Exhalation

Stories

By: Ted Chiang

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, Amy Landon, Ted Chiang

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.

Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

©2019 Ted Chiang (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • ESQUIRE • VOX • THE A.V. CLUB • THE GUARDIAN • FINANCIAL TIMES • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

“Lean, relentless, and incandescent.” —Colson Whitehead

“Illuminating, thrilling. . . . Like such eclectic predecessors as Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, China Miéville, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Chiang has explored conventional tropes of science fiction in highly unconventional ways. . . . Individual sentences possess the windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose ideal. . . . It is both a surprise and a relief to encounter fiction that explores counterfactual worlds like these with . . . ardor and earnestness. . . . Human curiosity, for Chiang, is a nearly divine engine of progress.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker

“Delirious and exciting as hell . . . [Chiang’s] stories brim with wonder and horror, spectacle and mundanity, philosophy and religion. Tapping into a range of speculative traditions, from pulp and fantasy to the rigorous scientific accuracy of hard sci-fi and the popcorn thrills of soft sci-fi, his work has a profound richness.” —Stephen Kearse, The Nation

Excellent collection of short stories

Ted Chiang can write a short story. This is a great collection, and I enjoyed it much more than his prior short story collection. The only complaints I had were I thought one of the stories was too long and the narration of another story bothered me. My take on the stories:

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate: a deep, layered, time travel story. Just great. 5*

Exhalation: a mechanical being examines itself and its world. Perfect. 5*

What's Expected of Us: free will hijinks. A mind bender with a great ending. 4*

The Lifecycle of Software Objects: what if AI had human emotions, could learn and grow up over the years, and even be transferred in to robotic suits to interact with us? I thought this one was a bit too long. Great concept. 3*

Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny: what if we had machines to take care of children, and what would happen if they became attached to them? Creepy goodness. 4*

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling: two stories - one of a young person in a far away land being taught to read by a missionary - we see the ramifications of his new literacy; the other set in a near future where people can view uploaded memories of their lives. The memories in our heads may safer than the real events they are based on. 4*

The Great Silence: my favorite story in the collection. The title refers to our search for intelligent life in the universe. Short but affecting. 10*

Omphalos: life in a world where creationism is true. 4*

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom: people are able to communicate with other versions of themselves in alternate universes using gadgets called "prisms". Really cool premise. Another long story but worth the investment. The narrator's male voices in this story were a distraction which took away from the story for me. (She also narrated The Lifecycle of Software Objects and Omphalos). 4*

The author also included "author's notes" for each story which he read himself. Chiang is a smart fellow and it was interesting to hear where he got his inspiration for each story.

I'm looking forward to his next collection!

Mostly great stories and narration

Hoffman and Ballerini are fantastic narrators of great stories, and I was engaged from start to finish of their chapters. However, Amy Landon's stiff and awkward performance detracted from the experience of the other stories, to the point that I had to skip them entirely.

One small suggestion for producers.....

Love anything by Ted Chiang, especially the second story....

However, and this producer isn't alone in this critique....

At the change of stories, such as the end of a story when Ted Chiang begins his commentary, there's an abrupt discontinuity when Amy Landon finishes speaking and Ted Chiang's afterword begins. Can it be a second? A half-second? Way too abrupt, without "the end" or "fin" or "-30-" to let us absorb the final thought of the story.

We need a new form of punctuation for audiobooks, a tone perhaps, or a musical interlude, that says "Attention. The story you've been listening to has ended and new content is about to begin."

My favorite sci-fi author

Ted Chiang is now ensconced as favorite modern sci-fi writer. This may be a skosh less wonderful than Stories of Our Lives, but man, it’s still all 5’s.

Simply exceptional

Just perfect presentation of consistent worlds with amazing differences arising from technological inventions that have somehow managed to shape the stories into amazing trips through the psychological created by them. A must read for any science fiction fan that appreciates a rounded world with no cuts meant to fit the story, maintaining the logic of it with utmost importance.

Fantastic Genre

The stories in this book weave a mesmerizing line between an optimistic, realistic and pessimistic outlook for some of the driving themes of our future. Excellent read and great narrators.

Excellent Anthology!

This was a very enjoyable audiobook. The author takes scientific ideas/theories and uses them as narrative tools to explore the human condition. I definitely recommend it.

AMAZING!

I just listen to this book for the second time and I’m sure I will listen to it again and again. It IS that Good

Pop goes the mind!

If there’s one thing for sure, you can’t retell a Ted Chiang story- they’re way too convoluted and intense…but wow, what stories! Nobody thinks like this author, I feel grateful that I can understand this kind of brilliance. Big fan! Great compilation. And FANTASTIC narration by all voice actors.

This book blew my mind

The first story blew my mind and it alone is worth the book. The rest are just really good bonus stories