HUGE fan of Ted Chiang. Still have never seen the film about his short story (Arrival), but the stories are all so amazing. He wrote one story where a device is invented to allow a limited amount of data to be sent from one branch of the multiverse to the other that was created by starting the device. So people turn it on before making big decisions to have a way to text/call themselves in another branch to see how the important choice affected their lives. The exploration of that concept ended up making me cry despite it not being a sad/soppy story. Just astonishingly good.

He also wrote one about a brain implant that causes people to be unable to experience “beauty” of people that has some odd biological essentialism behind it, but it seemed more like just sci-fi explanation than relevant for the story itself. A bit lib in its analysis, but still just a great exploration