Name: Anthony Teo's review of Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Item: Exhalation
Rating: 4.5
Author: Anthony Teo

Ted Chiang

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • ESQUIRE • VOX • THE A.V. CLUB • THE GUARDIAN • FINANCIAL TIMES • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS “Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human. The best kind of science fiction.” —Barack Obama, via Facebook "THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AS AN ENORMOUS BREATH BEING HELD." In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will. Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.

Stories

Exhalation

casey

Some humans theorize that intelligent species go extinct before they can expand into outer space. If they're correct, then the hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard.

But, I wondered, if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away?

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, and that is enough.

Because even if a universe's life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.

In this way Hassan lived the happiest of lives until he was overtaken by death, breaker of ties and destroyer of delights.

Anthony Teo

Some absolutely brilliant, gripping stories here. One or two didn’t quite hit for me, but most did. Conceptually 

 sci-fi for our era in particular. (The audiobook version I listened to didn’t have the greatest narrators, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment too much.)

Naomi J.

Some absolutely brilliant, gripping stories here. One or two didn’t quite hit for me, but most did. Conceptually fascinating sci-fi for our era in particular. (The audiobook version I listened to didn’t have the greatest narrators, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment too much.)

Now I must give myself away into the future.

Air Abhipraya

A strong collection of short stories exploring interesting topics in fresh ways. The first 2 stories were my favorite. Some stories were a little open ended and slow for my liking, but solid overall. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others - the basis for the Academy Award nominated film Arrival - comes a groundbreaking second collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories.In 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate', a portal through time forces a fabric-seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary 'Exhalation', an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects', a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two previously unpublished stories: 'Omphalos' and 'Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom'. In Exhalation, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth - What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? - and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

A thought provoking collection of short stories that does a wonderful job of putting regular people at the heart of speculative sci-fi stories. 

There are no great heroes, just normal people doing things they believe are good. 

The book makes you evaluate some big questions and look at some commonplace things in a new light. 

Relatively easy to read and worthy of recommendation.

Liam Richardson

A thought provoking collection of short stories that does a wonderful job of putting regular people at the heart of speculative sci-fi stories. 

There are no great heroes, just normal people doing things they believe are good. 

The book makes you evaluate some big questions and look at some commonplace things in a new light. 

Relatively easy to read and worthy of recommendation.

great collection of stories with some moments of insight in humanity. particularly enjoyed the merchant and the alchemist's gate, the great silence, and anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Eva Ströberg

Crazy awesome sci-fi short stories, although some are better than the others.

I do like the fantasy worlds that Ted Chiang created with this book, and the first story about the alchemist is also very good. It's up in one of my fave sci fi books now.

Kevin Wammer

After Story of Your Life another collection of Ted Chiang shortstories. Not as good as the first one, but still a great read. I want more.

Patrick Book

I’ll always carve out some time for humanist sci-fi. Chiang has some intriguing ideas!

Ryan Mateyk

My brain has never felt bigger than when reading these stories. Incredibly thought provoking!

Ted Chiang's style has the same steady, metronomic pace as that of an exam scenario writer, avoiding any flair and unnecessary imagery. But instead of asking us to calculate how many leftover fish we have, we're given depictions of the moral choices that might be common in our cybernetic future and asked to contemplate them as if they were here in the world today. The lack of any commonplace SciFi tropes or attempts at impressive visuals means every line is dedicated to the story's ideas. This is a good thing, because Ted's ideas are phenomenal in their own right. The Lifecycle of Software Object kept my mind in a constant runaway state as I thought about AI rights and our obligations to them, each page turned in a dazed state. That same actuarial style - and Ted's light use of realistic jargon - makes it easy to imagine these moral choices as being tangibly relevant to us. 

The only downside, of course, is that unless the dilemmas are of any interest to you in the first place, the underlying story will be as dry and boring as a biscuit. I haven't read anything else by Ted at this time; all I can say is this: this approach could have easily failed if he had chosen a slightly less interesting topic.

Natalie

Imaginative and full of optimism for the goodness of humans. Admittedly I'm biased towards literary fiction and often found the simplistic narrative-building uninspiring. Nevertheless, this collection is eye-opening to the possibilities of existential inquiry afforded by sci-fi.

mic shulman

From an award-winning science fiction writer (whose short story "The Story of Your Life" was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated movie Arrival), the long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: "Omphalos" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom." In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth--What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?--and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

Quinn Tenorio

Having never read a series of short stores like this before, I enjoyed most of them, and liked the topics/concepts that were explored. Being a fan of science fiction and fantasy, it was nice to be able to read shorter stories where I didn't need to understand lots of information. Chiang also does a good job of providing just enough information despite starting a story in the 'middle' of the action. As much as I liked some of the stories, a few of them were a bit boring or sometimes difficult to get through.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human. The best kind of science fiction." --Barack Obama From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others--the basis for the Academy Award -nominated film Arrival: a groundbreaking new collection of short fiction. "THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AS AN ENORMOUS BREATH BEING HELD." In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity's oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will. Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic--revelatory.

Aamna

Not what I was expecting :/

Most of the stories felt forced, as if he was given an assignment and he had to incorporate a feature into the story. Quite disappointed. Will have to re-read his first collection to recover from this one.

Lee Schneider

Chiang's work feels like one of the most prominent examples that writers should also be thinkers and that that is particularly applicable for genre writers who are able to test out ideas in extremeties that our reality, as it exists, may not allow. In this endeavour, each of the short stories from the collection prompts questions about humanity and society, a number of which truly needed me to sit down with them.

The stories that really stuck with me were "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "Exhalation" (I feel like the self-surgery scene was one of the most cinematic scenes I have ever read), "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (when in his notes Chiang says that AI would require not training but parenting, I wish the techbros driving AI could read this and get it) and "The Great Silence". "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" was not one I enjoyed quite as much as the ones before but it was definitely one that I still keep turning in my head, too.

Chiang's work feels like one of the most prominent examples that writers should also be thinkers and that that is particularly applicable for genre writers who are able to test out ideas in extremeties that our reality, as it exists, may not allow. In this endeavour, each of the short stories from the collection prompts questions about humanity and society, a number of which truly needed me to sit down with them.

The stories that really stuck with me were "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "Exhalation" (I feel like the self-surgery scene was one of the most cinematic scenes I have ever read), "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (when in his notes Chiang says that AI would require not training but parenting, I wish the techbros driving AI could read this and get it) and "The Great Silence". "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" was not one I enjoyed quite as much as the ones before but it was definitely one that I still keep turning in my head, too.

Alan

Chiang’s stories take hold quickly; he has a knack for reframing a scientific idea through a fictional conceit, then manufacturing a wholly consistent and interesting world around it. I picture worry stones with supple indentations and the sheen of finger oils, the marks of countless passes by a warm hand.

Jack Cheng

Rohit Arondekar

Ted Chiang is very good at creating worlds that feel familiar except for some detail that seems ordinary at first, but then you realise that it has a profound effect, and the author is brilliant at exploiting this same yet different kind of middle-world. The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, Omphalos, and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling were my favourite stories from this collection.

Amy Place

I just wasn't thrilled with the writing style. The stories read like someone with an advanced degree in theoretical physics is taking an undergrad writing workshop with a teacher who is too enthusiastic about any sign of creativity.

But at the same time, I am still thinking about some of these stories days later, and I know I will have the concepts on my mind for a while yet.

Kathy Luo

The only reason it's not a 5 is because I felt like the whole wasn't greater than the sum of its parts, and that's an important factor to me when I read a collection

That being said, each story is individually brilliant--really beautiful, meticulous blends of scifi and philosophy with human emotions, struggles and vices. I particularly loved: 

- The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects
- The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling 
and 
- The Great Silence

Amazing. Comes incredibly close to the first collection — some stories surpass.

I'm writing this review a few weeks after I read the book, and the one story that stuck out the most is still the Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate. 

I also really enjoyed "What's Expected of Us" and "Omphalos". Themes of free will intrigue, and in the way Chiang writes about them, satisfy me. 

Chiang handles unravelling characters and themes very well - often keeping the reader on edge. As he builds his pseudo-earth worlds, mirroring aspects of reality but moving us into the future (and sometimes the past) without warning, Chiang dispels assumptions and builds compelling comparisons to the world we live in today without forcing the stories into our present lives. In doing so, he somehow makes them feel more applicable.

I wish I could experience reading these for the first time again. And that says a lot, because I was sick with food poisoning when I read most of this book.

Vishwa

Amazing. Comes incredibly close to the first collection — some stories surpass.

I'm writing this review a few weeks after I read the book, and the one story that stuck out the most is still the Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate. 

I also really enjoyed "What's Expected of Us" and "Omphalos". Themes of free will intrigue, and in the way Chiang writes about them, satisfy me. 

Chiang handles unravelling characters and themes very well - often keeping the reader on edge. As he builds his pseudo-earth worlds, mirroring aspects of reality but moving us into the future (and sometimes the past) without warning, Chiang dispels assumptions and builds compelling comparisons to the world we live in today without forcing the stories into our present lives. In doing so, he somehow makes them feel more applicable.

I wish I could experience reading these for the first time again. And that says a lot, because I was sick with food poisoning when I read most of this book.

Gavin

Wonderful again, worth the wait - 9 stories (including 4 novellas) in 12 years. The defamiliarisation, the perceptual aid in these is the equal of great philosophical work.

The best bit is his patience and magnanimity with folk psychology. He is much more empathetic with bad philosophy that I am; he builds people very different from himself or me (a worried father writing a moral-panic piece about perfect recall; a young-earth creationist tipped into despair by being god's practice shot), and then around page 10 he flips their philosophy, showing how it unravels in the face of reality, and so makes me look like an idiot zealot for being irritated by them.
many people became convinced that [alt-timeline creation devices] nullified the moral weight of their actions. Few acted so rashly as to commit murder or other felonies, but...

In "What's Expected of Us" he has "one-third" of people driven mad by an intuitive demonstration of their lack of 'libertarian' free will. I don't doubt that some would be, but there's no way that one-third of people are that abstract, that philosophically susceptible. The world would look so different if they were. (We have "paradox-absorbing crumple zones", as Futurama puts it.) And as for the ones who did go mad, I would be tutting at them for letting bad philosophy confuse them to death.

The title story is just perfect, the story of a robot dissecting itself and thereby learning of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its emotional implications. (view spoiler)[It's powerful because it's us. Our waste air is waste heat. Our pressure gradient is a proton gradient.  (hide spoiler)]

Another distinctive thing: Half the stories have a pair of contrasting narrators, objective and subjective. One of these voices is merely expository, apparently styleless. But it just works.

 I was primed to dislike "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" from the title alone: despite popular usage, feelings are neither true or false, but instead grounded or ungrounded, helpful or unhelpful. (I was shocked to find this activist taxonomy very useful: valid / justified / effective.) But again it's larger than me: it links the great oral-to-literate transition to a near-future one from analogue-literate to digital-literate. God it's good, like Black Mirror if it wasn't relentlessly scaremongering and cheap.


Ranked:
1. "Exhalation".
2. "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"
3. "Omphalos"
4. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"
5. "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom"
6. "The Great Silence"
7. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects"
8. "What's Expected of Us"
9. "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny"

Not as good as his first collection, but what is? (With Le Guin and Wolfe gone, he might be the reigning master.)

Misha

1. The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
2. Omphalos
3. Exhalation
4. The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
5. Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom
6. The Great Silence
7. What's Expected of Us
8. The Lifecycle of Software Objects
9. Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny

Anthony Teo &
Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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Exhalation by Ted Chiang