The Great Silence

Notes

• First published in May 8, 2015 issue of e-flux.
• Unlike this story's May 2016 publication in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which has 2 co-author credits, the editors of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 chose to credit only Ted Chiang. As explained in Chiang's "Contributor's Note", "There are actually two pieces titled 'The Great Silence,' only one of which can fit in this anthology. ... The video installation [piece], titled The Great Silence, was shown at Philadelphia's Fabric Workshop and Museum as part of an exhibition of Allora and Calzadilla's work. ... In 2015 [they] were asked to contribute to a special issue of the art journal e-flux as part of the 56th Venice Biennale and they suggested publishing the text from our collaboration. I hadn't written the text to stand alone, but it turned out to work pretty well even when removed from its intended context. That was how 'The Great Silence,' the short story, came to be."