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In a collection of nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions and introduces several new quandaries for us Chronoscopians to discuss.
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- @Kindle - US$14 from Amazon
- @Kobo - US$14 from Rakuten
- Hardback - HKD 165 from BookDepository
- Audiobook - US$28 from Audible
From technological ingenuity flows ethical intricacy. The stories in “Exhalation” are mostly not so magically inventive as those in Chiang’s first collection, but each is still likely to linger in the memory the way riddles may linger—teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling. ~ The New Yorker
Visionary speculative stories that will change the way readers see themselves and the world around them: This book delivers in a big way. ~ KIRKUS REVIEW
The stories in Exhalation are a shining example of science fiction at its best. They take both science and humanism deeply seriously, which is why it’s so satisfying to watch Chiang’s shining, intricate machine at work: You know that whatever the machine builds, it will tell you something new about human beings. ~ Vox
These nine stories introduce life-changing inventions and new worlds with radically different physical laws. In each, Chiang produces deeply moving drama from fascinating first premises. ~ Publisher Weekly
- The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - 2007 - 34 pp - Nebula & Hugo Awards
- Exhalation - 2008 - 20 pp - Locus & Hugo Awards
- What's Expected of Us - 2005 - 3 pp
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects - 2010 - 117 pp - Locus & Hugo Awards
- Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny - 2011 - 12 pp
- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling - 2013 - 47 pp
- The Great Silence - 2015 - 5 pp
- Omphalos - 2019 - 33 pp
- Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom - 2019 - 72 pp
Ted Chiang is a Chinese-American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the film Arrival (2016).
- STORIES
- The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
- Omphalos
- PAGES : 114
- DATE : Friday, 5 July 2019
- TIME : Doors open 19:30, Discussion starts at 20:00
- VENUE : 16F Nan Dao Commercial Bdg, 359 Queen's Road
- F&B : BYOB and snacks - Have dinner beforehand or bring take-out.
- STORIES
- Exhalation
- Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom
- The Great Silence
- PAGES : 97
- DATE : Friday, 26 July 2019
- TIME : Doors open 19:30, Discussion starts at 20:00
- VENUE : Spectrum Saloon, 11C, 59 Bonham Strand West, Sheung Wan
- F&B : BYOB and snacks - Have dinner beforehand or bring take-out.
- STORIES
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects
- What's Expected of Us
- Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny
- PAGES : 132
- DATE : Friday, 23 August 2019
- TIME : Doors open 19:30, Discussion starts at 20:00
- VENUE : Spectrum Saloon, 11C, 59 Bonham Strand West, Sheung Wan
- F&B : BYOB and snacks - Have dinner beforehand or bring take-out.
Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say one is true and the other is false.
- SYNOPSIS In medieval Baghdad, a penniless man is brought before the most powerful man in the world, the caliph himself, to tell his story. It begins with a walk in the bazaar, but soon grows into a tale unlike any other told in the caliph's empire. It's a story that includes not just buried treasure and a band of thieves, but also men haunted by their past and others trapped by their future; it includes not just a beloved wife and a veiled seductress, but also long journeys taken by caravan and even longer ones taken with a single step. Above all, it's a story about recognizing the will of Allah and accepting it, no matter what form it takes.
- GoodReads
- Wiki
The universe began as an enormous breath being held. I am glad that it did... until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.
- SYNOPSIS - The tale of a world totally unlike Earth where mechanical men use the gas argon as air, replacing their lung tanks daily from an underground well.
- GoodReads
- Wiki
- EscapePod Episode
The heart of each Predictor is a circuit with a negative time delay — it sends a signal back in time
- SYNOPSIS a newly developed gadget called a Predictor flashes a green light a second before you press a button, thereby undermining the notion of free will. As it turns out, the Predictor is a sort of miniature time machine.
- GoodReads
What’s the best way to create artificial intelligence? In 1950, Alan Turing wrote, “Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. This process could follow the normal teaching of a child. Things would be pointed out and named, etc. Again I do not know what the right answer is, but I think both approaches should be tried.”
- SYNOPSIS The first approach has been tried many times in both science fiction and reality. in this story, Ted Chiang offers a detailed imagining of how the second approach might work within the contemporary landscape of startup companies, massively-multiplayer online gaming, and open-source software. It’s a story of two people and the artificial intelligences they helped create, following them for more than a decade as they deal with the upgrades and obsolescence that are inevitable in the world of software. At the same time, it’s an examination of the difference between processing power and intelligence, and of what it means to have a real relationship with an artificial entity.
- GoodReads
- Wiki
- SYNOPSIS Victorian social mores are explored through the efforts of a disgruntled inventor to devise a mechanical nanny.
- GoodReads
People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments
- SYNOPSIS What would a perfect memory mean for us and our culture? How changed literacy our subjectivity? A journalist explores the pros and cons of a Cyborgish memory enhancement gadget called Remem which lets you capture, search, and replay every instance of your liveblog. It would bring a change similar to reading and writing for our Western culture, so he writes the story of the savage folk of Tev who slowly learn the impact of written truth versus oral truth. He can't stop people adopting the gadget like the tribes oral culture could stop writing on paper; so, he tried to find the positive in it.
- GoodReads
- Wiki
The universe ought to be a cacophony of voices, but instead it’s disconcertingly quiet.
- SYNOPSIS The story is narrated by a Puerto Rican parrot whose entire kind is on the brink of extinction. He addresses humans and their curiosity in regards to search for extraterrestrial beings in the vast expanse of our universe. There is great irony in humanity’s quest for intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos whilst we willingly ignore intelligent beings on planet Earth.
- GoodReads
- IO9 Coverage
- SYNOPSIS how will your perception of Earth history will change if you’ll learn that the Earth does not have 8912 years and humanity is not the reason for which the universe was created, as you thought?
- GoodReads
- SYNOPSIS Devices which allow forking off of two parallel universes and communication between them create opportunities for making a fast buck, as well as raising questions about ethics and free will.
- GoodReads
https://electricliterature.com/ted-chiang-interview/