An extremely good collection of stories that mostly happen in very strange places.
Tower of Babylon
This story happens on apparent biblical flat Earth. The tower of Babylon is being built, and as the building materials in the world are apparently indestructible, the tower reaches heaven and goes past the moon, sun, and stars. The ceiling is made from marble-like material, and it takes a specialized group of stone workers to penetrate. What will they find (hopefully not the reservoir filled with water that flooded the Earth during the Flood)? An unusual premise with good writing and an intentionally anticlimactic ending. ****+
Understand
A new therapy wakes up a man who had spent years in a vegetative state after a drowning accident. The therapy creates new connections between neurons. It seems to work better if the brain damage before treatment was severe. The man turns out to be a genius. He volunteers for a study where he gets an extra dose of the medication and becomes even more intelligent, eventually so intelligent that he is aware of every function of his brain. He uses this ability to evaluate facts, and finds out that there must be another super-intelligent human around somewhere. What will happen when they meet? Another good story, perhaps a bit more ordinary than some of the other stories in the book. ****
Division by Zero
A mathematician proves that the basic principles of mathematics are false. Any integer can be proved to be the same as any other integer—and she can’t find any fault in her proof. That causes an existential crisis for her. A nice story with some introspection between the mathematician and her husband, who doesn’t really grasp why his wife is so distressed. A below-average story for this collection. ***+
Story of Your Life
The story is the basis of one of my favorite movies of all time, Arrival. Aliens have appeared around the world. A young woman tries to decipher their language. It turns out that their written and spoken languages are very different, and their writing is based on pictographs that contain whole concepts with one marking including all temporal aspects of the concept. This causes her to be partly “unstuck” in time and to be able to see her whole life and accept it, including the upcoming death of her daughter. Another excellent, well-written, thought-provoking tale about accepting the inevitable. ****
Seventy-Two Letters
The physics of the world work on some sort of Old Testament/Torah style of principles. Golems (creatures made from inorganic matter, with God's word—or at least some word with power—hidden inside them) are common, and they are so easy to make that a small child can animate them for fun. The principles of what kind of words work best are slowly worked out (and the best words are copyrighted), and there doesn’t seem to be any religious principle after all—just like how the world works. Also, human conception is based on ”homunculi” in sperm, which resemble miniature people and are all identical. The mother gives the real substance to the child, whose features are influenced by the man who lives with the mother. The new homunculi that produce future generations are already inside any homunculus in the sperm. A man who is trying to create golems with the ability to create new golems is contacted by a researcher who has found out that soon, the homunculi in the sperm will no longer contain any new homunculi, which will lead to the extinction of humans. The story happens in a very complex world where there were perhaps too many strange changes compared to the real world. The story was maybe a bit too long, but it was very good and imaginative in spite of that. ****-
The Evolution of Human Science
Genetic manipulation has produced metahumans who are so much brighter than normal humans that there really isn’t any point for normal scientists to do any research at all. But at least they try to decipher and translate the very difficult and hard-to-understand studies done by metahumans on a level that normal humans can comprehend. ****-
Hell Is the Absence of God
Heaven and angels are true. Angels visit Earth with shining light and powerful tornado-level winds. When they visit, people are healed, and other miracles happen. Unfortunately, usually, several people are dead or badly hurt from collateral damage. Neil’s wife was killed during the latest visitation. She was lifted to heaven (when someone dies, the soul can be seen going to heaven or hell). Neil doesn’t really love God unconditionally, so he is destined to go to hell (Which is not a terrible place itself; there just is no chance ever to feel the love of God; otherwise, life is about the same as we know it on Earth). Janice was born without legs. She has made her career preaching about God’s plan and about how she loves God and is happy with His decision to let her be born without legs. During the same visitation, she gets a perfect working pair of legs. Ethan was born into a devout family, but he himself didn’t feel able to have unconditional love for God. He has hoped for it, but that is not something you can just decide to have. He had been hoping to experience a visitation that might change his feeling. He experiences the same visitation, but finds it doesn’t do anything for him, and he is sorely disappointed.
Those three people meet. They all feel cheated by God, but what they can do? Another story that happens in a very strange world and that was very fascinating and interesting, one of the best ones in the collection. *****
Liking What You See: A Documentary
It is possible to stop people from recognizing beauty with a small reversible procedure. A school is pushing to make it mandatory. The story encompasses the viewpoints of different people based on their anecdotes, with some of the people supporting the procedure and some opposing it. The views are well presented and convincing but mostly logical. Another very interesting and thought-provoking story that is told in an interesting format. ****+
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