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?
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Popular Highlights in this book
Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.Highlighted by 7,918 Kindle readers- People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.Highlighted by 5,654 Kindle readers
- Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.Highlighted by 4,853 Kindle readers
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Ethics and technology
A typical Ted Chiang story explores some new technology in an ingenious way and ends with an ethical lesson. The first story here, "The Merchant and the Alchemists's Gate," is one of the best, and it involves time travel in ancient Baghdad."The Lifecycle of Software Objects" is about AI with lessons for parenting and the ethical treatment of pets, as well as relationships. "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" explores the possibility that our every action could be recorded and the ethical implications for memory. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" features a device that creates a link between two worlds that have diverged based on a quantum measurement, and all the ways that people might use and misuse it as they interact with their "paraselves."My favorite of these stories is one of the shortest -- "The Great Silence." It began as a collaborative video installation, and Chiang's standalone text became the short story. A link is made between the search for extraterrestrial life and life on Earth from the perspective of Puerto Rican parrots which are going extinct. The parrots are capable of speech, but will fall silent when they are gone.What I miss from Chiang's first collection, "Stories of Your Life and Others," is the darker side of the human situation. Both "Understand" and "Hell Is the Absence of God" are searing in their depiction of evil. There is nothing like that in "Exhalation" -- the ethical intent is admirable, but the stories seem subdued by comparison. The basic ethical lesson has been expressed by the Dalai Lama: "My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."This collection is recommended to those who enjoy stories that are ingenious and earnest.
