Ted Chiang is one of the most insightful science fiction writers of our time. His writing has garnered high praise, including four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His short story, “Story of Your Life,” was the basis of the 2016 film Arrival. This volume, which includes a foreword by Chiang and twenty-one short essays by philosophers, analyzes the philosophical significance of Chiang’s popular science fiction. These essays discuss how Chiang’s stories engage with age-old and contemporary philosophical questions pertaining to free will, God, technology, existentialism, beauty, procreation, contradictions, time, human intelligence, alien intelligence, and artificial intelligence. This volume probes terrain that should be of interest to experts in philosophy, while still being accessible to a general audience interested in science fiction. These essays, like Ted Chiang’s writing, demonstrate how excellent science fiction can help us to think about the world and our place in it.

“A worthwhile volume for devoted fans of Chiang’s work as well as academic philosophers and laypersons in love with deep questions, and a notable exception to the publishing trend of over-philosophizing the non-philosophical, The Philosophy of Ted Chiang does some justice to the wonderful stories of one of our greatest living explorers of the human condition.” (Anthony Eagan, Santa Fe Institute, santafe.edu, June 23, 2025)

David Friedell is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Union College (Schenectady, NY). His work has appeared in journals including Philosophical Studies, Analysis, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.