Stories of Your Life and Others

Ted Chiang presents this story as a transcript of a documentary on calliagnosia, the ability to register human faces without recognizing their beauty or lack thereof. The story includes first-person interviews with several speakers, including Tamera Lyons, first year student at Pembleton University; Maria deSouza, third year student and president of SEE (Students for Equality Everywhere); and Joseph Weingartner, neurologist.

In the world of the story, some underage people have “callies,” neurostats installed at the request of their parents that stimulate brain lesions and cause calliagnosia. There is a movement at Pembleton College to make callies a requirement. Tamera, who attends Saybrook High School where callies are compulsory, is against it; she plans to have her calli turned off the day she turns 18. Maria points out the issue of lookism: “[T]his prejudice against unattractive people is incredibly pervasive” (228). She believes with callies people would ignore the surface and look beyond it.

Neurologist Weingartner explains the concept of calliagnosia, which “by itself can’t eliminate appearance-based discrimination. What it does, in a sense, is even up the odds” (230). It does so by negating human ideas of what beauty is: good skin, symmetry, and facial proportions.