Exhalation
Ted Chiang · 2019
Nine stories exploring free will, time, consciousness, and what it means to be human. Chiang is the most important short fiction writer in science fiction, and this collection cemented that status. Every story is a philosophical thought experiment executed with flawless craft.
The case against
Chiang's characters exist to walk the thought experiment to its conclusion; feel for them and you are mostly feeling for a premise. The prose is deliberately plain, the dialogue often expository, and 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' tests patience at novella length. The story notes at the back explain each idea, and the stories rarely contain more than the notes do.
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