i love the simplicity of ted chiang's writing: no purple prose, no complicated jargon. while reading this collection, i contributed several thousand words to my own short story that i've been in a rut on. i aspire to write science fiction like this. i also found out while reading this that he only writes a story every couple of years; his entire literary output can be compiled in a couple of tomes, yet each story is so cleanly written and conceptually striking.