Ted Chiang Interview
Rani Graff: Seems to me that the main character in “Story Of Your Life” is a tragic one. She can see the course of her life before it actually occurred, and probably knows how and when it will end, all the result of her learning the alien language. This is a very heavy burden for a person to carry. Do you feel that ordinary people like us would be able to carry such a burden? Would you have learnt that language yourself if you had a choice?
Ted Chiang: In a sense, ordinary people already carry such a burden, because we all know we’re going to die. We can also expect to experience many losses before we die, and—with luck—happiness too. The ability to anticipate the future is part of what it is to be human, I think; how many of us would be willing to give that up?
I don’t see “Story of Your Life” as being purely a tragedy. Living life is about accepting the bad with the good. Sometimes that’s a hard thing to do, but the alternative seems far worse.
Rani Graff: One of the very distinct elements of “Hell is the Absence of God” is the total lack of dialog. What made you write it that way?
Ted Chiang: Partly it was an attempt to try something new as a writer. Nowadays a lot of SF is written using either first-person narration, or third-person limited narration, which is almost the same except for changing some pronouns. I wanted to try something different, and for a short story about three different characters, having a separate “storyteller” do the narration seemed appropriate.
Rani Graff: “Hell is the Absence of God” is set in an alternate universe where the meaning of faith seems to be a bit different than the meaning it has in our universe. Care to elaborate on this?
Ted Chiang: I wanted to explore the idea of a universe in which religion doesn’t require faith. In our world, religion relies on faith because definitive proof is unavailable. As a result, some people choose their religion based on which one makes them feel better, e.g. “I don’t like the judgemental god of Religion A, so I’m going to worship the kind and gentle god of Religion B.” That option exists because neither deity is unambiguously present, but if a particular god were here right now, we’d have to deal with him whether we liked him or not.
Of course, not everyone opts for the most comforting religion. Many people follow religions that sometimes make them feel terrible about themselves. There are probably many reasons for this, but I think one reason is that such religions describe a universe in which there is clarity, and many people find that clarity more valuable than sweeping reassurances. And I think the same situation would exist even after the appearance of a deity: no matter what action a god took, people would have widely differing interpretations of that action.
Rani Graff: “Liking What You See: A Documentary” seems to be sending a somewhat poisoned arrow towards the western notion of external human beauty, but at the same time sends another arrow towards some extreme PC trends that seems to take place in America. Where do you stand in all that?
Ted Chiang: There will always be people who take things to extremes, but there are also good arguments to be made on every side. To me the essential problem is that it’s hard to reconcile our reaction to beauty, which is deeply ingrained, with our desire for to reward merit rather than appearance. A feminist writer once said, “Allowing beautiful women their beauty may turn out to be one of the most difficult aspects of personal liberation.” I thought that was a very good point.
