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

thought provoking and very entertaining

Ted Chiang is a master of combining relevant technological and philosophical events and ideas with wonderfully realistic fiction

Great stories but not narration

I love Ted Chiang's thought provoking stories and enjoyed these very much. The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate, Exhalation, and Omphalos were my favorites. I really did not like the female narrator. She sounded like text-to-speech and I struggled with listening to her. I appreciated the authors notes on the stories.

9 stories, 2 are new. All are great

I’m a HUGE Ted Chiang fan. His stories have a heart and a fantastical quality that I can’t find in any other science fiction. When I saw he had a new book coming out, I ordered it right away and waited eagerly for the release date.

It turns out, now that I’ve finished it; that I’ve read 7 of these stories already. I’ve read everything he’s published, so to me these were review. I was hoping for more original stories but it’s always nice to hear the classics. Especially the alchemist gate, software objects and the one about writing.

Anyway if you’re already a fan, it’s a good review and 2 new stories, if you’re not a fan, come and have your mind blown. I envy you the experience of hearing these for the first time.

Minus one star on performance because the intonations of the female reader feel off, or repetitive. Maybe it won’t bother you

All narrators were excellent

I was put off at first because people said Amy London’s voice was bad. I’m not sure who’s cat she ran over to get that much hate, but she did a great job in all the stories she was featured in.

In fact, all the voice actors were excellent. If that was a concern for you at first, then I hope to persuade you to purchase the book anyway and see for yourself because there’s some real goodies in this collection.

good stories but narration was horrible

the woman narrator was not good but the stories were interesting. science fiction that could become reality.

What Sci-Fi should always strive to be

Ted Chiang's stories are always a treat. Emotional, clever and intrincate, every single one of this tales has something special to offer (even the weakest, the Mechanical Nanny, is entertainingly quirky). You won't regret listening. Chiang is one of the best science fiction writers to grace our minds in this past few years. Sometimes he reminds me of Phillip K. Dick in how marvellous his creations are sometimes.

Thought provoking

Terrific collection of stories.

The last one about special purpose quantum computers that allow limited communication across universes was especially interesting.

some stories are better than others

overall basically black mirror but a little more wholesome. well presented and written. each story feels pretty different.

Thought provoking and immensely intriguing

Deep, thought provoking concepts interwoven in stories that powerfully engage the reader and left me wanting sequels/wishing the stories hadn't ended. The stories seem somewhat reminiscent of "The book of virtues" that I read as a child, but in a more adult/complex form with abstract concepts of AI and morality woven in. Loved the concepts and the narrator voices! Also appreciated the short story format as there are a series of mini-storys non related to the next.

Excellent Collection of Short Stories

This collection of short stories was thrilling to listen to. Not every story was specifically to my tastes, but I personally enjoyed "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny", "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling", and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom".

The story I loved the most, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", was particularly great because of the way the story was told consistently, and I could definitely believe that such things would happen if such a machine existed. I also loved the theme of the short story, and how it was thoughtful without being sad.

The only story I really had problems with was "Omphalos", which made me think that Ted Chiang didn't really understand Christianity, faith, or the Christian God (of which the god in short story was clearly fashioned after). This was particularly perplexing as the other short stories were well-researched as far as science fiction goes; in comparison, "Omphalos" felt crude in its premise.

As a side note, the chapter listings on the Audible audiobook are incorrect; some of the author's notes (of which each story has one) are grouped with the wrong short story, and the final story "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" is labeled incorrectly altogether.