Ted Chiang

An author I discovered recently, while randomly searching for good online reading, is Ted Chiang. He writes very deep science fiction. The stories are good and accesibly scientific. He doesn't write that much, but what he does write is good... often award winning. He has two books out. The first is a collection of his short stories called "The Story of Your Life." The second was released recently and is called the "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," although it may have been a limited print. Anyways, his stories I've found.

What's Expected Of Us
A very, very, very short story that will give you a good flavor of what and how Ted Chiang writes.

Understand
Like Flowers for Algernon, but much cooler, because the main character doesn't decay and is a lot more selfish.

Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Awesome story merging religion and time travel. It's a very standard time travelling story, but approached from a very unique mindset.

Division By Zero
It's a good story about the internal and external struggles of a mathematician and her husband who discover math is broken.

Tower of Babel
I liked this one okay. It's about the Tower of Babel.

Hell is the Absence of God
I... didn't really enjoy this one too much. It's a "What if" type story where God (where God is an interpretation of the Christian Bible's Old Testament God) never hid himself from humanity. I would have enjoyed it more if the painting of God in this story wasn't so far from what the real God is like.

There are also some interviews with him out there, you can easily google/wiki them.

Two Short Stories

Two short stories I found online, I enjoyed reading them a lot in the order I found them. So here they are. If you haven't read them before, trust me, they're good sci-fi.

Dispersed By The Sun Melting in the Wind (Rachel Swirsky)
Occupation (Isaac Asimov)

Rinkworks

Rinkworks was introduced to me back in 2000 or so by my high school girlfriend who enjoyed "Book-A-Minute." Honestly, that's one of my least favorite aspects of the site, but so much of that site is good that it is well worth the time to pay a visit. It's a lot of random humor and cleverness. Here's the stuff I like the best:

I Think: If you liked SNL's Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy, there'll probably be a thought or two you enjoy from this.

It's a Bad, Bad, Movie (Read anything with a rating of 5): This guy reviews B-movies that amused him. A special link to my favorite review

Things People Said: These are all good. I'll give some examples of what you'll find, specifically, my favorites. Here goes:

- Accident Quotations -

• "In my attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole."
• "To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front, I struck the pedestrian."
• "The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him."
• "The pedestrian had no idea which direction to go, so I ran over him."
• "I saw the slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car."

- Resume Quotations -

• "My contributions on product launches were based on dreams that I had."
• "I eat computers for lunch."
• "Graduated in the top 66% of my class."
• "Previous experience: Self-employed -- a fiasco."
• "Special skills: I've got a Ph.D. in human feelings."
• "My ruthlessness terrorized the competition and can sometimes offend."
• "ONCE FOCUSED ON AN OBJECTIVE, I BELIEVE MYSELF TO HAVE AN UNDYING LUST FOR SUCCESS WITH ACCURACY AND EFFECIENCY."

- Warning Labels -

• "Do not iron clothes on body." -- On packaging for a Rowenta iron.
• "Warning: This product can burn eyes." -- On a curling iron.
• "Caution: The contents of this bottle should not be fed to fish." -- On a bottle of shampoo for dogs.
• "Warning! This is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants." -- On the packaging for a wristwatch.

- Tenents -

• "I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is running away from the wall."
• "This is to let you know that there is a smell coming from the man next door."
• "The toilet seat is cracked. Where do I stand?"
• "Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces."
• "The toilet is blocked, and we cannot bathe the children until it is cleared."

Orson Scott Card Stories

Orson Scott Card
Without doubt, Orson Scott Card is my favorite author. At his website, many short stories are provided. Here are my favorites. This should take a good chunk of time to read through, and the stories are very enjoyable. If you like them, you should read all his stories.
(a) Atlantis

It's very long and takes a bit before it's interesting, but it's really good once it does. If you've read Pastwatch, you might think you already read this... but you haven't, keep reading.

(b) Ender's Game

If you like the book and haven't read this, I think it's still worthwhile. If you haven't heard of Ender's Game... after reading this, I'm sure you'll want to pick up the full novel.

(c) Homeless in Hell

It's a Christmas story about an interesting interpretation of Hell and Santa Clause.

(d) Missed

It's kinda on the sad side about a guy coping with death, please keep that in mind. Quite short though. One short break's worth.

(e) Prior Restraint

This is a pretty interesting story, but I can't say anything about it without kind of ruining it.

Introduction

Hi, I've spent a lot of time surfing the web and I've found a lot of amusing stuff. It'd be a waste to keep it all to myself, especially considering that you're bored (that's how you found your way here, right?.) So I thought I'd share, exerting as little energy as possible by using this free blog account. Hope you find something there to fight off the boredom. Without further ado. I'll put up something new once every two weeks or so.