Exhalation

Paperback

ISBN:
978-1-5290-1449-5
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(76 reviews)

1 edition

A wonderful collection of stories.

A wonderful collection of stories by an author who does not produce many stories. But the ones he does write are finely crafted and raise questions about people and their reactions to situations that, but for the way the universe was created, could really exist outside the author's imagination.

  • "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate": a tale of a merchant who encounters an alchemist who works magic with a gate that can bring one to the past or the present. Via a series of stories in the story, the nature of the gate is shown and the effect it has on the people who use it to travel to the past or the future and reveals the nature of time travel where the past and future are fixed by the choices already or yet to be made.

  • "Exhalation": an exhilarating story about an unusual world where air itself drives the …

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

I really enjoyed Omphalos in particular.

Others that I'd listen to again are "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", and "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling".

The length of the stories was all over the place, which was a bit distracting at times.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

I have always enjoyed Ted Chiang stories but read in the aggregate I found myself a bit disappointed by a degree of similarity between the stories. They are all well crafted, to be sure, but I will plan to consume them in smaller doses in the future.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

The title piece "Exhalation" didn't do much for me, but the first story "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" (time travel), "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" (Relationship with AI), "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" (human memory and its error), "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom" (parallel universe) were all memorable.

Review of 'Exhalation' on 'Goodreads'

Another great collection from Ted Chiang. He always seems to find the interesting wrinkle in a thought experiment and works it into a compelling story. A world in which scientific evidence supports new world creationism and how that that might affect humanity’s sense of worth. How would rearing AI personalities affect them after decades of life? These are just two stories, but they all have kernels like this.

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