Ted Chiang published his first short story, "Tower of Babylon," in Omni magazine in 1990. The story won the Nebula Award, and has been followed by just nine more stories in the intervening sixteen years. All but two of those stories, which have won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Sidewise awards, are collected in Stories of Your Life and Others.
More than any other story here, the elegant, masterful tale that follows is emblematic of everything this book stands for. Beautifully written, rigorously argued, it seamlessly combines science fiction and fantasy in a manner that makes clear how integral the one is to the other.