Ted Chiang's "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" novella was read (by J.J. Campanella) on Starship Sofa back in 2008, it is one of the best things I've read/listened:
I have to say, having read everything he's written, I'm curious what a full novel would look like, though I'd be happily content if he just came out with a short story/novellete/novella a year forever. He just puts so much thought into his world-building it's incredible.
I couldn't stand Story of Your Life. I felt it made no sense from a physics point of view, and if you're not going to do that then why write science fiction at all? (Whereas I very much enjoyed Lifecycles of Software Objects)
Was also recently available on BBC Radio Four Extra. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jtyf) Sadly, not still available there. (But probably available on Usenet or in a torrent.)
I thought this was an interesting story, but in the end, it was also completely pointless. The premise was good, but instead of following the premise to its logical conclusions based on our current understanding of the world, he proceeded to just make up everything. But what really killed it for me was that the ending was terrible. I don't want to spoil anything, but the events that led to the ending pretty badly contradicted the abilities of the protagonist (notably the self-awareness and "meta-programming").
I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for a Ted Chiang novel - "Story of Your Life" is one of the greatest short stories I have ever read, and others like "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" are spectacular as well.
http://www.starshipsofa.com/2008/03/23/aural-delights-no-15-...
"Understand" is available on archive.org:
http://archive.org/details/TedChiangUnderstand
More stuff is here: http://www.sffaudio.com/?page_id=4811