lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2019-05-19 05:58 pm
lightreads) wrote2019-05-19 05:58 pm
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Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
Exhalation: Stories
4/5. I will admit this collection didn't knock my socks off in the same way his first did. I think I'm getting too good at spotting his technical weaknesses (dialogue, anyone?) but this is still full of strange and interesting ideas. No one can have a big idea, then reduce a novel down to its quintessence and write it in 8,000 words like he can. A few notes – links go to online versions.
"Exhalation": A strange and sad and beautiful story about how an alien culture might end. It's tempting to slap a lot of metaphors on this – it's about the environmental costs of existence! – but I'd rather just let it be what it is.
"Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom": Hadn't read this one before. A limited ability to contact your alternate universe selves opens up complex questions of choice and its meaning. A great idea, but I wish there was a little more meat on the interpersonal bones. There's something mechanical about the way this was pieced together that didn't work for me.
"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": The introduction of artificial memory has sweeping interpersonal implications when you can't lie to yourself or others anymore about that thing you said in the heat of the moment. Painful, but hopeful in the end.
"Omphalos": A story exploring how a person could lose their faith in a universe where God actually did create the world 8,000 years ago and there is ample physical evidence for that. Science and religion and evidence and sexism. About as Chiang as it gets.
4/5. I will admit this collection didn't knock my socks off in the same way his first did. I think I'm getting too good at spotting his technical weaknesses (dialogue, anyone?) but this is still full of strange and interesting ideas. No one can have a big idea, then reduce a novel down to its quintessence and write it in 8,000 words like he can. A few notes – links go to online versions.
"Exhalation": A strange and sad and beautiful story about how an alien culture might end. It's tempting to slap a lot of metaphors on this – it's about the environmental costs of existence! – but I'd rather just let it be what it is.
"Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom": Hadn't read this one before. A limited ability to contact your alternate universe selves opens up complex questions of choice and its meaning. A great idea, but I wish there was a little more meat on the interpersonal bones. There's something mechanical about the way this was pieced together that didn't work for me.
"The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling": The introduction of artificial memory has sweeping interpersonal implications when you can't lie to yourself or others anymore about that thing you said in the heat of the moment. Painful, but hopeful in the end.
"Omphalos": A story exploring how a person could lose their faith in a universe where God actually did create the world 8,000 years ago and there is ample physical evidence for that. Science and religion and evidence and sexism. About as Chiang as it gets.