Exhalation (2019)
Ted Chiang (1967)
350 pages
Science fiction has a reputation of being mostly space opera adventures – entertaining diversions, but nothing to be taken too seriously. Such a simplistic characterization, however, ignores a host of writers who have used the genre to explore, with compelling effectiveness, the many and varied questions that arise from the intersection of our technological development and our cultural, social, economic and political realities.Some novels of this latter type imagine how our present civilization will evolve into the future, such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s expansive vision of humankind’s evolution – both genetically and culturally – in 2312 (and other of his works), or Alfred Bester’s disturbing prognosis from the 1950’s in The Stars My Destination of the eventual consequence of the continuing shift toward a corporatocracy as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the fundamental precepts of capitalism. Others present a dystopic view of our future, whether the classic – and powerfully disturbing – novel of nuclear destruction On the Beach by Nevil Shute, or Jeff VanderMeer’s tale in Southern Reach Trilogy of nature rising up to avenge damaging human disregard of the environment, to name a couple. And then there are those who look outward, to our place in the universe, such as Cixin Liu’s eye-opening answer to the Fermi Paradox – why we have not found evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations despite the seemingly high likelihood they should exist – in his Three Body Problem trilogy. What all of these stories have in common is the combination of a thought-provoking premise and a captivating plot. (Reviews of these novels and other wonderful examples can be found here, in the sections dedicated to Science Fiction.)
Add now to this kind of thoughtful writing the beautiful short stories of Ted Chiang’s book Exhalation. In the nine tales of his collection, he employs an engaging mix of science fiction themes – from future technological developments on Earth to alternative histories to alien civilizations – to reveal and reflect on the fundamental hopes and fears that characterize our passage through life, from the debilitating frailties we desperately try to hide to the strengths of resolve we display at the most unexpected moments; from the afflictions we weather to the blessings we receive.
The first story, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, sets the tone for those that follow. Opening in the Baghdad of perhaps a thousand years ago, we are introduced to the alchemist of the title, who has invented a gate that allows a person to pass through to the same place twenty years earlier. Out of this simple conceit unfold a delicately-spun set of intricately woven tales that evolve around the basic human desire to change fate, whether out of a wish to improve – or enrich – our future destiny, or to assuage a guilty conscious, by attempting to change something that’s happened in the past. A merchant who happens upon the alchemist’s shop and is shown the device seizes the opportunity to go back to counsel his younger self, in the hopes of changing a traumatic event. He comes to discover that fate is a force not easily diverted.
Chiang explores a variation on this theme of fate and free will in Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, in which he imagines the impact on humanity of a device – based on the principles of quantum probability – that when activated generates the two possible outcomes of a quantum measurement. The device causes two parallel realities to be created, and allows communication for a fixed period of time between these two then diverging timelines, allowing people to learn the alternative outcomes of a decision they make. Despite the inherent restrictions of the short story format, Chiang creates a realistic history of the technical evolution of the device, as well as its evolving impact on people’s behavior, even as he builds up a drama around specific characters dealing with the ramifications of this capability. How would people react to being able to know the outcome of decisions they have made? And, if seemingly all possible outcomes exist and play out in some parallel universe, does it really matter what one does in any particular timeline?
In the title story, Chiang imagines an alien world of mechanical beings who get the ‘air’ they need to live (argon in their case) from two tanks in their body that must be swapped out daily for a fresh, full pair. (The commonplace distinction in defining “flesh-and-blood” as life and “Mechanical” as not becomes a question of perspective as one gets deeper into the story, though Chiang doesn’t address this distinction directly.) Death in this world turns out to only occur in the extremely rare cases of a catastrophic failure of the tanks, an event that ends up largely destroying the body. For that reason, as well as an unwillingness to hazard invasive procedures on living beings, the science of anatomy has had little opportunity to develop more than wild suppositions regarding the functioning of the brain. When one scientist is finally prompted by an unexplainable set of coincidences to perform a risky experiment to learn how the brain actually works, his learnings lead to an existential crisis for the civilization. A more transcendent and sublime exploration of the inexorable process of entropy has surely never been written.
And so it is with the remaining stories. In the novella length The Lifecycle of Software Objects, the plot develops unhurriedly, like a life, to become a delicate examination of what it takes to become a conscious entity. Omphalos, meanwhile, looks at the concept and implications of creationism in the context of an alternative history. These and the remaining stories demonstrate Chiang’s delicate touch as he explores fundamental questions of our human condition through the lens of the impact of science and technology.
When I bought this book – attracted to it by the cover design and sold on it by the cover flap description of the stories – I hadn’t yet heard of Ted Chiang. But the employee who rang up the sale mentioned that she had loved also his first book of short stories, titled Stories of Your Life and Others. After reading this current collection, I’m looking forward to checking that one out – look for a review of it to appear here sometime in the not too distant future.
Other reviews / information:
Some links to information on the Fermi Paradox: SETI, QuantaMagazine, and, an earlier of my blog posts.
Finally got around to reading Chiang's earlier collection Stories of Your Life and Others, and I enjoyed it as much as I did Exhalation. My review at right, in which I mention that
Although wildly different in themes, the two sets of stories share a distinctive sensibility, as well as a dedication to the wonders and mysteries of science and ancient traditions, stretched and bent just a bit through Chiang’s imagination to create marvelously engaging works that explore our human condition.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
