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(More customer reviews)Everything else I've read by Ted Chiang has been a slam-dunk work of genius, where all the conceptual threads get tied up in some amazing way. This book is not like that, which is both good and bad. The conceptual stuff here isn't as unique as in his previous work - this territory has been mined, in various ways, going at least as far back as the Asimov robot novels. Nonetheless, Chiang gives an interesting spin on it. The strength of the book is that it sets up a scenario that feels much more real and grounded in human emotion and motivation than his other works have been - more so than most contemporary science fiction, for that matter. The problem is, we don't actually get the character development that the story cries out for. This is a story that, unlike his previous stories, doesn't actually fully work as a conceptual sketch, despite the rich possibilities hinted at. Maybe Chiang has outgrown the short story format, and for some reason hasn't elected to take the plunge into a true novel, which this could easily have been, and a great one at that. So let me throw out some unsolicited advice: Ted, quit your day job and go for it. If this is what your sketch of a novel looks like, I'm already sold on the real thing.
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