Ted Chiang (; pinyin: Jiāng Fēngnán; born 1967) is an American science fiction writer, whose work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards.Chiang's awards, Internet Speculative Fiction Database. He has published the short story collections Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) and Exhalation: Stories (2019). His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). He was an artist in residence at the University of Notre Dame from 2020 to 2021. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker, where he writes on topics related to computing such as artificial intelligence.
Early life and education Chiang was born in 1967 to a Taiwanese American family in Port Jefferson, New York. His Chinese name is Chiang Feng-nan (). Translated from The Imminent Danger of A.I. Is One We’re Not Talking About. Both of his parents are Taiwanese waishengren who were born in mainland China, migrated to Taiwan with their families during the Great Retreat, then immigrated to the United States. His father, Fu-pen Chiang, is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University. His mother ( 2019) was a librarian. Chiang also has a sister who is a physician.
Chiang grew up on Long Island and, at age 15, began submitting science fiction stories to magazines. He later recalled, "When I was a kid, my intention was to become a physicist. That was a perfectly respectable career choice for the son of an engineer. I figured I would be a fiction writer on the side, and that, I think, is perfectly acceptable to Asian parents". In 1989, he graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Science after choosing to study computer science over physics. As an undergraduate, Chiang continued to write sci-fi stories, though they were ultimately unpublished.
Career After attending and graduating from the Clarion Workshop in 1989 Chiang sold his first story, "The Tower of Babylon", to Omni magazine, and was awarded a Nebula Award for it in 1990. His later stories have won numerous other awards, making him one of the most-honored writers in contemporary science fiction. Chiang's first short story collection, Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) was published in 2002 by Tor Books and comprises his first eight stories. The collection was reprinted in 2016 as Arrival to coincide with the adaptation of "Story of Your Life" as the film Arrival.
, Chiang was working as a technical writer in the software industry and resided in Bellevue, Washington, near Seattle. He was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop at UC San Diego in 2012 and 2016.
Chiang's second short story collection, Exhalation: Stories was published in May 2019 by Alfred A. Knopf. Chiang has published eighteen short stories, novelettes, and novellas In 2022, Chiang became a Miller Scholar in the Santa Fe Institute.
In 2023, Chiang was named one of Times 100 most influential people in AI.
Writing style and influences Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke inspired Chiang when he first started writing, and the works of Gene Wolfe, John Crowley and Edward Bryant were his creative influences in college.
Chiang has said that one of the reasons science fiction writing interests him is that it allows him to make philosophical questions "storyable". He enjoys reading explanatory story notes by authors, and includes them in his own collections. He considers these not the "precise response to 'How did you get the idea?,' but it's a way to answer the reader if they knew what the best question to ask [about the story] was".
Reception Critic John Clute has written that Chiang's work has a "tight-hewn and lucid style... [which] has a magnetic effect on the reader".Chiang, SF Encyclopedia. Critic and poet Joyce Carol Oates wrote that Chiang explores "conventional tropes of science fiction in highly unconventional ways" in "teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling" fashion, comparing him favorably to Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree Jr. and Jorge Luis Borges. Writer Peter Watts has praised Chiang's work, writing: "We share a secret prayer, we writers of short SF. We utter it whenever one of our stories is about to appear in public, and it goes like this: Please, Lord. Please, if it be Thy will, don’t let Ted Chiang publish a story this year."
Former US president Barack Obama included Chiang's short story collection Exhalation in his 2019 reading list, praising it as the "best kind of science fiction".
Awards Ted Chiang has won or been nominated for several awards for several of his works.
Chiang turned down a Hugo nomination for his short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary" in 2003, on the grounds that the story was rushed due to editorial pressure and did not turn out as he had really wanted.
Chiang was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2020. In 2024, Chiang won the PEN/Malamud Award for "excellence in the art of the short story" and the American Humanist Association's Inquiry and Innovation Award.
Work Year & Award Category Result Ref."Tower of Babylon"1991 Locus AwardNovelette1991 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 2026-04-29.1990 Nebula AwardNovelette Retrieved 25 April 2026.1991 SF Chronicle AwardNovelette1992 Astounding Award for Best New Writer Retrieved 2026-04-29.1998 Premio IgnotusForeign Story"Division by Zero"1992 Locus AwardShort Story"Understand"1991 Asimov's Readers' PollNovelette1992 Locus AwardNovelette1992 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 2026-04-29.1994 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short StoryStory of Your Life1998 Otherwise AwardHonor Retrieved 25 April 2026.1998 HOMer AwardNovella1999 Locus AwardNovella1999 Hugo AwardNovella Retrieved 2026-04-29.1999 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction Retrieved 25 April 2026.1999 Nebula AwardNovella Retrieved 25 April 2026.2001 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short Story2002 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StorySeventy-Two Letters2000 Sidewise Award for Alternate HistoryShort Form2001 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction2001 World Fantasy AwardNovella2001 Hugo AwardNovella Retrieved 2026-04-29.2001 Locus AwardNovella2002 Hayakawa's S-F Magazine Reader's AwardForeign Short Story"Catching Crumbs from the Table (aka: The Evolution of Human Science)"2001 Locus AwardShort Story"Hell Is the Absence of God"2002 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 2026-04-29.2002 Locus AwardNovelette2002 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction2002 Nebula AwardNovelette Retrieved 25 April 2026.2004 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story2005 Premio IgnotusForeign Story2013 Kurd Laßwitz AwardForeign Work (Translated as Die Hölle ist die Abwesenheit Gottes)"Liking What You See: A Documentary"2002 Otherwise AwardHonor Retrieved 2026-04-29.2003 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction2003 Locus AwardNovelette"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"2007 BSFA AwardShort Fiction2008 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 25 April 2026.2007 Nebula AwardNovelette Retrieved 25 April 2026.2008 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction2008 Locus AwardNovelette2009 Seiun AwardTranslated Short StoryStories of Your Life and Others2003 Locus AwardCollection2007 Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories2017 Washington State Book AwardFiction"Exhalation"2008 BSFA AwardShort Fiction2009 Hugo AwardShort Story Retrieved 25 April 2026.2009 Locus AwardShort Story Retrieved 2026-04-22.2010 Grand Prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short Stories2011 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story2021 Ignotus AwardsForeign Short StoryExhalation: Stories (Collection)2019 Bram Stoker AwardFiction Collection Retrieved 26 April 2026.2019 Goodreads Choice AwardsScience Fiction2019 Ray Bradbury Prize Retrieved 26 April 2026. Retrieved 2026-05-02.2020 Locus AwardCollection Retrieved 2026-04-22.2021 Shelley AwardThe Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work2021 Grand prix de l'ImaginaireForeign Short story/Collection of Foreign Short StoriesThe Lifecycle of Software Objects2011 RUSA CODES Reading ListScience Fiction2011 Hugo AwardNovella Retrieved 2026-04-22.2010 Nebula AwardNovella Retrieved 25 April 2026.2011 Locus AwardNovella Retrieved 2026-04-22.2012 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story Retrieved 25 April 2026.2013 Premio IgnotusForeign Story2014 FantLab's Book of the Year AwardTranslated Novella/Short Story"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"2014 Locus AwardNovelette Retrieved 26 April 2026.2014 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 26 April 2026.2016 Premio IgnotusForeign StoryArrival2017 Hugo AwardDramatic Presentation - Long Form"Omphalos"2020 Hugo AwardNovelette Retrieved 2026-04-22.2020 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction2020 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story2020: Ignyte AwardNovelette2020 Locus AwardNoveletteAnxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom2020 Hugo AwardNovella2019 Nebula AwardNovella Retrieved 25 April 2026. Retrieved 25 April 2026.2020 Seiun AwardTranslated Short Story Retrieved 25 April 2026.2020 Locus AwardNovella"It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning"2020 Locus AwardShort Story"Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art"2024 BSFAShort Non-Fiction
Personal life As of 2016, Chiang lives in Bellevue, Washington, with his long-time partner, Marcia Glover, whom he met while they both were working at Microsoft. She worked as an interface designer and then a photographer.
Works Short stories "Tower of Babylon", Omni, 1990 "Division by Zero", Full Spectrum 3, 1991 "Understand", Asimov's Science Fiction, 1991 "Story of Your Life", Starlight 2, 1998 "The Evolution of Human Science" (also known as "Catching Crumbs from the Table"), Nature, 2000 "Seventy-Two Letters", Vanishing Acts, 2000 "Hell Is the Absence of God", Starlight 3, 2001 "Liking What You See: A Documentary", Stories of Your Life and Others, 2002 "What's Expected of Us", Nature, 2005 "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", Subterranean Press, 2007 and F&SF, September 2007 "Exhalation", Eclipse 2, 2008 "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", Subterranean Press, July 2010 "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny", The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer) June 2011 "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling", Subterranean Press Magazine, August 2013 "The Great Silence", e-flux Journal, May 2015 (included in The Best American Short Stories, 2016) "Omphalos", Exhalation: Stories, 2019 "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", Exhalation: Stories, 2019 "It's 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning", New York Times, 2019
Collections Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor, 2002; republished as Arrival by Picador, 2016) Exhalation: Stories (Knopf, May 2019)
Non-fiction "Frankenstein's Daughter" by Maureen McHugh: An Appreciation, The Ellen Datlow/SCI FICTION Project, December 30, 2005 The Problem of the Traveling Salesman, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #23, November 2008 Reasoning About the Body, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #26, November 2010 Introduction to "Particle Theory", Strange Horizons, October 31, 2011 Bad Character, The New Yorker, May 9, 2016 Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear, BuzzFeed, December 18, 2017 What If Parents Loved Strangers’ Children As Much As Their Own?, The New Yorker, December 31, 2017 Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter, The New Yorker, March 30, 2021 Foreword to The Art and Science of Arrival by Tanya Lapointe, 2022 Foreword to The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure by Xavier Dollo, 2022 ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web, The New Yorker, February 9, 2023 Will A.I. Become the New McKinsey?, The New Yorker, May 4, 2023 Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art, The New Yorker, August 31, 2024 No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious, The Atlantic, June 3, 2026
Lectures Ted Chiang on the Future, MoMA PS1, July 8, 2013