stories are clearly philosophical thought experiments, they are also what we might call parables of the human condition, albeit without the didacticism this term might imply. Let it build up your expectations and then subvert them in ways that seem inevitable in hindsight.įor folks who enjoy audiobooks, this one is excellent.Chiang’s ongoing interest in questions of free will and determinism is the motif that emerges most strongly across this collection. Let the story take you on an unexpected journey. Go into it knowing as little as possible. If you are considering reading it, I suggest you skip reviews. If you have shied away from the scale of most science fiction, or aren’t particularly interested with the technological or scientific focus of most science fiction, this much more grounded approach might be the thing that gets you into it. That’s not to say that I think folks new to the genre wouldn’t also get a lot out of these books. It’s easy to say that artificial intelligence should be granted personhood as a general philosophical perspective, but at what point? And to what extent? What are the mechanisms that might be employed in the evolution of artificial intelligence towards personhood? And what does that teach us about what personhood is, or what family is? What does that teach us about free will and choice?
Where these tropes are often used to tell large scale stories about the future of humanity, Chiang’s stories feel deeply grounded and personal in a way that transforms them from the ordinary. He is here to take those ideas and play with them. He is not here to introduce you to the tropes of time travel, artificial intelligence, alien life, and so on. What I think makes it particularly appealing to people already fond of this genre is that this is not a primer to speculative fiction. This series of short stories does exactly what science fiction is supposed to do – help you think outside yourself and your world view to different ways of being. You might discover an invention that proves that free will is as false as it is necessary to life. You might read the lab notes of an alien scientist dissecting his own brain. You might follow a portal to the past at the back of a store in medieval Bagdad. As you might imagine, this diversity of inspirations creates an enormous variety in the stories.
I know this because Chiang provides a brief commentary at the end of many of the stories as to how it came about. If you love science fiction and want something really different, this might be the best thing you read all year.Įxhalation is a series of science fiction short stories with inspirations ranging from ancient Arab storytelling traditions to Monty Python sketches.
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