Exhalation

Stories

hardcover, 368 pages

Published May 7, 2019 by Knopf.

ISBN:
978-1-101-94788-3
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1043306168

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4 stars (55 reviews)

5 editions

Great, but a notch below the previous book

5 stars

Several great short stories, though the longest one in the book is not as successful. Chiang keeps the spirit of his previous book 'Stories of your life', with short narratives that investigate deep philosophical questions in a creative and engaging way, without being artificial. I found the earlier book to be brilliant cover-to-cover, while this one is more uneven.

Exhalation: stories by Ted Chiang

5 stars

Every story is a thought experiment—like the best episodes of Twilight Zone. I was completely absorbed. I still talk about stories in this collection. "The Great Silence," the story from the perspective of a (critically endangered) Puerto Rican parrot, left me choked up. "Omphalos," a pseudo-epistolary story from a timeline where creationism is real and science and religion are closely intertwined. I'm still telling people about those about 4 months after reading them.

Exhalation

3 stars

Many of the stories are glaringly built around a fixed idea so that the notes at the end are redundant—or are more interesting than the stories themselves. The surrounding texts are more filler than breathing worlds. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", and "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" are the most organic.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Confession time: I am in love with Ted Chiang. Deeply. I fell hard in 2003 with his story “Liking What You See: A Documentary.” Today, having finished “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” I’m head over heels. What a beautiful mind. The stories in this collection all dance around the nature of consciousness; of personality, decisionmaking, determinism. Communication, empathy, freedom, culture, storytelling, adapting to change. Everything we think about what makes us human, he takes in interesting directions. All told with grace, empathy, humility, compassion and gentle humor. All of them, every one, making me stop reading afterward to reflect.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, read these. You’ll grow.

You be good. I love you.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The author is a well-known short-fiction and technical writer with an unusually simple and lucid style at the sentence level. In that regard, he reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro. This book is a collection of 10 good to excellent short stories that do not have strong plot development or dramatic conclusions but have clever and insightful themes with unusually deep intellectual rumination. Chiang is concerned about the intersection of technology and humanity, the costs of progress, linguistics, and the nature of human and animal cognition.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Ted Chiang is perhaps the most cerebral sci-fi author I have read; he accomplishes in 30 pages what Neal Stephenson needs 300 [3,000?] pages to do. (I enjoy Stephenson very much, but he's a slow-burn kind of guy, you know?)

This collection is notable in that I actually enjoyed every story in it. (Okay, okay, "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" could've been a tad shorter — but I still liked it overall.) The standouts for me, however, are "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling," "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," and of course, the eponymous "Exhalation." Special thanks to [a:Amy Sturgis|785795|Amy H. Sturgis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1278628951p2/785795.jpg] for introducing me to that last one several years ago in one of her classes, which largely prompted me to pick up this collection in the first place.

For all the differences in these stories, there is also an …

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Замечательный набор зарисовок, которые автор использует чтобы исследовать большие вопросы: свобода воли, взаимное влияние науки и религии, формирование картины мира через несовершенные воспоминания. Ни одна не даёт ответов, это работа уже для читателя.

Не пять звёзд только из-за того, что The Lifecycle of Software Objects, занимающая треть книги, ставит вопросы, замученные в жанре (миры Чана обычно не слишком типичны для современной научной фантастики, и имеют больше общего с творчеством Филипа Дика - титульный рассказ, Exhalation, вдохновлён Electric Ant - чем с привычными картинами далёкого и не очень будущего, но эту историю я бы условно отнёс к посткиберпанку, и довольно спокойной и степенной даже его разновидности) уже абсолютно до смерти, и не смогла захватить мой интерес какими-то новыми интерпретациями.

Остальные - чистое удовольствие; собственно Exhalation уже была в... хотел написать, что в самом известном (спасибо фильму Arrival) сборнике автора Stories of Your Life and Others, но беглый фактчек это не подтверждает, …

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Such an excellent collection of stories. Just so very good.

'The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling' is my favourite, by far, for how the story dovetails with an anthropological description of writing. Reading 'Omphalos' during the holidays -- a story which revolves around the role of faith in science and research -- was illuminating and interesting. And the beauty of the redemption arc in 'Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom' was a perfect end to the series.

Highly recommended.

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