2 stars/story average. Not super impressed with this collection. ☹️

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate: 3.5
I'm a sucker for time travel, so I enjoyed this one, though it wasn't terribly profound or anything. I also find it interesting that Chiang writes Muslim characters with a bit more respect than he does his Christian characters…

Exhalation: 3.5
This was about artificial life on the verge of extinction. It was interesting, but not mind-blowing.

What's Expected of Us: 1.0
Hated the premise of this one. It was essentially Calvinism without God, and I don't even agree with actual Calvinism, which acknowledges God.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects: 1.0
The longest story in the book, by far. Too long… it dragged on forever. There was also profanity and a lot of crude sexual references.

Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny: 1.0
This was sad and rather pointless. It also didn't really seem like SciFi.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling: 3.0
There were two different story lines in this: one modern, one "historical." The modern one was interesting, but the other one rubbed me the wrong way, as it depicted a Christian missionary in a bad light.

The Great Silence: 1.0
This wasn't really SciFi, for starters. It was very boring. And it also referenced evolutionary theory as fact.

Omphalos: 1.0
The author's personal beliefs about religion/Christianity were very obvious in this one… and wrong. We cannot find purpose or truth apart from God.

Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom: 2.5
This story about parallel worlds had potential, but it was too long and I didn't care about any of the characters. ( )

Mind blowing! This is my first time reading Ted Chiang’s stories and every single one was so impactful and really made me think deeper and more critically about things that we often don’t question. They were also just so well written I wanted to keep going to the end of each story in one sitting. The last story, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” was the only one that started a little slower for me, but still by the end I found it to be very insightful and intriguing.

Reading the story notes on the inspirations and how these stories came into being at the end was also cool. I think my favorite story would have to be the longest one in this collection: “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.” That one really drew me in, and yet I have to say that really and truly each story has stayed with me. This story in particular focuses on the topic of AI and what rights AI “should” have, who gets to decide that, and why. And then it also looks more specifically at the way humans and AI may interact and how those interactions may play out. The AI must interact with the world and continue developing just as humans do, so it would make sense that it would also take some time to develop and during that time, would also need some guiding and nurturing presence. But how would humans respond to that need and what ways would those willing to provide these things go about doing so?

My favorite type of time travel story is the one in which nothing you can do in your traveling can actually change the present, and yet this doesn’t matter so much when you realize the importance of simply gaining a better understanding or a different view of something from your past— essentially, even though nothing will be different in the general sense when you return from the journey, you yourself will be changed as a person. This is the kind of time travel that is seen in the first story of this collection, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.”

“Exhalation” dives into the idea of the world becoming increasingly chaotic since it’s beginning and how it constantly strives for a balance but in doing so gets ever closer to an equilibrium. One of my favorite quotes is from this story: “I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a yearning to see what can arise from a universe’s exhalation…Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plentitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.”

“What’s Expected of Us” really taps into our need for a purpose and the link that this often has with the search for where we came from and why. Many seek their purpose from the creator they place their faith in, and some seek purpose within the environment around them and what they believe this reflects on themselves. But what if we found out through scientific observations that we weren’t created on purpose? And therefore, that we have no purpose given to us? How would this effect our view of ourselves and others? How would it effect our ability to make choices and find meaning in anything we do?

The remaining stories go into similar themes, questioning the way humans interact with one another and non human beings and objects. Questioning what possibilities may arise in our deepening relationship with and dependence upon technology. Questioning when and why a choice matters against the platform of the universe. This will only be the beginning of my readings into Ted Chiang’s imaginatively and immaculately rendered speculations on humanity.

Exhalation: 5/5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

( )

I cannot recall the last time I tore through a collection of short fiction this quickly. In less than a day, I voraciously consumed all 350 pages of this literary delight. All speculative fiction, primarily short stories with a couple of novelettes and even a piece of flash fiction, these tales explore philosophically provocative worlds without missing out on a moment of intrigue or excitement. Ominous elements balance in harmony with hope as we are invited to explore our humanity in nine deftly created settings. Ted Chiang is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a true master of the short form. ( )

FYI - This collection contains:
-The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
-Exhalation
-What's Expected of Us
-The Lifecycle of Software Objects
-Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny
-The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling
-The Great Silence
-Omphalos
-Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

"The rewards will be purely intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough?" (pg. 87)

A disappointing follow-up to Stories of Your Life and Others, for none of Ted Chiang's stories in Exhalation match those in his debut volume, and many compound the existing errors in his writing. I wrote in my review of his first collection that they were inventive and cerebral high-concepts occasionally let down by a lack of storytelling meat. The same is true here but, unfortunately, that word "occasionally" must now be replaced by the word "frequently".

The stories in Exhalation are better thought experiments than they are stories, and Chiang's background as a technical writer is painfully apparent. Many are soulless, relying on storytelling cliché even while the subjects they discuss – time travel, AI, quantum science, and so on – are excellent. Chiang can provide a lot of verisimilitude by the depth of thought which he provides to his topics, but much of this good work is then undone by the simplistic characterisation and laboured storytelling.

It leads to a very dissatisfying read; many readers will become bored with the stories long before Chiang does, and even those who are fascinated by the topics may tire as Chiang turns his ideas over and over until the soil holding them is exhausted. Few of the stories end emphatically or with resolution – scant reward for those who have persevered. The only story which stands out (and which would deserve to be in Stories of Your Life and Others – though that too was a flawed collection) is the opener, 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate', which leans on an Arabian Nights writing style to provide some storytelling spark. But the stories of Exhalation are too often compelling ideas without real stories attached, and Chiang's highly dexterous ideas-based writing is starkly attached to some rather embarrassingly simplistic storytelling. If only he could get the balance right, he'd be a formidable writer rather than just a fêted one. ( )