Exhalation

By Ted Chiang

2019

Science Fiction

*Exhalation* is Ted Chiang's second collection of short stories, gathering nine pieces written between 2005 and 2019. The stories range across a Babylonian time-travel parable, an alien scientist dissecting his own brain to understand entropy, an alternate history of British colonial Nigeria collided with a near-future memory-recording technology, and a study of digital pets whose makers face their obsolescence. Each works less as plot than as a long thought experiment — the formal premise carries the moral weight, while the prose stays patient and unornamented. The collection won the Locus Award for best collection and cemented Chiang's reputation as the most philosophically rigorous short-fiction writer working in science fiction.