Exhalation

[psocoptera]

I find Ted Chiang consistently interesting - I like high-concept science fiction. Exhalation is a new collection of his stories from the past 15 years. Of the nine stories, four I had already read (including standouts like "Exhalation" and "Lifecycle of Software Objects"), three were previously published but new to me, and two, "Omphalos" and "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom", are new 2019 publications. We don't have wordcounts, but I'm guessing "Omphalos" is a short story and "Anxiety" is a novelette, although, wait, now I've found some descriptions of "Anxiety" as a novella. We may have to wait and see how Locus classifies them. Anyways, they're both very good stories and if you like Chiang I think you'll definitely want to read them. (If you don't like Chiang, you probably won't; if you've never read any Chiang, here's his freesfonline page.) "Omphalos" has one particular bit of worldbuilding that made me gasp out loud, and "Anxiety" is... really relevant to my particular interests. Expect both of these on my nomination-consideration lists once I finally start reading 2019 short fiction.

Comments

[ruthling]

i have this on my hold list on Libby, but it will be 6 months before I see it. I am not as much of a fan of his as some people, but I still look forward to it.

[jedusor]

I LOVED this collection, especially Omphalos. I briefly dated someone who's in the same book club as Ted Chiang and definitely had a celebrity-stars-in-my-eyes moment upon learning that XD