People who read it, what were your thoughts? Would you go through the gate? If there is a moral behind the story, what would you say it is?
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang
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I really enjoyed the story, in particular its construction. I kept saying "oh neat" to myself... well I'm easily amused and not at all sophisticated in literature. I remember watching someone draw an incredibly accurate doodle of Gary Numan in a hat (back before we realised Gary Numan is older than Gary Oldman) by just using a few deft lines that didn't even join up. This story reminded me of seeing that as it covers a lot of ground in a few short pages, sneakily avoiding the usual time travel problems like not meeting yourself or sleeping with your grandma. I also liked the idea of using different stories to give the perspectives of different characters to explore the story. I don't know if there's really a moral - but being framed the way it is, I did feel it was a call for virtue - feel free to pick your favourite synonym here. I did also feel like it was a study on the Serenity Prayer. Bless physics so I can never be tempted to see the future or past, but it did make me think quite a lot about whether I'd want to revisit the past to see what was hidden to me at the time.
...never thought of it quite this way, but I would definitely agree with the idea of the story being a study on the Serenity Prayer.I don't know if there's really a moral - but being framed the way it is, I did feel it was a call for virtue - feel free to pick your favourite synonym here. I did also feel like it was a study on the Serenity Prayer.
All the little stories felt almost like parables you'd read from the Old Testament or the like. Maybe there's a moral at the end, but they're not necessarily stories-with-a-moral, if you know what I mean. At this point I can fairly safely say that I haven't been visited by me from the future, but I think I would visit my future self. Or maybe I have visited from the future and arranged some of the strange occurrences in my life thus far, unseen by past me?
On a side note: has anyone read much by the author, Ted Chiang? This IRL book club I'm in has been working through his stories in Exhalation, this being the first of them. Gotta say, I'm getting a bit annoyed by his writing. He's the kind of author that likes to explore cool ideas and concepts, while characters, dialogue, and plot are all inconvenient necessities for his writing which should be avoided when possible. In the other thread ooli mentioned the appeal of the Arabian flair; I was a bit more skeptical of it, really. It's one of those things that feels a bit hokey if you're not taken with it. By now I'm convinced that it was only used to cover up the staleness that he outputs when writing stories. Overall, I did actually like "The Merchant..." though.
I have a copy of Stories of your life and others and while I'm not a fan of everything in there, there are a few gems that I've reread several times. A lot of his writing does seem to be idea-driven, though, so if that's not your cup of tea then I'd maybe not invest in a second book of his :)