FYI - This collection contains:
-The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
-Exhalation
-What's Expected of Us
-The Lifecycle of Software Objects
-Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny
-The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling
-The Great Silence
-Omphalos
-Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

"The rewards will be purely intellectual, and over the long term, will that be enough?" (pg. 87)

A disappointing follow-up to Stories of Your Life and Others, for none of Ted Chiang's stories in Exhalation match those in his debut volume, and many compound the existing errors in his writing. I wrote in my review of his first collection that they were inventive and cerebral high-concepts occasionally let down by a lack of storytelling meat. The same is true here but, unfortunately, that word "occasionally" must now be replaced by the word "frequently".

The stories in Exhalation are better thought experiments than they are stories, and Chiang's background as a technical writer is painfully apparent. Many are soulless, relying on storytelling cliché even while the subjects they discuss – time travel, AI, quantum science, and so on – are excellent. Chiang can provide a lot of verisimilitude by the depth of thought which he provides to his topics, but much of this good work is then undone by the simplistic characterisation and laboured storytelling.

It leads to a very dissatisfying read; many readers will become bored with the stories long before Chiang does, and even those who are fascinated by the topics may tire as Chiang turns his ideas over and over until the soil holding them is exhausted. Few of the stories end emphatically or with resolution – scant reward for those who have persevered. The only story which stands out (and which would deserve to be in Stories of Your Life and Others – though that too was a flawed collection) is the opener, 'The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate', which leans on an Arabian Nights writing style to provide some storytelling spark. But the stories of Exhalation are too often compelling ideas without real stories attached, and Chiang's highly dexterous ideas-based writing is starkly attached to some rather embarrassingly simplistic storytelling. If only he could get the balance right, he'd be a formidable writer rather than just a fêted one. ( )

Short stories worked well for me as bedtime reads this summer as did a change from my usual reading genres. I could dip into another time or place with ease, read a chapter, put the book aside, and return without losing my sense of immersion.

Chiang summons diverse characters and creates varied atmospheric settings around questions about choice, self-awareness, free will, and worldview/faith. Vivid narratives with depth and brilliant, critical observation of the human condition. ( )

Liked his previous book much more.
Tons of accolades for this one. ( )

The author is a well-known short-fiction and technical writer with an unusually simple and lucid style at the sentence level. In that regard, he reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro. This book is a collection of 10 good to excellent short stories that do not have strong plot development or dramatic conclusions but have clever and insightful themes with unusually deep intellectual rumination. Chiang is concerned about the intersection of technology and humanity, the costs of progress, linguistics, and the nature of human and animal cognition. ( )