Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang (Template:Lang-zh; pinyin: Jiāng Fēngnán; born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards.<ref>Chiang's awards, Internet Speculative Fiction Database.</ref> He has published the short story collections Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) and Exhalation: Stories (2019). His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame from 2020 to 2021.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker, where he writes on topics related to computing such as artificial intelligence.

Early life and education

Ted Chiang was born in 1967 to a Taiwanese American family in Port Jefferson, New York.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}; Template:Transliteration).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Translated from The Imminent Danger of A.I. Is One We’re Not Talking About.</ref> Both of his parents are Taiwanese waishengren who were born in mainland China and migrated to Taiwan with their families during the retreat of the government of the Republic of China to Taiwan before immigrating to the United States.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite magazine</ref> His father, Fu-pen Chiang, is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> His mother (Template:Abbr 2019) was a librarian.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref> Chiang also has a sister who is a physician.<ref name=":3" />

Chiang grew up in Long Island and, at age 15, began submitting science fiction stories to magazines.<ref name=":4">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He later recalled, "When I was a kid, my intention was to become a physicist. That was a perfectly respectable career choice for the son of an engineer. I figured I would be a fiction writer on the side, and that, I think, is perfectly acceptable to Asian parents".<ref name=":3" /> In 1989, he graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree after choosing to study computer science over physics.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> As an undergraduate, Chiang continued to write sci-fi stories, though they were ultimately unpublished.<ref name=":4" />

Career

After attending and graduating from the Clarion Workshop in 1989 Chiang sold his first story, "The Tower of Babylon", to Omni magazine,<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and was awarded a Nebula Award for it in 1990.<ref name=":2" /> His later stories have won numerous other awards, making him one of the most-honored writers in contemporary science fiction. Chiang's first short story collection, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) was published in 2002 by Tor Books and comprises his first eight stories. The collection was reprinted in 2016 as Arrival to coincide with the adaptation of "Story of Your Life" as the film Arrival.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Template:As of, Chiang was working as a technical writer in the software industry and resided in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop at UC San Diego in 2012 and 2016.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chiang's second short story collection, Exhalation: Stories was published in May 2019 by Alfred A. Knopf.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Chiang has published eighteen short stories, novelettes, and novellas Template:As of In 2022, Chiang became a Miller Scholar in the Santa Fe Institute.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2023, Chiang was named one of [[Time (magazine)|TimeTemplate:'s]] 100 most influential people in AI.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Writing style and influences

Chiang has said Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke inspired him when he was young,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> while the works of Gene Wolfe, John Crowley and Edward Bryant were his creative influences in college.<ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chiang has said that one of the reasons science fiction writing interests him is that it allows him to make philosophical questions "storyable".<ref name=":1" /> He enjoys reading explanatory story notes by authors, and includes them in his own collections. He considers these not the "precise response to 'How did you get the idea?,' but it's a way to answer the reader if they knew what the best question to ask [about the story] was".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Reception

Critic John Clute has written that Chiang's work has a "tight-hewn and lucid style... [which] has a magnetic effect on the reader".<ref>Chiang, SF Encyclopedia.</ref> Critic and poet Joyce Carol Oates wrote that Chiang explores "conventional tropes of science fiction in highly unconventional ways" in "teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling" fashion, comparing him favorably to Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree Jr. and Jorge Luis Borges.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Writer Peter Watts has praised Chiang's work, writing: "We share a secret prayer, we writers of short SF. We utter it whenever one of our stories is about to appear in public, and it goes like this: Please, Lord. Please, if it be Thy will, don’t let Ted Chiang publish a story this year."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Former US president Barack Obama included Chiang's short story collection Exhalation in his 2019 reading list, praising it as the "best kind of science fiction".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chiang has commented on "metacognition, or thinking about one’s own thinking" being something most humans, but neither animals nor current AI, are capable of, and that capitalism erodes the capacity for this insight, especially for tech company executives.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Awards

Ted Chiang has won or been nominated for several awards for several of his works.

Chiang turned down a Hugo nomination for his short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary" in 2003, on the grounds that the story was rushed due to editorial pressure and did not turn out as he had really wanted.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Chiang was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2024, Chiang won the PEN/Malamud Award for "excellence in the art of the short story"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the American Humanist Association's Inquiry and Innovation Award.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Work	Year & Award	Category	Result	Ref.
Tower of Babylon	1991 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	1991 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	1991 Nebula Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	1991 SF Chronicle Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	1992 Astounding Award for Best New Writer		Template:Won
	1998 Premio Ignotus	Foreign Story	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Division by Zero	1992 Locus Award	Short Story	Template:Nominated
Understand	1991 Asimov's Readers' Poll	Novelette	Template:Won	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	1992 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	1992 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	1994 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's Award	Foreign Short Story	Template:Won
Story of Your Life	1998 Otherwise Award		Honor
	1998 HOMer Award	Novella	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	1999 Locus Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	1999 Hugo Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	1999 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:Won
	2000 Nebula Award	Novella	Template:Won
	2001 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's Award	Foreign Short Story	Template:Won
	2002 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Won
Seventy-Two Letters	2000 Sidewise Award for Alternate History	Short Form	Template:Won
	2001 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2001 World Fantasy Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2001 Hugo Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2001 Locus Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2002 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's Award	Foreign Short Story	Template:Won
Catching Crumbs from the Table (aka: The Evolution of Human Science)	2001 Locus Award	Short Story	Template:Nominated
Hell Is the Absence of God	2002 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	2002 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	2002 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2003 Nebula Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	2004 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Won
	2005 Premio Ignotus	Foreign Story	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2013 Kurd Laßwitz Award	Foreign Work (Translated as Die Hölle ist die Abwesenheit Gottes)	Template:Won
Liking What You See: A Documentary	2002 Otherwise Award		Honor
	2003 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2003 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate	2007 BSFA Award	Short Fiction	Template:Nominated
	2008 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	2008 Nebula Award	Novelette	Template:Won
	2008 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2008 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	2009 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Won
Stories of Your Life and Others	2003 Locus Award	Collection	Template:Won
	2007 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire	Foreign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2017 Washington State Book Award	Fiction	Template:Nominated
Exhalation	2008 BSFA Award	Short Fiction	Template:Won
	2009 Hugo Award	Short Story	Template:Won
	2009 Locus Award	Short Story	Template:Won
	2010 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire	Foreign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories	Template:Won	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2011 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Nominated
	2019 Ray Bradbury Prize		Template:CFinalist
	2021 Ignotus Awards	Foreign Short Story	Template:Won	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Exhalation (Collection)	2019 Bram Stoker Award	Fiction Collection	Template:Nominated
	2019 Goodreads Choice Awards	Science Fiction	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2020 Locus Award	Collection	Template:Won
	2021 Shelley Award	The Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work	Template:Won	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2021 Grand prix de l'Imaginaire	Foreign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Lifecycle of Software Objects	2011 RUSA CODES Reading List	Science Fiction	Template:Sho	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2011 Hugo Award	Novella	Template:Won
	2011 Nebula Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2011 Locus Award	Novella	Template:Won
	2012 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Won
	2013 Premio Ignotus	Foreign Story	Template:Nominated
	2014 FantLab's Book of the Year Award	Translated Novella/Short Story	Template:Nominated
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling	2014 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	2014 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	2016 Premio Ignotus	Foreign Story	Template:Nominated	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Arrival	2017 Hugo Award	Dramatic Presentation - Long Form	Template:Won
Omphalos	2020 Hugo Award	Novelette	Template:Nominated
	2020 Theodore Sturgeon Award	Short Science Fiction	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2020 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Nominated
	2020: Ignyte Award	Novelette	Template:CFinalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	2020 Locus Award	Novelette	Template:Won
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom	2020 Hugo Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2020 Nebula Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
	2020 Seiun Award	Translated Short Story	Template:Nominated
	2020 Locus Award	Novella	Template:Nominated
It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning	2020 Locus Award	Short Story	Template:Nominated

Personal life

As of 2016, Chiang lives in Bellevue, Washington, with his long-time partner, Marcia Glover,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> whom he met while they both were working at Microsoft. She worked as an interface designer and then a photographer.<ref name=":2" />

Works

Short stories

• "Tower of Babylon", Omni, 1990
• "Division by Zero", Full Spectrum 3, 1991<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• "Understand", Asimov's Science Fiction, 1991<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• "Story of Your Life", Starlight 2, 1998
• "The Evolution of Human Science" (also known as "Catching Crumbs from the Table"), Nature, 2000<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• "Seventy-Two Letters", Vanishing Acts, 2000
• "Hell Is the Absence of God", Starlight 3, 2001
• "Liking What You See: A Documentary", Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002
• "What's Expected of Us", Nature, 2005<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", Subterranean Press, 2007 and F&SF, September 2007
• "Exhalation", Eclipse 2, 2008
• "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", Subterranean Press, July 2010
• "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny", The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer) June 2011
• "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling", Subterranean Press Magazine, August 2013<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• "The Great Silence", e-flux Journal, May 2015 (included in The Best American Short Stories, 2016)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• "Omphalos", Exhalation: Stories, 2019
• "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", Exhalation: Stories, 2019
• "It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning", New York Times, 2019

Collections

• Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor, 2002; republished as Arrival (Picador, 2016)
• Exhalation: Stories (Knopf, May 2019)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Non-fiction

• "Frankenstein's Daughter" by Maureen McHugh: An Appreciation, The Ellen Datlow/SCI FICTION Project, December 30, 2005<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• The Problem of the Traveling Salesman, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #23, November 2008<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Reasoning About the Body, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #26, November 2010<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Introduction to "Particle Theory", Strange Horizons, October 31, 2011<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Bad Character, The New Yorker, May 9, 2016<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear, Buzzfeed, December 18, 2017<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• What If Parents Loved Strangers’ Children As Much As Their Own?, The New Yorker, December 31, 2017<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter, The New Yorker, March 30, 2021<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Foreword to The Art and Science of Arrival by Tanya Lapointe, 2022<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Foreword to The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure by Xavier Dollo, 2022<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, The New Yorker, February 9, 2023<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?, The New Yorker, May 4, 2023<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art, The New Yorker, August 31, 2024<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Lectures

• Ted Chiang on the Future, MoMA PS1, July 8, 2013<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
• Imaginary Science and Magic in Fiction, Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center, November 2020<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

Film

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The screenwriter Eric Heisserer adapted Chiang's story "Story of Your Life" into the 2016 film Arrival. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, the film stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

External links

• Interview conducted by Avi Solomon
• Interview conducted by Al Robertson
• Interview conducted by Lou Anders
• Interview conducted by Gavin J. Grant
• Interview conducted by James Yeh
• Template:Trim Template:PAGENAMEBASE at the Internet Speculative Fiction DatabaseTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• Ted Chiang's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
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