Ted Chiang


Ted Chiang 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. He has published the short story collections Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation: Stories. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival. He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame from 2020 to 2021. 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. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan. 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. His father, Fu-pen Chiang, is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University. His mother was a librarian. Chiang also has a sister who is a physician.
Chiang grew up on Long Island and, at age 15, began submitting science fiction stories to magazines. 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". In 1989, he graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Science degree after choosing to study computer science over physics. As an undergraduate, Chiang continued to write sci-fi stories, though they were ultimately unpublished.

Career

After attending and graduating from the Clarion Workshop in 1989 Chiang sold his first story, "The Tower of Babylon", to Omni magazine, and was awarded a Nebula Award for it in 1990. 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 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.
, Chiang was working as a technical writer in the software industry and resided in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle. He was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop at UC San Diego in 2012 and 2016.
Chiang's second short story collection, Exhalation: Stories was published in May 2019 by Alfred A. Knopf. Chiang has published eighteen short stories, novelettes, and novellas as of 2019 In 2022, Chiang became a Miller Scholar in the Santa Fe Institute.
In 2023, Chiang was named one of Times 100 most influential people in AI.

Writing style and influences

Chiang has said Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke inspired him when he was young, while the works of Gene Wolfe, John Crowley and Edward Bryant were his creative influences in college.
Chiang has said that one of the reasons science fiction writing interests him is that it allows him to make philosophical questions "storyable". 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 was".

Reception

Critic John Clute has written that Chiang's work has a "tight-hewn and lucid style... has a magnetic effect on the reader". 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. 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."
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".

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.
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" and the American Humanist Association's Inquiry and Innovation Award.
WorkYear & AwardCategoryResultRef.
Tower of Babylon1991 Locus AwardNovelette
Tower of Babylon1991 Hugo AwardNovelette
Tower of Babylon1991 Nebula AwardNoveletteWon
Tower of Babylon1991 SF Chronicle AwardNovelette
Tower of Babylon1992 Astounding Award for Best New WriterWon
Tower of Babylon1998 Premio IgnotusForeign Story
Division by Zero1992 Locus AwardShort Story
Understand1991 Asimov's Readers' PollNoveletteWon
Understand1992 Locus AwardNovelette
Understand1992 Hugo AwardNovelette
Understand1994 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short StoryWon
Story of Your Life1998 Otherwise AwardHonor
Story of Your Life1998 HOMer AwardNovella
Story of Your Life1999 Locus AwardNovella
Story of Your Life1999 Hugo AwardNovella
Story of Your Life1999 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science FictionWon
Story of Your Life2000 Nebula AwardNovellaWon
Story of Your Life2001 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short StoryWon
Story of Your Life2002 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StoryWon
Seventy-Two Letters2000 Sidewise Award for Alternate HistoryShort FormWon
Seventy-Two Letters2001 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
Seventy-Two Letters2001 World Fantasy AwardNovella
Seventy-Two Letters2001 Hugo AwardNovella
Seventy-Two Letters2001 Locus AwardNovella
Seventy-Two Letters2002 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short StoryWon
Catching Crumbs from the Table 2001 Locus AwardShort Story
Hell Is the Absence of God2002 Hugo AwardNoveletteWon
Hell Is the Absence of God2002 Locus AwardNoveletteWon
Hell Is the Absence of God2002 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
Hell Is the Absence of God2003 Nebula AwardNoveletteWon
Hell Is the Absence of God2004 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StoryWon
Hell Is the Absence of God2005 Premio IgnotusForeign Story
Hell Is the Absence of God2013 Kurd Laßwitz AwardForeign Work
Won
Liking What You See: A Documentary2002 Otherwise AwardHonor
Liking What You See: A Documentary2003 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
Liking What You See: A Documentary2003 Locus AwardNovelette
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2007 BSFA AwardShort Fiction
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2008 Hugo AwardNoveletteWon
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2008 Nebula AwardNoveletteWon
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2008 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2008 Locus AwardNovelette
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate2009 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StoryWon
Stories of Your Life and Others2003 Locus AwardCollectionWon
Stories of Your Life and Others2007 Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories
Stories of Your Life and Others2017 Washington State Book AwardFiction
Exhalation2008 BSFA AwardShort FictionWon
Exhalation2009 Hugo AwardShort StoryWon
Exhalation2009 Locus AwardShort StoryWon
Exhalation2010 Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short StoriesWon
Exhalation2011 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story
Exhalation2019 Ray Bradbury Prize
Exhalation2021 Ignotus AwardsForeign Short StoryWon
Exhalation 2019 Bram Stoker AwardFiction Collection
Exhalation 2019 Goodreads Choice AwardsScience Fiction
Exhalation 2020 Locus AwardCollectionWon
Exhalation 2021 Shelley AwardThe Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional WorkWon
Exhalation 2021 Grand prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2011 RUSA CODES Reading ListScience Fiction
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2011 Hugo AwardNovellaWon
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2011 Nebula AwardNovella
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2011 Locus AwardNovellaWon
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2012 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StoryWon
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2013 Premio IgnotusForeign Story
The Lifecycle of Software Objects2014 FantLab's Book of the Year AwardTranslated Novella/Short Story
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling2014 Locus AwardNovelette
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling2014 Hugo AwardNovelette
The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling2016 Premio IgnotusForeign Story
Arrival2017 Hugo AwardDramatic Presentation - Long FormWon
Omphalos2020 Hugo AwardNovelette
Omphalos2020 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction
Omphalos2020 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story
Omphalos2020: Ignyte AwardNovelette
Omphalos2020 Locus AwardNoveletteWon
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom2020 Hugo AwardNovella
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom2020 Nebula AwardNovella
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom2020 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story
Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom2020 Locus AwardNovella
It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning2020 Locus AwardShort Story
"Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art"2024 BSFAShort Non-FictionWon