Includes 'Story of Your Life' the basis for the major motion picture Arrival; starring Amy Adams; Forest Whitaker; Jeremy Renner; and directed by Denis Villeneuve. With his masterful first collection; multiple-award-winning author Ted Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably diverse stories; all told in his trademark precise and evocative prose. From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth with the firmament above; to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty; to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality. . . Chiang's rigorously imagined fantasia invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.