This is a perfect Ted Chiang story – speculative fiction about people and relationships, not really about technology. Chiang weaves two timelines together here. In the first, a journalist investigates a new technology called “Remem”, which provides perfect, searchable access to personal memories. In testing the technology, he learns that his memory of a pivotal event is wrong, which makes him doubt his own self-perception.
In the other, Chiang imagines an encounter between the Tiv people in the 1940s encountering the written word for the first time when the Europeans show up. The newcomers impress upon one of them how important accurate record-keeping is, but a conflict arises with the society’s oral traditions.
Taken together they call into question whether absolute truth in history is desirable, or if we as humans are wired to seek harmony over accuracy.
First published in Subterranean Magazine, 2013, collected in Exhalation: Stories, Alfred A. Knopf, 2019
A Personal Anthology 