Ted Chiang
is back—one of the greatest bits of speculative fiction news in
2019. Seventeen years since Chiang’s last collection Stories
of Your Life and Others, the
aged-wine approach the man uses writing has finally produced enough
content to fill out a collection. Named Exhalation:
Stories, let’s take a look at
the vintages produced.
A Chiang
version of a 1,001 Arabian Nights
tale, “The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate” is the story of one
Fuwaad ibn Abbas, and the encounter he has with a merchant in the
bazaar one day. Passing through a gate that shifts time, ibn Abbas
is never the same despite returning. But what does he ultimately
make of it? Additional stories nested within his story, the whole is
parables wrapped in a parable on the value of knowledge and the path
to attaining knowledge, particularly the mindset regarding the
passage of time and regret.
One of the
greatest science fiction stories ever written, “Exhalation” is
the fascinating story of a robot-man who dissects himself. Not
a grisly description of wires, fluids, tubes, and lubricants (and
none of the paranoia PKD would imbue such a story with—see “The
Ant Man”), it is set in a society wherein air tanks, called lungs,
need to be replaced every day, and the brain is composed of leafed
gold foils stamped with symbols and formulas. Highly
reminiscent of Stanisław
Lem, this is the stand-out piece in not only in the collection,
but all of sf short fiction.
Lopsided
bookends, “What's Expected of Us” and “Omphalos” are both
discussions on determinism and free will. The former a brief
vignette of a technology so simple yet so profound, it strikes at the
core of the human psyche to change society. The latter significantly
more personal, it tells of a Christian scientist who makes a
discovery, likewise profound, that has her questioning the roots of
her beliefs. That set up may seem to make “Omphalos”
predictable, which to some degree it is, but it’s the manner in
which Chiang resolves the scientist’s conundrum that give the story
its value.
The
longest piece in the collection, “The Lifecycle of Software
Objects” is the story of Ana and Derek and the
digients—virtual AI pets—they come to raise. Both
employed at a start up called Blue Gamma, at first everything goes
well for the company. The digient product is a huge
success. Many consumers buy one of the impressionable pets
to have in Data Earth, the virtual environment in which most everyone
has a second life. The digients a product of both ‘nature’ and
nurture, each turns out with a different personality and learns at
varying rates, depending on how they are cared for. Adding
to the success, accessories are produced, including battery operated
automatons into which the digients can upload for periods of time to
experience the real world. But, like all commercial
products, there eventually comes a decline in the market. Platforms
are enhanced, newer, more advanced products by other firms are
marketed, and the technological environment evolves, leaving Jax,
Lolly, Marco, and Polo and the other digients in a fight for virtual
place. What ultimately becomes of their burgeoning
intelligences is as moving as the real world. Autonomy, the
unstoppable evolution of technology, and the responsibility we as
humans have for what we create all come into the picture—in reality
and virtually—form the core ideas of “The Lifecycle of Software
Objects”.
Chiang’s
relative popularity/recognition translating into a couple of
commissioned pieces since his last collection, “Dacey's Patent
Automatic Nanny”, written for Jeff VanderMeer’s Thackery
T. Lambshead anthology, looks at
the logic (or lack thereof) of implementing purely rational programs
to raise children. Chiang’s afterword really puts this story in
proper context. The second commissioned piece is “The Great
Silence”. Somehow pulling off the correlation of Fermi’s Paradox
to endangered parrots, Chiang throws a surprising spin on the origins
of the story in the end notes.
Formerly
future state now current state, “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of
Feeling” tells of a father-daughter relationship affected by
life-logging technology. Want to know who attended your fifteenth
birthday, just google search your video content. Setup nice but
resolution lacking subtlety, the Black Mirror episode “The Entire
History of You” does this premise better justice, despite that
Chiang accomplishes his goal of expressing the difference between
truth and perceived truth.
Closing
the collection with its weakest entry is Chiang’s parallel universe
story, “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”. Giving several
people’s perspectives as they try to understand, work within, and
sometimes exploit technology that allows people to communicate
cross-parallel universes, it’s a fascinating idea, so big in fact,
that it feels relatively unpacked despite the multiple of directions
the ideas flow. Appropriately (and relevantly) told through the lens
of psychology, those quite familiar with Chiang’s oeuvre might be
able to predict the outcome, even as its parts jostle and clank
awkwardly to the finish.
Despite
the closing tale, Exhalation:
Stories is more of what makes
Ted Chiang one of the great writers and
humanists of science fiction: wonderfully unpacked ideas, touching
personal presentations, and a finger on the pulse of the human
implications for technology. Aside from bringing together all the
stories Chiang published since Stories
of Your Life and Others (except
“Better Versions of You”) and adding author’s notes to each,
Exhalation
likewise gives readers two previously unpublished works, “Omphalos”
and “Anxiety Is The Dizziness of Freedom”. Neither feeling like
bottom-of-the-drawer material resurrected for this collection (though
the latter does feel as though it needs another 100 pages or complete
revision), they nevertheless do not feel out of place or dragging.
He’s back!
The
following are the nine stories collected in Exhalation:
Stories:
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Exhalation
What's
Expected of Us
The
Lifecycle of Software Objects
Dacey's
Patent Automatic Nanny [Thackery T. Lambshead]
The Truth
of Fact, the Truth of Feeling
The Great
Silence
Omphalos
Anxiety Is
the Dizziness of Freedom
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