These stories are carefully curated into a conversation that comes full circle, after having traversed extraordinary terrain. His challenging and rewarding fiction proves that a sizable and appreciative audience exists for the kind of speculative fiction that doesn’t merely offer cosmic explosions, but instead plucks both heartstrings and gray matter in equal measure.” career thus deservedly joins those of only a handful of past masters who likewise did their best work in miniature: Edgar Allan Poe, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon. Represents the ideal definition and practice of all science fiction. A fusion of pure intellect and molten emotion.

Human curiosity, for Chiang, is a nearly divine engine of progress.” It is both a surprise and a relief to encounter fiction that explores counterfactual worlds like these with. Individual sentences possess the windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose ideal. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, China Miéville, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Chiang has explored conventional tropes of science fiction in highly unconventional ways. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula K. Like such eclectic predecessors as Philip K. “ Exhalation by Ted Chiang is a collection of short stories that will make you think, grapple with big questions, and feel more human.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES.

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. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. 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. Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory. 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.

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.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR.

Exhalation book review