Chapter - 1: The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate Chapter - 2: Exhalation Chapter - 3: What's Expected of Us Chapter - 4: The Lifecycle of Software Objects Chapter - 5: Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny Chapter - 6: The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling Chapter - 7: The Great Silence Chapter - 8: Omphalos Chapter - 9: Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom Chapter - i: Story Notes Acknowledgements - i: Acknowledgements
The long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories.
Ted Chiang's fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards, and he is the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. His debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into twenty-one languages. He was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives near Seattle, Washington.
As much thought experiments as stories, Ted Chiang’s exquisite
mechanisms employ science fiction as an instrument to probe the
human condition. Like the chronicler of Exhalation’s title
narrative, he opens the back of his own head and lays bare its
mysterious golden motion for the hushed appreciation of an
awestruck audience. Beautifully written and conceived, this is a
marvellous, astonishing collection that we would do well to read
before the worlds it conjures are upon us. Urgently
recommended.
*Alan Moore*
Deeply beautiful . . . This book is as generous as it is marvelous,
and I’m left feeling nothing so much as grateful for it.
*New York Times*
Exhalation is a breath of fresh air . . . If there's an overarching
theme, it's that we should take time to appreciate the miracle of
existence and cherish the free will we have to pursue our destinies
- while we still can.
*Financial Times*
A beguiling mix of compassion and awe, worthy of comparisons to the
work of Philip K. Dick . . . An immensely pleasing book.
*San Francisco Chronicle*
We all know Ted Chiang is a fucking genius, but: Ted Chiang is a
fucking genius.
*Carmen Maria Machado*
‘Like such eclectic predecessors as Philip K. Dick... 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...
Magically inventive... each [story is]... likely to linger in the
memory the way riddles may linger - teasing, tormenting,
illuminating, thrilling.’
*New Yorker*
Ted Chiang’s stories are lean, relentless, and incandescent.
*Colson Whitehead*
‘Chiang is a master. . . . The Alice Munro of science fiction.’
*LitHub*
‘[Chiang] is so good that this book qualifies as an event.’
*Newsday*
Illuminating, thrilling . . . Individual sentences possess the
windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose
ideal.
*New Yorker*
Smart, sharp, self-contained experiments of thought and feeling
whose impact goes beyond their page count; the more you think about
them, the more possibilities they open up.
*SFX Magazine*
‘Ted Chiang has no contemporary peers... His name deserves to be
mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Borges, and Kafka.
Every story is a universe. Every story is a diamond. You will
inhale Exhalation in a single, stunned sitting, because true genius
doesn’t come along nearly as often as advertised. This is the real
thing.’
*Blake Crouch*
‘Ted Chiang writes with such a matter-of-fact grace and visionary
power that one simply takes on faith that his worlds and his
characters exist, whether they are human or robot or parrot; he is
the rare author who makes me feel, also, that he believes in his
readers, in our integrity and our imagination.’
*Karen Russell*
Breaks down what it really means to be human.
*Time*
So jammed with brilliant, mind-exploding ideas it's like the author
packed fireworks between the covers.
*National Public Radio*
‘Meticulously crafted and innovative short fiction... Chiang's
stories are uniformly notable for a fusion of pure intellect and
molten emotion... narrative[s] of refined human sensitivity and
soulfulness... While this combination represents the ideal
definition and practice of all science fiction, it's seldom
achieved... Masterful and striking... plucks both heartstrings and
gray matter in equal measure.’
*Washington Post*
‘Chiang produces deeply moving drama from fascinating first
premises… These stories are brilliant experiments, and [Chiang’s]
commitment to exploring deep human questions elevates them to among
the very best science fiction.’
*Publisher’s Weekly starred review*
‘This stellar collection... begins with an instant classic...
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see
themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big
way.’
*Kirkus starred review*
Each of his devastating stories mines little pieces of humanity
from unexpected points of view.
*Vulture*
‘Explores emotional and physical landscapes with precise and
incisive prose… Chiang remains one of the most skilled stylists in
SF, and this will appeal to genre and literary-fiction fans
alike.’
*Booklist starred review*
‘Chiang is always thought provoking, and his latest collection is
no exception.’
*Library Journal starred review*
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