Stories of Your Life and Others is a 2002 collection of science-fiction short stories written roughly over the previous decade, the titular story of which was the inspiration for the movie Arrival (2016). Spanning a number of topics from the Tower of Babel to language to enhanced intelligence, Stories of Your Life and Others brings to light an underappreciated art form. The death of newspapers and magazines has gone hand-in-hand with the death of the short story. While short stories continue to be the bases of popular movies, I'm afraid that soon, the only place short stories will be read is in the classroom, along with poetry and other vestiges of the past.
That is too bad because there are a number of great short-story writers out there, including Stephen King and Haruki Murakami. Philip K. Dick wrote scores of popular short stories in the 1950s and 1960s, but he mostly gave up on the medium, as did other science-fiction writers, for a more lucrative form of expression, the novel. I didn't love every short story in this collection - one never does - but these stories inspire me to look out for more short fiction, and that's the best praise I can give them.
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