Exhalation

Stories

By: Ted Chiang

Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, Amy Landon, Ted Chiang

Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.

Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

©2019 Ted Chiang (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • ESQUIRE • VOX • THE A.V. CLUB • THE GUARDIAN • FINANCIAL TIMES • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

“Lean, relentless, and incandescent.” —Colson Whitehead

“Illuminating, thrilling. . . . Like such eclectic predecessors as Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., 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. . . . Individual sentences possess the windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose ideal. . . . It is both a surprise and a relief to encounter fiction that explores counterfactual worlds like these with . . . ardor and earnestness. . . . Human curiosity, for Chiang, is a nearly divine engine of progress.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker

“Delirious and exciting as hell . . . [Chiang’s] stories brim with wonder and horror, spectacle and mundanity, philosophy and religion. Tapping into a range of speculative traditions, from pulp and fantasy to the rigorous scientific accuracy of hard sci-fi and the popcorn thrills of soft sci-fi, his work has a profound richness.” —Stephen Kearse, The Nation

Spectacular! (seriously)

This is a stellar collection of thoughtful, creative SF stories. I know of no other collection I'd more highly recommend.

Though provoking

I was fully engaged with every story. All of them made me think about humanity and about myself. Who are we? Why is our purpose? All the good stuff. Just wow!
Everyone should.... no. NEEDS TO read this!

Excellent, well thought out storyteller

While I think the “Stories of Your Life and Others” anthology was better, or at least more so to me, this collection is fantastic. So many sci-fi stories today are really just fantasy stories couched in futuristic settings. They lack a clear narrative of physics and philosophy that should be requisite of the genre, and instead make up for this with fantastical scenes and creatures that are not plausible in any universe resembling this one. This has reduced much of the genre to mere entertainment. Ted harnesses coherent ideas about philosophy, theology, and physics, and forms his stories around this. And I think it makes all the difference in the universe as to the quality of robust, deep stories unfolded with brevity.

deep thoughts, stories that stay with you

nothing better than sci-fi short stories, and these are exceptional. love the different worlds and imaginative characters. every story is 5 stars, and i love each of the different readers

great writing, delivery could be better

Story is amazing

The voices for the robot kids are really terrible. Kept taking me out of the story. Maybe just read this one with your eyes.

A Master in Speculative Fiction

I love how Ted Chiang writes. His thought experiments are wonderfully played out in these stories. I'm listening a second time because I want to make sure I haven't missed anything. The priceless bit is listening to Chiang himself explain his inspiration for these stories and what ideas he was intending to explore. If I had to pick a story I liked the least, it would be the first one...it's really smart from a literary standpoint and it's won awards...but it was hard for me to get into.

I enjoyed this book.

I enjoyed this book. It was a little different but I was open to something new and I found it to be quite pleasurable and entertaining it was thought-provoking and Drew my attention and kept my interest. I would listen to it again or buy hard copy in the future.

Take a chance

Take a chance on this book if you are reading this. I always provide ratings for the books I listen to but almost never a full review. I also do not often listen to short stories. A friend recommended this so I took a chance. Each story is unique in setting and format. They are written tightly and move at a steady pace.

A beautiful blend of storytelling, literature, science fiction, and moral philosophy. Like snippets of Twilight Zone episodes or Black Mirror. Showing us what our world or lives could be like, and what we should strive for; or at least, be wary of jumping to conclusions and the consequences of our actions.

Mostly great stories

The longest story felt like it took up 40% if the book, and was far and away my least favorite. The only one that I can say I disliked.

Still... So many wonderful stories!

Very interesting content, just okay writing...

The thought experiments and plots are pretty interesting, the writing is pretty heavy-handed though; not much subtlety or nuance, and doesn’t feel natural. Worth listening to regardless. There are several different narrators—I thought the female narrator was not very good at all, but the others were pretty good.