Speculative Visions with Ted Chiang

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Award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang celebrates the reprinting of his short story collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, with a reading and Q&A moderated by Whiting Award-winning fiction writer Alice Sola Kim. He is introduced by his literary agent, Kirby Kim.
Chiang has won four Locus awards, four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. The reprint of Stories of Your Life and Others includes the award-winning “Tower of Babylon,” a new story, “Liking What You See: A Documentary,” and “Story of Your Life,” which is being adapted as a major motion picture as “Arrival,” starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker.
3:04 Ted Chiang reads the opening of a new story
26:30 Q&A with Ted Chiang and Alice Sola Kim
57:30 Q&A with audience
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[@ogungou9]

At last ... the real Ted talks ...

[@yeahman147]

😂

[@drewskywalkerpa]

It’s a shame I don’t really read much modern fiction, but gosh am I glad they made arrival so I found this guy, what a beautiful mind

[@mikecaputo16]

Brilliant, brilliant writer. "Story of Your Life" was amazing.

[@seangdolan]

His writing style is of one who is constantly thinking of everything all at once. His speech style matches his writing style I think. He overthinks everything.

[@Troglodyte2021]

hahah

[@undividedself1]

Exactly. It's a feature, not a bug.

[@lenonperezgoncalves]

I was hooked like a fish right on the first story, "Tower of Babylon". The idea was genius, the plot unfolds beautifully, the story entertains all along. "Story of Your Life", there was already some hype about it, and my expectations were high. And fulfilled. I knew this author was brilliant when I came to "Division by Zero" and saw how amazingly diverse fields he can explore with dexterity (word which is stuck in my head since I read "72 Letters"). But "Understand" was the final proof for me. I feel secure calling it a horror story, it got me hold my breath a few times. Probably the best short story (novella?) I ever read. Just finished this collection and I went straigth to buy "Exhalation".

[@iikimida]

Today I learned that if speaking is hard one can always try writing

[@yeahman147]

Or sign language or telepathy

[@lovingtartan]

Remarkable mind, brilliant writer. I cried while reading _Understand_.

[@ShredST]

For me, Understand was weirdly one of the most terrifying thing I've read.

[@SnortsOfHappiness]

That story is a real trip.

[@MikeDBZ]

I know this is a 5 year old message, but I just spent some time reading Understand during a power outage. This short story moved me. I've taken LSD several times before, and was coming off a very euphoric Marijuana high while reading this short story. i felt I understood the subtleties of the main characters attempts at describing his increasingly recursive state of mind. One of my favourite short stories ever.

[@the_0_man]

his "yoooo" (you knw) sounds really cool!

[@MrDawnRise]

I'm glad I read Ted Chiang stories.

[@rp627]

around 1:05:00 for his writing process

[@oshin4403]

1:07:40 actually

[@richardbenitez7803]

Reading the book of short stories that came out recently: Was surprised that all stories had a spiritual theme woven brilliantly and in ways those uninitiated in religious practice or study would not recognize. The use and management of these insights is something i have never encountered in fiction of this sort. Very pleased. With great admiration for this guy, i am searching internet for any comments from the author or others.

[@enneff]

Richard Benitez I like how he approaches spirituality as a necessity of humanity.

[@kathyxu1513]

I love the rhythm of his speech.

[@rp627]

40:00 around here is a good asian-american expectation question

[@rp627]

LOL, fun interviewer, with patience too. :)

[@ShredST]

The story about the woman with no episodic memory reminds me of article written by an engineer at facebook. This engineer discovered that other people have visual imagination, and that he doesn't. As a consequence of that, he can't relive his past memories. If people asked what he did yesterday, he'd probably make things up because he couldn't recall.

[@MegaDeCapo]

I live in a Scientific community and the way he talks is pretty common.

[@joebosayo]

anyone know why does ted keep saying "yo" ? is it a taiwanese in between word like "uh" or "umm" ?? i've never heard it from my taiwanese friends.

[@MrDanbloom]

Brilliant writer, his movie adaptation ARRIVAL coming 11/11 directed by Canadian director Denis Villeneuve.

[@bob110088]

Just discovered Ted Chiang. I'm totally hooked. I want to read everything he's written. Going on Amazon I was shocked at the price of his books. This is a Crime. Ted Please get your books available to everybody.

[@gigimoss]

What do you mean? The prices are quite ordinary... They are available to everybody who earns a salary.

[@GaiaCarney]

I’ve read every story Ted Chiang has written. I checked them out of my local library 📚 All for free 🤗

[@oberstul1941]

Ok, so I enjoyed the interview, read his book, really like his style, blew my mind with a couple of stories, greatly enjoyed the movie Arrival and so on - therefore I'm clearly not a hater, but why does he say YO so much? I almost imagine him as a rapper when he does that. Is that some form of Chinese language baggage or smt? Cheers!

[@ShredST]

I think he's just saying "you know" really fast.

[@luquillasnano]

Also, i guess he's just shy.

[@scarlettcarson6745]

Hahaha that's due to his personality and preferences I guess. I guarantee you it has nothing to do with Chinese language traditions

[@oberstul1941]

@@scarlettcarson6745 I just thought yo or a similar word is usually said in Chinese; remember that time when Obama took a picture with a Chinese guy who had a hoodie that said NIGGA on it? They explained that the nigga sound is oftenly used in Chinese. Thought it was a similar situation. Cheers!

[@scarlettcarson6745]

@@oberstul1941 Yeah indeed there is a word pronounced Yo in Chinese bt we don't really use it often in this kind of occasion...we use it when we are surprised or want to catch someone's attention. And the word "that" in Chinese sounds really similar to nigga so it has caused lots of misunderstandings...

[@Charlie-te2tt]

What was the name of the story he started reading? Frustrating not to be told anything else about it - would kind of like to know what happened etc

[@bluebrain7009]

Omphalos. It's in Exhalation

[@aminta5307]

yo, yo, yo, yo 🤣

[@foaplus2024]

it's short for "you know", he was just very nervous here.

[@aMakelov]

does anybody know the title of the story he was reading from?

[@ShredST]

I don't think he's released it yet.

[@undividedself1]

Omphalos

[@alexidemendoza7813]

EY! When does this come out!!!???!?!?!

[@whalingwithishmael7751]

Does yo mean something in Chinese?

[@romanmarshall602]

You (pronounced yo) is the verb 'to have'

[@flobo23]

@@romanmarshall602 cool. one learns smth every day^^

[@davidmorris9140]

Undoubtably a genius mind, but he really struggles with some form of Tourette's symptoms. I just wish it was better understood and explainable by him as I feel the audience understanding might help his mind relax a little and form cohesive sentences. I think understanding how his mind works could be of great benefit to science 'and' literature. Certainly not wired like most of us that for sure.

[@asterixe1]

I'm sure he's Aspie or on the autism spectrum from his look, vibe, and reading style. Maybe he should be celebrated as an Aspie writer? We haven't heard much about Aspie writers. Despite his vocal tic, he seems very relaxed, confident, and nice. It's great that he can say "f__k that" and just go ahead with the interview without bringing his tic to the forefront. I think he doesn't talk about his vocal tics in the same way he doesn't write about race in his stories.

[@Wangriceman]

I think you guys are all kind of reaching just slamming a diagnosis on him - a large majority of us don't do public speaking and there are plenty of people who pause and 'umm' when speaking publicly, while speaking normally in relaxed one-to-one conversation. I for one, tend to speak a bit like Ted when I'm speaking in front of a large audience. If you talked to me personally you'd never know that about me. He's not our patient so let's not throw around medical conditions at him, he's a person like you and me

[@---oi3gs]

There also might be another dimension to this. Speaking and writing require different sets of skills, the ability to adapt to different rules and norms inherent to each, even though even the norms don't always follow the rules in these non-logical techniques of human language. Among humans, even the writing or speaking of strictly logical information needs to be conveyed through illogical rules, minutia, and subtleties of human language. Even worse, the idiosyncracies of the respective written and spoken forms of language mostly require mutually exclusive abilities to master. Often times, the differing abilities would also conflict with one another. This is why the greatest writers are never the greatest speakers, and vice versa, although some great writers can also speak well. But some writers, like Ted Chiang, exhibit the other quality of being extremely brilliant in one area but extremely bad in the other. You can chalk this up to the unpredictable consequences of using primitive forms of communication a la written and spoken language, which humanity is only capable of at this stage of evolution. The only place where perfect clarity and elegance of expression exists is in thought, which is unquantifiable, undefined, immeasurable, and thus incomprehensible by the tools of present-day science. All the talk about measuring the electro-chemical signals in the brain to try and understand thought processes are at best mere attempts to measure the imprints manifested by thoughts in this physical domain, but does not approach understanding the nature of thoughts themselves, and much less the ability to wield the power of telepathy at will. Consequently, only a species that is capable of communicating through direct thought transmission, as the norm, without the need to filter thoughts through cumbersome and constricted intermediaries for expression of the thoughts, such as using written and spoken languages, could achieve perfect communication with infinite clarity and instantaneous understanding that in turn leads to unimaginably more advanced types of science and unfathomably more explosive civilizational development.

[@MrFlorical]

What kind of vocal tic does this master of English possess?

[@korras21]

why look for disorder? you might understand better when you slow it down :)

[@ogungou9]

@@korras21 : Why would he slow it down? Disorder tells you things and words speak you more than you speak them. So why? Because he has ears, feeling and thoughts ... Do not be defensive ... *Be inquisitive not suspicious*.

[@alvarochuiso]

It looks like he has an ictus, not being offensive, but he is really divagating a lot thinking and saying: aaaha, youh, aaah.

[@megamurx]

i can´t believe that this is the guy who wrote this brilliant stories, but i think writing is for him a battle like his speaking

[@---oi3gs]

-chuiso chuisez and megamurx Actually, this shouldn't be surprising at all, because writing is a skill on a wholly different dimension from speaking, requiring the ability to navigate different sets of rules and norms of written and spoken language, respectively. As a result, great writing often would come in conflict with expressing the same thoughts through spoken language, regardless of the language, even though it is also possible that there are differences between human spoken languages to this effect.

[@adrianlopezrobinson5176]

Ahhhhmm So ummmmm what?

[@ogungou9]

@@megamurx: Very good writers are often bad speakers. Writers who speak very skillfully about their books are often bad writers.

[@oknotyet9630]

@@ogungou9 I don't think you have evidence to support this very thrown out theory, Speaking and writing are different skills. Clearly Ted has developed writing on a much bigger scale and public speaking is something he needs to improve upon.... Like everything, with practice. He writes books doesn't give speeches.

[@xiaoyangwang7527]

If time was nonlinear...

[@marcosalmeida4683]

Ted Chiang interpretou mau o livro de Jó. Como se acha no direito de crítica lo? O grande escritor e novelista Vitor Hugo elogiou o livro de Jó. Esse Chiang até que fez um filme bom mas seu conteúdo não basta de idéias plageadas da bíblia que por hironia, crítica na explicação de seu conto a "história de sua vida". Posso mostrar que a Bíblia antes deste filme é livro fala de tudo o assunto, inclusive ciência e física. Quem quiser ver me chama aqui.

[@seangdolan]

Ted sounds pretty darn woke to me.

[@yeahman147]

Disappointed to hear he is American

[@asterixe1]

I'm surprised he's represented by an Asian American literary agent, and that this is posted by the Asian American Writers' Workshop. He's the most un-Asian writer of Asian descent in America. None of his stories have anything Chinese or Asian in them. I think he's so popular, and has won so many awards, because his stories are devoid of anything Asian. People like his straight-on sci-fi that has nothing "ethnic lit" about it. He doesn't relate to his Chinese American heritage at all. He wrote a New Yorker article praising the English alphabet and slamming the Chinese system of characters. In Arrival, he approved of the white lady (Amy Adams) reforming the evil, backwards Chinese general. I think he should identify more with his Chinese American side - it does us a disservice to have all his stories whitewashed. Alice Sola Kim doesn't seem very respectful towards Ted Chiang. She's really annoying.

[@ShredST]

"In Arrival, he approved of the white lady (Amy Adams) reforming the evil, backwards Chinese general." I have no idea how you got that interpretation. I thought the depiction of the Chinese general was very respectful.

[@lachua99]

English alphabet? you mean the Roman alphabet ?

[@ShredST]

+lachua99 www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/if-chinese-were-phonetic I guess alphabets in general.

[@lachua99]

I see. What is his argument?

[@ShredST]

My comment had the link to the article. I guess he thinks that Chinese characters are an obstacle to literacy.

[@tavinwong7312]

搞不懂为什么很多写作很牛逼的人讲起话来甚至都不连冠，一副说不清楚的样子

[@rp627]

damnnnn Ted is the whitest person ive ever heard, lol. crazy how Asians do that in less than a generation, including my own Dad. xD

[@ehonda7831]

I liked the woman not Ted