Exhalation

The awards are well deserved for the brilliant writing style yet the stories themselves left me so claustrophobic. I just wanted to go outside and sit under a tree and feel human. Hard stories to read without any positive feelings.

Just wow.

I'm a Spanish speaker who fell un love with SF while a teenager, watching 'Viaje a las Estrellas (Star Treck). I couldn't find quality SF in Spanish, so being bilingual started reading Asimov's I Robot series as well as 'Foundation'and Anne McCaffrey's dragons books. What I loved was the 'what if' question in Asimov's books as well as McCaffrey's problems with 'thread'. This book Is all about 'what if'. I'll be reading some more by this author.

I enjoyed his collection of short stories. He tackled a number of interesting concepts.

What a great collection of stories. Each one comes with the right blend of science what-ifs and philosophical musings. Thoroughly enjoyable throughout.

All somehow following certain themes but definitely bring up very specific philosophical questions that kept my group talking for hours for every section. My favorite and personally the best kind of sci-fi takes.

I love these stories and can’t wait to read more

Each of the stories in Ted Chiang’s newest collection “Exhalation” is an answer to that classic science fictional question “What If?”... The first is almost a Arabian Nights flavored fantasy tale about time travel, but the rest are more like traditional science fiction. Each was previously published in diverse places. Like many collections, some will be more interesting to a particular reader than others. However, I think it is a testament to Mr. Chiang’s skill as a writer that all of these stories were really well crafted, and made me think about the story for a while after finishing each one. There are stories about the growing pains of software-based AI that live in a virtual world, and about pneumatic powered life forms who discover that entropy will increase. There is even a story about what the universe would actually look like if young-earth creationism was real. The author provides a nice afterward that tells the history of the stories, and of his thought process in writing them. Definitely a collection worth reading!

Somewhere between an advice column, a book of jokes, and a gentler PKD. I was delighted to find a novel that hugs the everyday humanity of its characters as we observe them deal with the burden that Chiang has woven into their world. The author has eschewed pew pew gadget obsession that is the hallmark of other works and other writers, but the sense of wonder is just as strong. Please enjoy

I found these stories unique and visionary.