I have no criticism of their depictions of robots because back then, they didn’t know what a transistor was. “We do know a lot more than Lester del Rey or Isaac Asimov did when they were writing their robot stories. Maybe the AI will make some snarky remarks, just to throw in some color (in the same way you might depict a butler making snarky remarks), but he remains your absolutely loyal servant. ‘‘I wrote The Lifecycle of Software Objects partly out of a long-standing dissatisfaction I’ve had with the way artificial intelligence has been depicted in science fiction: as a very useful butler, an idealized servant who does whatever you want and is hyper-competent but servile.

Much of his short fiction was collected in Stories of Your Life and Others (2007), winner of a Locus Award and a Mythopoeic Award finalist, and he won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992.Ĭhiang lives in Bellevue WA with his partner Marcia Glover. His most recent work, and his longest story yet, novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, was a Nebula Award nominee, and is this year’s winner of the Locus Award. First story ‘‘Tower of Babylon’’ (1990) won a Nebula Award and was a Hugo finalist ‘‘Understand’’ (1991) was a Hugo nominee ‘‘Story of Your Life’’ (1998) won a Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and was a Hugo nominee ‘‘Seventy-Two Letters’’ (2000) won the Sidewise Award and was nominated for Sturgeon, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards ‘‘Hell Is the Absence of God’’ (2001) won the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards, and was a Sturgeon Award finalist ‘‘Liking What You See: A Documentary’’ (2002) was a Sturgeon finalist and made the Tiptree Award shortlist ‘‘The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate’’ (2007) won Hugo and Nebula Awards and was a Sturgeon finalist and ‘‘Exhalation’’ (2008) won the Hugo and British Science Fiction Awards.

While Chiang is not a prolific writer, he is an influential and significant one, winning or being nominated for most of the major genre awards. After college, he took a job in Seattle as a technical writer in the computer industry, writing software documentation, and has worked there ever since. He graduated from Brown University with a CS degree, and attended Clarion the same year.

He studied physics and computer science in college, but gave up on the former when he decided he didn’t want a life in academia. Ted Chiang was born in Port Jefferson NY.

The lifecycle of software objects