I would have much preferred the Chiang story if it didn't have the clumsy, borderline-racist "LOLOL THE PRIMITIVES JUST DISCOVERED WRITING AND IT IS LIKE MAGIC TO THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE ORAL TRADITION PEOPLES!!!!!1!!!" B-plot. Though I don't expect the average reader on the street to know this, the "writing seems like magic to primitives" trope is a really really gross racist theme in nineteenth-century anthropology, and though Chiang tried to invert it, I don't think he succeeded in any productive way ("MAYBE the MISSIONARIES are the REAL PRIMITVES!" is not a very interesting subtext IMO). A lot of my friends were really smitten by this story and I think it's likely that it'll win, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I wish he'd stuck with the memory-machine bits, which were creative and clever and led to a neat, surprising ending
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Hmm. I found the exploration of how being able to store information in writing changes cultures and the way people think about things a) interesting in its own right, and b) a really useful and strong parallel to the exploration of how being able to record every memory precisely would change cultures and the way people think about things. Do you think there are ways of writing about the general idea that could avoid some of the ikky racist themes that made you uncomfortable?
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