Exhalation

The finest stories in the second Ted Chiang collection, Exhalation, are amongst the most thoughtfully written and thought-provoking works of fiction that I've ever read, and every single piece contained herein is a worthwhile journey. This master craftsman investigates, upends, and inverts big ideas by employing scientific tools: His well considered works are exemplar speculative fiction pieces that touch upon concepts no other genre can explore. Although I greatly enjoyed Chiang's first collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, this new one is richer, more scientifically interesting, and very, very emotionally engaging. (An aside: I didn't care for 'Understand' in the first collection---the only story that he's written that I'd describe as commonplace---but I liked or relished all of the others.) Scientific explorations of religious themes/myths are present in both books, but I prefer 'Omphalos' in this new collection over his previous forays ('Hell is the Absence of God,' 'Seventy-Two Letters,' and 'Tower of Babylon'), as it cleverly underpins it's religion with science and then makes superb ontological extrapolations from there. The revelations in this piece about the day of creation and cosmology are truly brilliant fictional conceits. Even though I typically avoid time travel stories, 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate' proves that Chiang's talents, humanitarian voice, and clever plotting can create a strong entry in this category. It's a good, somber yet hopeful story. The ideas explored in the short tales between the long ones are thought-provoking catalysts for discussion on free will ('What's Expected of Us'), communication with non-human beings ('The Great Silence'), and the nature of nurture ('Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny'). Even these smaller works are valuable jewels. The two longest tales are amongst the best in the collection. 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' explores Artificial Intelligence in such a way that the treatment of these beings (digients), their development, and the parameters of their worlds mirror our own kindnesses, weaknesses, and biological biases. In this story, Chiang brilliantly reconciles humanity's best traits and flaws with the inexorable, amoral, and valuable advances of science. 'Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom' is an exploration that asks questions I've never even considered in relation to divergent quantum realities. As was the case with my favorite story from this author's first collection ('Liking What You See: A Documentary'), thoughtful and believable characters investigate inchoate moral issues that an advancement of science has presented, and the conclusions drawn by the inhabitants of this dizzying web continue to linger in my mind... My other favorite story in the collection, and one of the most daring works in this author's entire catalogue is the titular tale, 'Exhalation.' This universe is very different from our own: The protagonist's detective work/surgery/scientific musings are odd, memorable, and deftly done, and the thematic connections between this alien place and our own reality only enrich the experience. The bizarre setting of this tale is atypical for Ted Chiang (and feels a bit more like Greg Egan), but Chiang's subtle characterization, warmth, optimism, and introspection are present and make the big, strange ideas resonate universally and feel very personal. Ted Chiang's second story collection is one of the best science fiction books that I've ever read. I recommend it highly and rank it alongside other favorite works in this genre like Diaspora (Greg Egan), Dark Integers and Other Stories (Greg Egan), Permutation City (Greg Egan), Quarantine (Greg Egan), Appropriate Love (Greg Egan), Childhood's End (Arthur C. Clarke), Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke), Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon), Forge of God (Greg Bear), The Electric Ant (Philip K. Dick), The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Philip K. Dick), Dragon's Egg (Robert L. Forward), Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. LeGuin), The Lotus Eaters (Stanley G. Weinbaum), Raft (Stephen Baxter), The Frame-by-Frame (qntm), I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility (qntm), The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (Cordwainer Smith), and Black Fog (Donald Wandrei).

"The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I am glad that it did, because I owe my exsistance to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less eddy currants generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until that exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on." 🌟🌟🌟🌟Star Ratings of each short story: 1. The Merchant at the Alchemist's Gate (5/5 stars). 2. Exhalation (5/5 stars) 3. What's Expected of Us (4/5 Stars) 4. The Lifecycle of Software Objects (3/5 Stars) 5. Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny (2/5 stars) 6. The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling (5/5 stars) 7. The Great Silence (4/5 stars) 8. Omphalos (3/5 stars) 9. Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom (5/5 stars) *Overall book rating taken from averaging the short story star ratings. 🌟🌟🌟🌟/5 stars 🔥🔥Overall feelings regarding this book: This is the second book that I have read by Ted Chiang and just like "The Story of Our Lives and Others" I got alot of scientific applications for real life abstract ideas and these short stories exploring those ideas. Ted Chiang always seems to do a profound job of really captivating and capturing my attention and my imagination. He really plays with ideas and gets me thinking. While I don't think I can love anything as much as I loved "The Story of Our Lives and Others", I really enjoyed this book. The short stories in this book "Exhalation" where, for the most part, very on brand for him and wonderfully captivating. But there were a few short stories in this I did not find I loved as much as I had hoped and could not relate to. It's not to say they were poorly written (I don't think Ted could manage that even if he tried), and they weren't bad stories, but they were a bit more bound in straight detail and fact rather containing an emotional element that would draw my attention to them. I'm sure you can tell from the ratings above, which stories caught my attention better than others. But this is my biggest reason why "Exhalation" fell shorter for me than "The Story of Our Lives and Others". I still highly recommend this if you enjoy science fiction. Ted Chiang is a true master a science fiction story telling.

Last month (May, 2019), the world became a little brighter – Ted Chiang published Exhalation, a short story collection brimming with another nine short stories. Some of these stories were published previously while others are brand new and original to this collection. All are heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Throughout, this collection contains the same balance of fanciful speculation and hard science fiction as his last collection. This, in short, is very Ted Chiang. Of these nine stories, I was moved to tears by five. I was so moved by three that I immediately sent quotes to friends and family. During one, I had to pause twice: once to cry, and once to head to Amazon and order two more copies for friends. It’s safe to say that I’m a fan. As a whole, the collection is admittedly a little disjointed. Most of the stories in this collection are a familiar length, while one is over a hundred pages. No matter how good the stories are (and they are good – have I said that enough?) this was jarring. The stories also swing wildly in tone and genre. While Chiang’s last collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, covered a similar tonal scope, something about these felt somehow disjointed. Knowing how much care Chiang puts into his work I can only believe that this impression is intentional. I’m afraid, however, that the effect was lost on me. Exhalation: As the titular story from this collection, Exhalation may be perfect. I hardly know what to say about it. The story is breathtaking and very, very Chiang. Told from the perspective of characters it’s immediately apparent are not entirely human, it covers so many of the science fiction throughlines: the impact scientific advancement has on society, the way personal perspectives limit research, where consciousness comes from, where memory resides. "None of us can remember much more than a hundred years in the past, and written records – accounts that we ourselves inscribed but have scant memory of doing so – extend only a few hundred years before that. How many years did we live before the beginning of written history? Where did we come from?" Full disclosure: this is the story that moved me so thoroughly I had to buy two more copies for friends. They’re currently in transit. I fully expect that 15 years from now I’ll still be referencing this story (one specific visual in particular). Be forewarned. The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling: This story is a bit of a sleeper. It’s on the longer side for this collection (still not even half the length of the longest story) and uses every page to great effect. While it’s entirely science fiction in familiar ways, Chiang introduces its themes subtly and carefully, so that you’re half-way through before you realize the water around you is boiling and you’re lost to the story. Or at least I was. It may be that I was easy prey for this one, though. It lines up a lot of my favorite themes, delivering them in a way that’s simultaneously intriguingly fresh and comfortingly familiar. It’s also one of the only stories that didn’t remind me of other works of fiction. For me, at least, while it played with all these familiar and beloved bits it was somehow not just unique but singular in that special way only art can be. This story, too, contained the most human characters. There’s something about them – their cares, their woes – that felt elevated, and the characters were more vivid and realized than you really find in short fiction. "Jijingi realized that, if he thought hard about it, he was now able to identify the words when people spoke in an ordinary conversation. The sounds that came from a person’s mouth hadn’t changed, but he understood them differently; he was aware of the pieces from which the whole was made. He himself had been speaking in words all along. He just hadn’t known it until now." Omphalos: Omphalos is perhaps the most ponderous inclusion in this collection. It’s a meditative read, with a very narrow narrative perspective, assembled solely of ruminations. It is a meditation on nothing short of man’s place in the universe, and is exemplar of what I believe is Chiang’s great strength – a fully-realized fictional world, whose oddities, rules, and circumstances he illustrates perfectly as the narrative unfolds. I’ve not encountered anyone does this better than he. "I began my lecture by discussing the growth rings of a tree trunk, and how the thickness of each ring depends on the rainfall during that year of the tree’s growth, so that a succession of narrow rings indicated a period of drought. I explained that by counting back from the year a tree was felled, we can compile a chronology of weather patterns going back many decades, beyond the memory of any person living. The past has left its traces on the world, and we only have to know how to read them." Imagine, now, a world in which the oldest trees have no growth rings at their core. In which the oldest mammals have no growth plates in their bones. What could the far reaches of the past in this world hold? What mystery? What miracle?

Exhalation: Stories By Ted Chiang I loved one of these stories so much I didn’t want it to end. It just seemed to get going when the story stopped and I had to invent its future for it. Let me try to describe why I liked it so much. First, it dealt with automation and especially a future General Intelligence. It describes two people accidentally thrown together in creating these intelligences: one a former zoo handler and the other a designer of digital prosthetics and animation forms. The conception of these intelligences is so apt with what we currently know that Chiang is either a terrific scientist, a brilliant interlocutor of science fiction like William Gibson, or just lucky; or maybe all three. Some group had created a software design for a digital intelligence that can only live in an elaborate Digital Earth, a kind of virtual space more detailed and complete than anything we have now. The software learns from experience and interactions with humans. The interactions bit makes them learn very slowly because they rely on humans in real time and cannot supercharge their learning at their own speed, unlike the Deep learning infants that focus on Go or other digital games. It takes time and much effort to produce adults in this scheme. At first the product and its intelligence forms are a hit and many, many people adopt them to help them learn; but then the intrinsic reward of creating a digital intelligence subsides and the difficulty of engaging these “children” constantly wearies everyone except a few. Our heroes are of course among the few; and they sort of fall in love with each other; but they certainly fall in love with their creations. Derek cares for variants of the same digital life form (digient) named Marco and Polo; and Ana cares for one Jax. At one point Ana and Jax declare love for each other; but it is not a sensual love, only a platonic one since Jax has no genitalia. The complication is that the digital world the digients inhabit is dying too from lack of involvement; and the digients are getting bored with its sterility. The human “parents” of the digients try to find a way to move their “children” into new digital worlds but find the expense and technical challenge overwhelming. A love/sex provider company offers to answer their needs with a proposal to create sex partners out of variants of the digient “children”. Twenty years have passed, and some of the digients are no longer children, but eager to explore the possibilities of adult life, including sex. Derek, who has an unsatisfied longing for Eva, agrees to allow his “children” to enroll. Ana, in love with Jax, cannot stand the thought of a variant of Jax involved with anyone else. That’s where the short story ends. There are so many multivariate avenues for its continuation. The story is so well written, I don’t want my half assed variants: I want Chiang’s! Why do I love this story so much? First, I think that he is right on about how long a real general intelligence will have to survive to become intelligent. Using some future variant of current neural networks and CNNs, a real digient will need to avoid the pitfalls and misconceptions of human development. It will have to start out believing in all the right things: physics, chemistry, evolution; gravity; AI itself. It cannot have ill defined ideas about gods, magic, and superstitions of all kinds. Those are the big misconceptions; but they have daily implications too: such as that things are solid; the future is unknowable; water is alive; objects have intentions; etc. etc. etc. Chiang doesn’t mention any of this, and that’s ok because he got the big idea right: digients have lots to learn and it will take them many years to get it right. Now, they could have done this on the internet; but as we all know, outside of Wikipedia, the internet is a mess, and personal experience is much better. The world and its experience don’t have all the hmuan biases and misconceptions built into them. What I really like is something that Chiang doesn’t deal with either, but I think he gets it right: platonic love. Yes, Jax and Ana; and probably Derek, Marco, and Polo all fall in love but it has nothing to do with sex. Do we all have an idea of what is beautiful? Of course! We build it out of our experience. We love our parents; ourselves, and then a growing body of community around us. We connect our parent’s faces, actions, intentions, etc. with this love. We connect our own faces and actions and intentions with this love. Ditto with out community. Wen we find someone else who correlates with all this, especially the faces and actions, of course we fall in love. Is there a sensual, sexual aspect of this? Of course. But there is also a huge platonic, non-sexual component. If the digients have an active pattern recognition and classification system, they too will build representations of their “parents” and friends, and those too will become the basis of a platonic but powerful love. Chiang got that right. Would someone with a powerful platonic affection for someone else, want to steep themselves into the mystery of sexual love? Why not? How will this sexual attachment between Jax, Marco, Polo, and their new variants work out in the hothouse of sexual exploration that the new company will ask them to explore? This is too fascinating a prospect to let drop. Hopefully Chiang will continue this short story into the future. Will Ana become part of Jax’ sexual exploration once Derek and his cohorts of animators add the necessary genitalia. Will the sensory input from those prosthetics be added in a coherent way to amplify the digients’ intellectual development. Here Chiang may have made a mistake. He proposes that there is a master reward table that governs the digients’ preferences in a fundamental way. While some sensory rewards are undoubtedly built in: such as the preferences for sweet and complex flavors; or even the fear of red colored strange objects, or snakelike moving things; the more higher order preferences that guide our values and our lives are surely embedded within the cognitive architectures of our knowledge structures; not in anything so simplistic as a basic table of values. But that is something the scientists could discover in their exploration of sexuality; which is the key to the further development of this story. The subtlety and nuance of Ana and Derek’s inhibited relationship makes me believe that Chiang can deal with this faithfully, although more prolific readers of Chiang will know if he has built up complex earthy sexual relationships before.

Ted Chiang is one of the great short story writers of the last twenty years. Even his minor efforts are good, and his best works rank among the best SF and fantasy stories being written. He's won four Hugos and four Nebulas, and one of his best stories -- "Story of Your Life" -- was turned into one of the best recent SF movies, Arrival. Most of his stories feature some fantastic, inventive idea or perspective, usually then investigated in remarkable detail. I, like many readers, first encountered Chiang's work with his wonderful and memorable short story "Tower of Babylon." The story treats the construction of the gigantic tower, built to reach heaven, described in the Bible, as a real thing, and explores the details from the point of view of the workers. It's amazing and utterly unforgettable, even to those readers (like me at times) whose memory of many stories fades over time. Exhalation is his latest collection (though in this case, "latest" means "second" -- Chiang is not a prolific writer). It includes nine memorable stories, all of which are worth reading, and all centering on an intriguing idea. The title story explores the world of mechanical creatures, one of whom decides to look at his own mind, to determine why their time perspective seems to be changing. The idea itself is fascinating, as are the details Chiang works out. And in the end it's also a story about entropy. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" looks at AI and how it would develop -- not fully formed, as in so many stories, but as something that has to be nurtured and raised, like a pet or a child. It's also a story of human commitment (and often lack of commitment) and obsession. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" takes the idea of the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics, and explores what it would be like if we had a device that could enable us to communicate with our other self in a parallel world after a divergent point, but only for a short time. The device has a number of bits of information that can be exchanged (and Chiang rigorously explains why this is so), and after that there is no way for further communication to take place. How would this impact human behavior? What would we do with such a device? There isn't just one answer. What if the universe really had been created several thousand years ago, complete with everything from animals and humans, to the stars in the sky. "Omphalos" is about how science and scientists in such a world would function. How would the earliest humans or the earliest animals differ from others (beyond just not having navels)? How about plants? (No tree rings earlier than a certain point is one answer.) As always, Chiang takes an intriguing premise and works out the details. Other stories explore free will, time travel, child rearing, and even the intelligence of parrots (yes, and it's a touching story). Highly recommended.

This is my first experience with Chiang and I really enjoyed his writing. The thoughts and ideas were crafted in such a unique way. I loved the depth of his work and the invitation to really consider the consequences of various choices and situations.

Exhalation was good. What I was expecting from all the other stories. The others did not stick with me so much. The anxiety is dizziness of freedom was not bad but still not like Exhalation.

Ted Chiang's Exhalation is a brilliant collection of short stories that will challenge your imagination and leave you pondering the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything in between. Each story is a masterpiece of thought-provoking science fiction, exploring complex themes and ideas in a way that is both entertaining and intellectually stimulating. What sets Exhalation apart from other sci-fi works is Chiang's unparalleled ability to craft stories that are simultaneously poetic and scientific. His writing style is elegant and precise, with a deep understanding of the human condition that shines through in every tale. One of the standout stories in the collection is "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a time-travel story that explores the nature of regret and the idea that our past mistakes can ultimately lead us to our greatest triumphs. Another notable story is "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," a tale about artificial intelligence and the ethics of creating life that is both heart-warming and thought-provoking. Exhalation has received widespread critical acclaim and it's easy to see why, as each story is a beautifully crafted gem that will stay with you long after you've finished reading. In conclusion, if you're a fan of science fiction that challenges your mind and leaves you with a sense of wonder, then Ted Chiang's Exhalation is an absolute must-read. It's a tour-de-force of storytelling that will leave you breathless and wanting more

Uno dei migliori libri di FS che abbia mai letto. Un grande autore!

Ted Chiang comes across as a thoughtful, intelligent, warm and dignified person in these endearing stories. Highly revered in the sf world, he seems set to command a wider audience with the publication of this book. The saddest story is one where a parrot ponders the lack of human insight into its intelligence and worldview even as humans destroy parrot habitat and look for signs of intelligent life in space. It’s based on the experience of Irene Pepperberg with African grey parrot Alex who would say to her, “Be good. I love you. Goodbye.” In the opening story a merchant in old Baghdad discovers both a time travel gate and the fact that although the past cannot be changed our understanding of life can be. He finds forgiveness. In another story, people explore determinism or the lack of it in establishing character in a world where through “prisms” they can access alternative versions of themselves in a constantly branching universe. In another, a mechanical scientist, on discovering the entropy that will lead to the extinction of his culture leaves a warm message for the archaeologists of the future. A long story (more a novella) explores the ethical concerns and duties humans will have towards AI creatures as a former zookeeper, re-trained in software, parents a “digient”. Along the same lines, a supposed catalogue for an exhibition of old machines describes the effect on a child of being reared by a mechanical nanny. Banished to a home for the feeble-minded, it becomes apparent to a scientist that the boy is only capable of interacting with machines. In notes at the end, where Chiang describes what prompted the stories, we learn that the origin of this story is the work of an early 20th C psychologist who warned against showing affection to children. His own suffered depression and suicide attempts, one succeeding. Another long story - two stories in one - compares the similar effect of literacy on an oral culture and a future technology which accurately preserves memories. A father finds that he has built his concept of self on a false memory, ascribing to his daughter harsh words which were in fact said by him. Newly humbled, he seeks her forgiveness. It will be apparent that Chiang is deeply concerned with questions that have fascinated us for ages: determinism/free will, our ethical and humane duties to other creatures of all types, seeing clearly and unfearingly (if that’s a word). Heartily recommended, all the more so for being hopeful, rather than dystopian.

The feeling I had when the lights went on after ‘Arrival’, the movie, is comparable to the feeling after finishing this book, and after most of the stories it contains. The words would be ‘gentleness’, and ‘optimism’. English is not my first language; I only started reading English books when I was in my forties (some 30 years ago), but that is not what made some of these stories difficult to read: sometimes I just didn’t feel intelligent enough to follow Mr Chiang’s lines of reasoning. But time and again I did not end up being intimidated but impressed and touched. The precious time I spent with this book, in the company of such a gentle mind, I felt a better version of myself.

I do not need to tell you that much about this book. I am just happy that I had the opportunity to read such wonderful, well thought out stories. Just read Ted Chiang. He is one of the bests in speculative fiction and his story telling style is so satisfying. Just read all his work; please. You'll do yourself a huge favor.

Ted Chiang is a magician. His stories take you down roads that seem almost dreamlike. His settings, characters and plotlines are almost surreal. Exhalation is a book of parables, set in a near-future, embedded in timelessness.