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morticia32's review
3.0
I like to read anthologies, because I always find new authors to try. But like most anthologies, not every story appealed to me. Some were excellent, and I will be searching out work by the author. Some, not so much.
But if you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy, you will find something in here for you. The stories are diverse, from horror to urban fantasy. Find what appeals to you and read it! As a result, some stories hit, some missed.
Almost all of these authors were new to me, with Kelley Armstrong being the only one I had read anything (everything!) by. Yes, that also means I am one of the few folks on the planet who has not read or watched Game of Thrones. I stick pretty much to urban fantasy, so some of these stories were certainly out of my comfort zone. But that's a good thing. Now I have more authors to look for and a wider range to read!
*I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley.*
But if you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy, you will find something in here for you. The stories are diverse, from horror to urban fantasy. Find what appeals to you and read it! As a result, some stories hit, some missed.
Almost all of these authors were new to me, with Kelley Armstrong being the only one I had read anything (everything!) by. Yes, that also means I am one of the few folks on the planet who has not read or watched Game of Thrones. I stick pretty much to urban fantasy, so some of these stories were certainly out of my comfort zone. But that's a good thing. Now I have more authors to look for and a wider range to read!
*I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book provided by the publisher via NetGalley.*
jakemcc's review
4.0
Really compelling short story that explores a world where technology has allows us to basically never forget our experiences. What would it be like if you could recall every event in your life just by thinking about a search term? Would that make you bitter and angry? Would you become a worse or better person?
villyidol's review
4.0
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang
Not read as part of this anthology. Another story that got merged by Goodreads librarians.
Not read as part of this anthology. Another story that got merged by Goodreads librarians.
verkisto's review
5.0
This is a story about a technology that allows people perfect recall of all their memories, but it's also about the purpose of memory in relationships in how we recall what's happened to us. What happens when we're given perfect recall of our entire lives? How does it affect our lives and the lives of everyone we know?
arkron's review
5.0
Full review at my blog.
Best stories in this anthology:
Worst stories:
Contents:
Merged review:
Repost from my blog.
Summary: What would a perfect memory mean for us and our culture? How changed literacy our subjectivity? A journalist explores the pros and cons of a Cyborgish memory enhancement gadget called Remem which lets you capture, search, and replay every instance of your liveblog. It would bring a change similar to reading and writing for our Western culture, so he writes the story of the savage folk of Tev who slowly learn the impact of written truth versus oral truth. He can't stop people adopting the gadget like the tribes oral culture could stop writing on paper; so, he tried to find the positive in it.
Review: First, I feared yet another linguistic exploration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which Chiang already explored in Story of your Life), but then it gladly developed in a different direction, that of literacy. The story contains lots of brain food about different sorts of truth - the harsh truth of facts versus smoothening truth of feeling, the stories of yourself which you need to comfort yourself or your tribe, which are based on forgiving and forgetting. The author gave us two interposed point of views for comparison, and to understand the concept: one set in the future in first person perspective of the journalist who wrote the whole story. It is mostly about the relationship to his daughter, and his finding out with the help of the memory gadget that he was wrong about his history:
And I think I’ve found the real benefit of digital memory. The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.
The tribal version of adopting new forms of memory was narrated in the point of view of a boy who learned reading and writing from a missionary. I found the insights into the process wonderful and bringing a lot to understand what the futuristic gadget would bring to our culture. Just one sample:
It was only many lessons later that Jijingi finally understood where he should leave spaces, and what Moseby meant when he said “word.” You could not find the places where words began and ended by listening. The sounds a person made while speaking were as smooth and unbroken as the hide of a goat’s leg, but the words were like the bones underneath the meat, and the space between them was the joint where you’d cut if you wanted to separate it into pieces. By leaving spaces when he wrote, Moseby was making visible the bones in what he said.
This gadget will change our "private oral culture" just as writing changed the tribal's oral culture. It will be difficult to rewrite our pasts to our needs.
Sometimes the narration feels more like an essay than a story, it moves slowly, even contemplative. And then, it isn't an essay at all but character driven, providing a lot of character development and insights into the main characters. Anyways, it is a masterful usage of futuristic technology to explore philosophical topics in the frame of a short story: Chiang focuses on the searchable story telling capabilities of technology only, and left out several other aspects that this gadget could be used for (think of medical usages).
I fully recommend this novelette to everyone searching for more heavy-weight stories: It will stay with you for some time: Did you already think about your own made-up story?
Best stories in this anthology:
- ★★★★★ • A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong • 2011 • Alternate World novella by K. J. Parker about the creative genius of two musicians • review
- ★★★★★ • The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling • 2013 • Near Future SF novelette by Ted Chiang about a perfect memory recording gadget • review
Worst stories:
- ★ • The Secret History of the Lost Colony • 2008 • SF short story by John Scalzi
- ★ • He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes • 2014 • short story by Harlan Ellison • review
Contents:
- 9 • ★★★★ • Perfidia • 2004 • thriller novelette about Glen Miller's death by Lewis Shiner • review
- 49 • ★★★★ • Game • 2012 • Magical realism novelette about hunting tigers in 1950 by Maria Dahvana Headley • review
- 79 • ☆ • The Last Log of the Lachrimosa by Alastair Reynolds • Horror - didn't read
- 125 • ★★★+ • The Seventeenth Kind • SF comedy about a shopping channel presenter, a novelette by Michael Marshall Smith • review
- 145 • ★★+ • Dispersed by the Sun Melting in the Wind • Post Apocalyptic short story with multiple "lasts" by Rachel Swirsky • review
- 157 • ★★+ • The Pile • ghost story about a Macarena dancing gorilla toy by Michael Bishop • review
- 175 • ★★★★ • The Bohemian Astrobleme • 2010 • Steampunk novelette by Kage Baker about a prostitute-spy investigation in Bohemia • review
- 205 • ★★★ • Tanglefoot • 2008 • Steampunk novelette by Cherie Priest about a boy creating a clockwork doll • review
- 235 • ★★★ • Hide and Horns • 2009 • Western novelette by Joe R. Lansdale • review
- 259 • ★★★★ • Balfour and Meriwether in the Vampire of Kabul • 2011 • Steampunk novelette by Daniel Abraham • review
- 285 • ★★★ • Last Breath • 2005 • Weird short story by Joe Hill • review
- 295 • ★★ • Younger Women • 2011 • Weird short story by Karen Joy Fowler • review
- 303 • ★★ • White Lines on a Green Field • 2011 • Magic realism novelette by Catherynne M. Valente • review
- 323 • ★★+ • The Least of the Deathly Arts • 2012 • Fantaasy short story by Kat Howard • review
- 335 • ★★+ • Water Can’t be Nervous • 2012 • Mainstream short story by Jonathan Carroll • review
- 345 • ★★★+ • Valley of the Girls • 2011 • SF short story by Kelly Link • review
- 361 • ★★★+ • Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill! • 2012 • Urban Fantasy short story by Hal Duncan • review
- 381 • ★★★ • Troublesolving • 2009 • SF novelette by Tim Pratt • review
- 407 • ★★+ • The Indelible Dark • 2012 • SF Metafiction novelette by William Browning Spencer • review
- 435 • ★★★ • The Prayer of Ninety Cats • 2013 • Dark Fantasy novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan • review
- 471 • ★★+ • The Crane Method • 2011 • Magical realism short story by Ian R. MacLeod • review
- 485 • ★★★ • The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn • 2011 • SF novelette by Robert Silverberg • review
- 521 • ☆ • The Toys of Caliban • 1986 • Horror novelette by George R. R. Martin • Screenplay for The New Twilight Zone S2E29 based on an unpublished story by Terry Matz
- 561 • ★ • The Secret History of the Lost Colony • 2008 • SF short story by John Scalzi • A removed chapter from "The Last Colony". Why would anyone else than absurdely hardcore fans of that series want to read something like that? Why is this considered a "Best of Subterranean"?
- 577 • ★★★ • The Screams of Dragons • 2014 • Urban Fantasy novelette by Kelley Armstrong • review
- 619 • ★★★ • The Dry Spell • 2009 • Magical realism short story by James P. Blaylock about a man daring the heavens to rain • review
- 635 • ★ • He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes • 2014 • short story by Harlan Ellison • review
- 645 • ★★★★★ • A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong • 2011 • Alternate World novella by K. J. Parker about the creative genius of two musicians • review
- 685 • ★★★★★ • The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling • 2013 • Near Future SF novelette by Ted Chiang about a perfect memory recording gadget • review
- 723 • ★★★ • A Long Walk Home • 2011 • Far future SF novelette by Jay Lake about loneliness • review
Merged review:
Repost from my blog.
Summary: What would a perfect memory mean for us and our culture? How changed literacy our subjectivity? A journalist explores the pros and cons of a Cyborgish memory enhancement gadget called Remem which lets you capture, search, and replay every instance of your liveblog. It would bring a change similar to reading and writing for our Western culture, so he writes the story of the savage folk of Tev who slowly learn the impact of written truth versus oral truth. He can't stop people adopting the gadget like the tribes oral culture could stop writing on paper; so, he tried to find the positive in it.
Review: First, I feared yet another linguistic exploration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which Chiang already explored in Story of your Life), but then it gladly developed in a different direction, that of literacy. The story contains lots of brain food about different sorts of truth - the harsh truth of facts versus smoothening truth of feeling, the stories of yourself which you need to comfort yourself or your tribe, which are based on forgiving and forgetting. The author gave us two interposed point of views for comparison, and to understand the concept: one set in the future in first person perspective of the journalist who wrote the whole story. It is mostly about the relationship to his daughter, and his finding out with the help of the memory gadget that he was wrong about his history:
And I think I’ve found the real benefit of digital memory. The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.
The tribal version of adopting new forms of memory was narrated in the point of view of a boy who learned reading and writing from a missionary. I found the insights into the process wonderful and bringing a lot to understand what the futuristic gadget would bring to our culture. Just one sample:
It was only many lessons later that Jijingi finally understood where he should leave spaces, and what Moseby meant when he said “word.” You could not find the places where words began and ended by listening. The sounds a person made while speaking were as smooth and unbroken as the hide of a goat’s leg, but the words were like the bones underneath the meat, and the space between them was the joint where you’d cut if you wanted to separate it into pieces. By leaving spaces when he wrote, Moseby was making visible the bones in what he said.
This gadget will change our "private oral culture" just as writing changed the tribal's oral culture. It will be difficult to rewrite our pasts to our needs.
Sometimes the narration feels more like an essay than a story, it moves slowly, even contemplative. And then, it isn't an essay at all but character driven, providing a lot of character development and insights into the main characters. Anyways, it is a masterful usage of futuristic technology to explore philosophical topics in the frame of a short story: Chiang focuses on the searchable story telling capabilities of technology only, and left out several other aspects that this gadget could be used for (think of medical usages).
I fully recommend this novelette to everyone searching for more heavy-weight stories: It will stay with you for some time: Did you already think about your own made-up story?
jayshay's review
3.0
Well done and thoughtful, just hasn't stayed with me like other Chiang stories.
coolcurrybooks's review
3.0
Short fiction collections always have stories that are a mix of quality and taste, but by and large I found The Best of Subterranean to be disappointing. The majority of stories didn’t work for me at all.
By far my favorite story in the collection was by Ted Chiang, which I sort of suspected would be the case going in. While you won’t see the review for it until this fall, I read and loved a collection of his short fiction. All of his stories I’ve read are technically stunning and contain such intriguing ideas that they will stick with you for a long time after. The story in this collection, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” is no exception. This story looks at how technology can shape the way we think. The narrator is living in a future where many people habitually record their entire lives, and a new company released software that that sorts through the recordings to bring relevant scenes up. While it currently just assists memory, will it one day replace organic memory altogether? And is that necessarily a bad thing? The emotional core of the story is the narrator’s fraught relationship with his daughter and the role forgetfulness has played in it.
Currently, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” is available on Subterranean’s website. In fact, many of the other stories also appear to be available online, including one I’d read before picking up this collection, “Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!” by Hal Duncan. My second favorite story of the anthology, “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K.J. Parker, is also available.
I’d previously read a novella by K.J. Parker, The Last Witness, that while well written wasn’t too my tastes. I had a much better time of it with “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong.” I believe it’s set in the same world as the novella (which I think a lot of his stories are set in?) and follows a professor at a college of music who has a pupil who’s a musical genius, the author of some extraordinary pieces of music. However, his pupil is then arrested for murder. The narrator has the chance to help him, but what is it worth? Although it’s a bit exasperating that it’s one of multiple stories in the collection where women don’t have any dialog, I did enjoy it, especially the clever plot twists.
While those two were the stand out stories, there were some others that were all right. “The Seventeenth Kind” by Michael Marshall Smith is a humorous tale about a shopping channel which attracts extraterrestrial attention. “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa” by Alastair Reynolds is a horrific science fiction story about what’s lurking on a presumably uninhabited planet. “Last Breath” by Joe Hill is a short, creepy story that reminded me just a bit of Ronald Dahl’s “The Landlady.” “The Least of the Deathly Arts” by Kat Howard presents a fantastical city obsessed with Death, who is himself a resident. “Troublesolving” by Tim Pratt has an intriguing take on time travel. “The Screams of Dragons” by Kelley Armstrong is set in the same world as her novel Omens, although I didn’t see any direct connection. Cherry Priest similarly has a characteristically creepy story set in her steampunk Clockwork Century world, “Tanglefoot,” although in this case the connection to her established world felt hamfisted and out of place.
As for the other stories, I would have preferred to skip the 2/3rds of the book they represent and have done something else with my time. The only one I actually did skip was “The Indelible Dark” by William Browning Spencer because it was not only boring but long too. It wasn’t the only story I disliked. “The Dry Spell” by James P. Blaylock, “Perfidia” by Lewis Shiner, “The Pile” by Michael Bishop, “Water Can’t be Nervous” by Jonathan Carrolland, and “The Crane Method” by Ian R. MacLeod were all similarly mind numbingly boring, but they at least had the grace to be short enough I could get through them. “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link was confusing and full of unlikable people. “The Secret History of the Lost Colony” by John Scalzi wasn’t even a short story — it was a cut chapter from a book of his and really didn’t work well in a short story collection. “The Prayer of Ninety Cats” by Caitlín R. Kiernan, a description of a fictional movie, was very strange and probably too much horror for me. “He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes” by Harlan Ellison was an utter mess I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. “Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind” by Rachel Swirsky was unrelentingly depressing. “The Toys of Caliban” by George R. Martin has more than a whiff of ableism about it, and “Game” by Maria Dahvana Headley felt sort of white savior-y.
Other stories I was more ambivilent on or at least could see other people liking. “Hide and Horns” by Joe R. Lansdale is a straight up Western (no fantastical elements), so it might appeal more to fans of that genre. “The Bohemian Astrobleme” had some interesting ideas and did manage to be fun, but I felt the ending could have been stronger. Same goes for “The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn” by Robert Silverberg” and “A Long Walk Home” by Jay Lake. I found “Balfour and meriwether in the Vampire of Kabul” by Daniel Abraham to be boring, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Maybe it was too tropy? While “Younger Woman” by Karen Joy Fowler wasn’t among my favorites, I did like how it looked at a mother’s reaction to her teenage daughter dating a vampire. “White Lines on a Green Field” by Catherynne M. Valente has her usual gorgeous writing style, but it was very much focused on the idealized myth of high school and didn’t reach me.
In the end, I feel like I would have made a better use of my time reading a random thirty of the stories I have bookmarked on my web browser. On average, I’d probably enjoy them more.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
By far my favorite story in the collection was by Ted Chiang, which I sort of suspected would be the case going in. While you won’t see the review for it until this fall, I read and loved a collection of his short fiction. All of his stories I’ve read are technically stunning and contain such intriguing ideas that they will stick with you for a long time after. The story in this collection, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” is no exception. This story looks at how technology can shape the way we think. The narrator is living in a future where many people habitually record their entire lives, and a new company released software that that sorts through the recordings to bring relevant scenes up. While it currently just assists memory, will it one day replace organic memory altogether? And is that necessarily a bad thing? The emotional core of the story is the narrator’s fraught relationship with his daughter and the role forgetfulness has played in it.
Currently, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” is available on Subterranean’s website. In fact, many of the other stories also appear to be available online, including one I’d read before picking up this collection, “Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!” by Hal Duncan. My second favorite story of the anthology, “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong by K.J. Parker, is also available.
I’d previously read a novella by K.J. Parker, The Last Witness, that while well written wasn’t too my tastes. I had a much better time of it with “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong.” I believe it’s set in the same world as the novella (which I think a lot of his stories are set in?) and follows a professor at a college of music who has a pupil who’s a musical genius, the author of some extraordinary pieces of music. However, his pupil is then arrested for murder. The narrator has the chance to help him, but what is it worth? Although it’s a bit exasperating that it’s one of multiple stories in the collection where women don’t have any dialog, I did enjoy it, especially the clever plot twists.
While those two were the stand out stories, there were some others that were all right. “The Seventeenth Kind” by Michael Marshall Smith is a humorous tale about a shopping channel which attracts extraterrestrial attention. “The Last Log of the Lachrimosa” by Alastair Reynolds is a horrific science fiction story about what’s lurking on a presumably uninhabited planet. “Last Breath” by Joe Hill is a short, creepy story that reminded me just a bit of Ronald Dahl’s “The Landlady.” “The Least of the Deathly Arts” by Kat Howard presents a fantastical city obsessed with Death, who is himself a resident. “Troublesolving” by Tim Pratt has an intriguing take on time travel. “The Screams of Dragons” by Kelley Armstrong is set in the same world as her novel Omens, although I didn’t see any direct connection. Cherry Priest similarly has a characteristically creepy story set in her steampunk Clockwork Century world, “Tanglefoot,” although in this case the connection to her established world felt hamfisted and out of place.
As for the other stories, I would have preferred to skip the 2/3rds of the book they represent and have done something else with my time. The only one I actually did skip was “The Indelible Dark” by William Browning Spencer because it was not only boring but long too. It wasn’t the only story I disliked. “The Dry Spell” by James P. Blaylock, “Perfidia” by Lewis Shiner, “The Pile” by Michael Bishop, “Water Can’t be Nervous” by Jonathan Carrolland, and “The Crane Method” by Ian R. MacLeod were all similarly mind numbingly boring, but they at least had the grace to be short enough I could get through them. “Valley of the Girls” by Kelly Link was confusing and full of unlikable people. “The Secret History of the Lost Colony” by John Scalzi wasn’t even a short story — it was a cut chapter from a book of his and really didn’t work well in a short story collection. “The Prayer of Ninety Cats” by Caitlín R. Kiernan, a description of a fictional movie, was very strange and probably too much horror for me. “He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes” by Harlan Ellison was an utter mess I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. “Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind” by Rachel Swirsky was unrelentingly depressing. “The Toys of Caliban” by George R. Martin has more than a whiff of ableism about it, and “Game” by Maria Dahvana Headley felt sort of white savior-y.
Other stories I was more ambivilent on or at least could see other people liking. “Hide and Horns” by Joe R. Lansdale is a straight up Western (no fantastical elements), so it might appeal more to fans of that genre. “The Bohemian Astrobleme” had some interesting ideas and did manage to be fun, but I felt the ending could have been stronger. Same goes for “The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn” by Robert Silverberg” and “A Long Walk Home” by Jay Lake. I found “Balfour and meriwether in the Vampire of Kabul” by Daniel Abraham to be boring, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Maybe it was too tropy? While “Younger Woman” by Karen Joy Fowler wasn’t among my favorites, I did like how it looked at a mother’s reaction to her teenage daughter dating a vampire. “White Lines on a Green Field” by Catherynne M. Valente has her usual gorgeous writing style, but it was very much focused on the idealized myth of high school and didn’t reach me.
In the end, I feel like I would have made a better use of my time reading a random thirty of the stories I have bookmarked on my web browser. On average, I’d probably enjoy them more.
Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
smuuti's review
5.0
A touching narrative of (again) a great idea.
I don't know how Ted Chiang keeps doing it but I keep falling in love with the ideas that blossom inside the stories he has written.
While the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You" offered a grave future of what might happen should this be apart of our future, [b:The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling|18455800|The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling|Ted Chiang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420140821s/18455800.jpg|26103616] offers a less extreme one, a delicate one even.
For a long time I have dismissed the past as something that doesn't matter when judging a person. People change and every single one of us goes through multiple transformations during our entire lives. I certainly know that I have changed my core - the ultimate reason why I do anything, the deepest framework on which all other values and morals depend on - and while replacing that, I have, in essence, changed the entirety of me. In doing that, I have wished for other people to forget the past me and start anew. But I can't change much of other people, instead I can change how I think about people and therefore I adopted the idea that the past doesn't matter, the person could have and most likely has changed aka the past must be forgotten as fast as possible (AFTER learning from it!).
The idea in this story runs contrary to that. It depicts a future, where the the past can't be forgotten. Where old wounds can continue to hurt and old memories of happiness can easily crumple. It has also made me think that maybe the past is not such an enemy after all, that it's counterproductive to exclude it's influence from decision making. To be fair, that rule was only relevant when dealing with individuals: I had felt that every single person I meet deserved a second chance and deserved to have a new life. No more! :D I now know that the extent of what can be learned from past experiences is a lot greater than what I'd have guessed. A bad experience can have something to teach me even after many years, even long after it's actual relevance.
So, when the past won't be forgotten, what happens to people? What happens to change? Well, I think the change is still there, but it doesn't work like I thought it would. There is no core that gets replaced and brings about the change of everything within. It's more like we grow more and more layers on top of everything old, and while the new stuff is active most of the time, the old ideas just need certain triggers to become ruling again.
I love ideas that change the way I see the world and that's why I loved this book.
We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.
I don't know how Ted Chiang keeps doing it but I keep falling in love with the ideas that blossom inside the stories he has written.
While the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You" offered a grave future of what might happen should this be apart of our future, [b:The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling|18455800|The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling|Ted Chiang|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420140821s/18455800.jpg|26103616] offers a less extreme one, a delicate one even.
For a long time I have dismissed the past as something that doesn't matter when judging a person. People change and every single one of us goes through multiple transformations during our entire lives. I certainly know that I have changed my core - the ultimate reason why I do anything, the deepest framework on which all other values and morals depend on - and while replacing that, I have, in essence, changed the entirety of me. In doing that, I have wished for other people to forget the past me and start anew. But I can't change much of other people, instead I can change how I think about people and therefore I adopted the idea that the past doesn't matter, the person could have and most likely has changed aka the past must be forgotten as fast as possible (AFTER learning from it!).
The idea in this story runs contrary to that. It depicts a future, where the the past can't be forgotten. Where old wounds can continue to hurt and old memories of happiness can easily crumple. It has also made me think that maybe the past is not such an enemy after all, that it's counterproductive to exclude it's influence from decision making. To be fair, that rule was only relevant when dealing with individuals: I had felt that every single person I meet deserved a second chance and deserved to have a new life. No more! :D I now know that the extent of what can be learned from past experiences is a lot greater than what I'd have guessed. A bad experience can have something to teach me even after many years, even long after it's actual relevance.
So, when the past won't be forgotten, what happens to people? What happens to change? Well, I think the change is still there, but it doesn't work like I thought it would. There is no core that gets replaced and brings about the change of everything within. It's more like we grow more and more layers on top of everything old, and while the new stuff is active most of the time, the old ideas just need certain triggers to become ruling again.
I love ideas that change the way I see the world and that's why I loved this book.
nancyotoole's review
5.0
With The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, Ted Chiang has hit one of my thematic sweet spots by writing a story about memory. The novelette is divided into two storylines. One tells about a reporter encountering, with much trepidation, a new type of technology that will basically replace out natural human memory. The second tells a historical account of a young man living in Tivland, encountering the written word for the first time. These two elements may sound different, but they're actually telling the same story: how more precise methods of keeping track of memories impact out overall concepts of truth, and the benefits and drawbacks to these technologies.
The story is strongly written with an engaging voice, and a few moments that genuinely surprised me. I love how the author tackled the subject of memory and truth in a thought provoking way. This is the second short piece of I've read by Chiang, the first being Exhalation, and it's safe to say that it's my favorite by him so far. (Hugo Reading)
The story is strongly written with an engaging voice, and a few moments that genuinely surprised me. I love how the author tackled the subject of memory and truth in a thought provoking way. This is the second short piece of I've read by Chiang, the first being Exhalation, and it's safe to say that it's my favorite by him so far. (Hugo Reading)
macthekat's review
4.0
This story rocked my boat that is for sure. It is one of those very deep short stories that makes you think and that might be useable as teaching material.