Vive la différence.

Trouble with Ted Chiang’s seemingly pat differentiation is most stories by construction must take their protagonists personally, and see them as special snowflakes: they are, after all, the people whose story is being told, without whom the very universe would not exist. (Think a moment how so much SF ends up as fantasies of political agency. There’s the storyable, world-shaking stuff!) —I like Jo Walton’s better: fantasy’s the stuff we know, in our bones, very much because it isn’t real; SF is that much harder because every jot and tittle you set down must always be checked, and checked again: like anything else that’s solid, science never stops melting into air…