Ted Chiang Interview
Rani Graff: Where does your writing start? What or who are your sources of inspiration?
Ted Chiang: You mean, where do I get my ideas? I don’t know; I just write about what I’m interested in. Annie Dillard once wrote, “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.”
Rani Graff: You are regarded by many as a new and unique voice in contemporary SF. Who, among other contemporary SF or Fantasy writers, do you consider to be a unique and interesting voice?
Ted Chiang: The SF/F field is full of writers with distinctive voices. Some of my favorites are Greg Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, and Ken MacLeod.
Rani Graff: What SF or Fantasy writings (books, stories or novelettes—contemporary or classic) made it to your all time personal favorites short list? What non-SF writings made it to that list?
Ted Chiang: I don’t really have an “all-time personal favorites” list, so I’ll just mention some books that I’ve read recently. In the SF/F genre, I enjoyed China Miéville’s The Scar, a wonderful depiction of a world filled to the brim with wonders. Outside of SF/F, I enjoyed Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones; there’s been a bit of a backlash against it because of its overwhelming success, but I found it genuinely moving.
Rani Graff: What was the effect Clarion had on your writing? Can you tell us about the Clarion experience?
Ted Chiang: For me, Clarion encouraged me to keep on writing. Before I was accepted to the workshop, I hadn’t received any encouragement about my writing, and I was on the verge of giving up. Clarion was the first time anyone told me they liked my work. Clarion also introduced me to the SF community. Before I attended, I hadn’t known anyone who read SF, let alone wanted to write it, so meeting my fellow students there was like discovering a family I’d never known I’d had.
Rani Graff: When reading your stories, especially “Seventy Two Letters,” “Tower of Babylon,” and “Hell is the Absence of God,” one gets a distinct cynical notion towards organized religion and God. What is your attitude towards religions? And if I may: What is your attitude towards God, or the notion of God? Do you yourself believe in God?
Ted Chiang: I wasn’t raised in any religion, so I don’t have such strong feelings toward religion that many people do. When I was younger I had a vague belief in God, but as I grew older, it seemed to me that the idea of God didn’t explain anything that couldn’t be explained otherwise, so I’m currently an atheist. I think religion is interesting, but my interest in it is strictly abstract. I recently had a conversation with someone who said she had occasionally experienced epiphanies, moments when she felt the presence of the divine. I have never experienced anything like that, which probably keeps my interest in religion from becoming more than abstract.
Rani Graff: In “Seventy Two Letters” you are using some cabalistic elements and Hebrew words. What is your connection to Cabala and Hebrew?
Ted Chiang: I have no background in either. In preparation for writing the story I did some research in the Golem myth, and of course that involves Kabbalah/Cabala and Hebrew. Before that I didn’t know much about either subject.
Rani Graff: How did you come up with the idea for “Seventy Two Letters”? What made you combine the Golem idea and the preformation theory into one story?
Ted Chiang: As I describe in the story notes in the collection, I realized that both of these ideas have relevance to the notion of self-replication. The process by which one organism gives rise to another is one that we don’t fully understand even today; the complexities involved are truly astonishing. I’m interested in how people in the past tried to understand the phenomenon, and I can see how both the golem and the theory of preformation reflect people’s thoughts about the concept.
