Stories of Your Life and Others

My first foray into the mind of Ted Chiang. What a fascinating time. A mix of stories that stepped back and forth over the border into science fiction.

A group of miners are recruited to dig into the vault over the Earth and into heaven at the top of the tower of Babel.

A man recovers from a catastrophic event and finds he has enhanced powers of intellect, sufficient for him to become a fascination to scientists and a threat to the govt.

A linguist is asked to help negotiate conversations with aliens, only to discover that she is having memories of things that have not yet happened. The movie Arrival is based on this story.

In an alternate, almost seampunk, history a team of developers make golems, clay automatons that are powered by cabbalistic names impressed upon them.

Imagine a world where angels make regular appearances in frightening events of power that leave some people dead or injured and others miraculously healed. Would you go chasing them?

And what if you could turn off the feature in your brain that makes some people look attractive so that you could then treat all people equally?