waiting to perhaps let time abate his woes, as clearly happens to virtually everyone who has ever lost someone? The story even spells out that this isn't the smart choice.
2. The main character did not solve a problem through the intelligent application of anything, see #1.
3. The story is a puzzle, yes, but only because it turns out that there aren't really rules and everything is random.
4. Well, factions are defined and there is some conflict because of their beliefs and values, not just "good" or "evil", but still, it's really poor writing.
5. The rules of the fictional universe are not sane and consistent, there are no rules, God is random.

And this author is a terrible author to boot, his story isn't really a story so much as an idea or summation of a story that could have been written.

u/None [+3] (a day later)

Thats not actually evidence that Ted Chiang is a bad author. Thats what he does. He does all that high concept shit. How would it really be better if it was longer?

u/KJ6BWB [+0] (a day later)

To create another rough analogy, you could take this rough idea and write a screenplay based on it, and then use that screenplay to create a movie, but you can't call the original rough idea a screenplay. You want a better story, look at the one partially based off that story: http://thoughtcrime.crummy.com/2009/Error.html which is actually rationalist fiction. This Hell is the Absence of God story is just nonsensical. When I first started reading it I thought it was crazy Christian propaganda, and once I hit the end I realized it was crazy anti-Christian propaganda, but being an idea (or propaganda) doesn't somehow elevate it to being an actual story. I'm not saying it needs to be longer, but this "story" is just a rough idea and absolutely doesn't fit in this forum.

u/None [+2] (2 days later)

No, you don't get it, man. Okay, you know how in horror movies, they try to avoid showing you the monster, because whatevers in your head is always scarier? Its like that, but with wonder instead of fear. It doesn't have to all be about rationality to be a good story, in fact, a large part of the rules that stories follow aren't real world logic, its story logic, and following story logic instead of real world logic doesn't neccessarily make something a bad story, it just makes it not a rational one.

u/CalebJohnsn [+7] Theoretical Manatician (6 hours later)

Here is a link to a page featuring The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling posted by our own occasional-redditor and six others, such as Exhalation, also posted by occassional-redditor, Hell is the Absence of God as mentioned by cinnamontoastPUNCH in this same thread as well as yet unmentioned works, such as the Merchant and the Alchemist, The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Understand, and What's Expected of Us.

While online copies of [Tower of Babylon](/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babylon_(story), Story of Your Life, The Evolution of Human Science, and Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny could not be found at this time of the six remaining works which have yet to be properly make available on r/rational, Seventy-Two Letters puts us at having almost exactly two-thirds of the current collected works of Mr. Chiang's so far memorable works, with our particularly noteworthy embrodski's contribution of a link to Stories of Your Life and Others rounding out the works as a whole.

So, with all that said, go forth and sate your curiosity about Chiang's works. You know you want to.

Anyways, that's all I have to contribute to this discussion. Hope you find something of interest.

Laters.

Note: Tower of Babylon, Story of Your Life , and The Evolution of Human Science have recently been located by TastyYogurt.

u/None [+3] (19 hours later)

Here's an almost complete collection featuring Tower of Babylon, Story of Your Life, The Evolution oh Human Science and other stories plus some not-very-enlightening author commentary. I think the only missing stories are Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny (which is a short one you might as well skip) and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, which has already been posted here.

If you like listening, here are some Chiang's stories in audio format. Quality of reading varies.

u/Oraanu [+1] (10 hours later)

Your first link redirects to reddit's "submit a link" form, not the actual page you're trying to link to.

u/KJ6BWB [+1] (a day later)

The story, The Truth of Fact, is a good story and a good example of rationalist fiction.

u/Newfur [+3] Crazy like a fox. Literally. (9 days later)

For my part, I absolutely adore "Tower of Babylon" as far as rationalist fiction goes. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is also amazing and goes into a sort of time travel, and "The Evolution of Human Science" is short but powerful, and might be of particular interest to the r/rational crowd.

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