In an alternate universe surrounded by solid metal, the people are robots who are powered entirely by compressed air. “Exhalation,” the title story, is an allegory for the concept of entropy (whereby the useful energy available in the universe always decreases over time).
It’s hard to articulate why-just that I feel like Connie Willis did it better in Doomsday Book, even though that was both very western in style and not the main focus of the story. I admit I still felt like it was lacking in some way. Chiang draws on the Islamic value of acceptance of Allah’s will to tell a different kind of time travel story. It’s pretty standard fare, but the interesting part is how he moves the story away from a Western point of view, where people are usually either fighting to change the past or lamenting their inability to do so. The Alchemist (living in medieval Baghdad) builds a wormhole-style time machine that lets you access the past (or the future), but not change it. “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” is a time travel story told Arabian Nights-style with stories within stories. I do still want to comment on the individual stories because there are some very interesting and thought-provoking things in there. What does it mean to be human, or even just alive? How do we face the concepts of free will and destiny in an incomprehensible universe? Chiang does a good job of making the reader think about these questions while letting them draw their own conclusions. I might have wanted to review some of the stories individually, but I feel confident in reviewing the collection as a single unit because of the clear themes running through it. These stories, on the whole, are cleverly told and entertaining, and they ask deep questions of the same kind presented in Arrival.
The linguistics part was fun, but the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is long since debunked, and the idea of learning a new language hacking your brain to give you superpowers is just plain silly, and I think Robert Heinlein did it better in Stranger in a Strange Land.Īll this means that my expectations weren’t high when I started Exhalation: Stories, but I was pleasantly surprised. But I also wasn’t thrilled with the premise. I admit I was underwhelmed by Arrival when it came out, although its worst excesses seem to have been added to the original novella. But this book came up on my book club’s reading list, so I gave it a shot. I generally find full-length novels more interesting.
I don’t read that many short stories, and I almost never read anthologies. This collection compiles nine recent short stories by the author of “Story of Your Life,” on which the movie Arrival was based. One of the top science fiction books of 2019, even reaching the summer reading list of former President Barack Obama, was Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang.
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