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A handful of science fiction writers alive have attained divinity status – N.K. Jemisin, Cixin Liu and Ann Leckie, to name a few. But Ted Chiang is the only one who did it without writing a novel. In fact, it has released much less than its neighbors on the current Mount Rushmore of the genre, usually a short news every two years. But oh, his stories. It is a religious experience.
If Robin Williams was a comedian, Ted Chiang is a sci-fi writer. He is best known for his 1998 story "Story of Your Life," which the 2016 movie Arrival was based on, but between these iterations, Chiang won four Hugo Prizes, three Locus Prizes and two Nebula Prizes – Oscars, Golden Globes and Emmys science fiction equivalents, respectively. His first eight stories were collected in 2002 Stories of your life and othersand the nine that he has written since appear in Exhalation, a moving book on destiny and free will destined to become a literary event of the years 2010.
Like fantastic writer Jeffrey Ford, Ted Chiang specializes in the puzzle stories that come together on the last page. Reading one of his stories gives the impression of drawing a Gordian knot which one does not realize is perfectly symmetrical until the last turn. In Exhalation, which could be subtitled "Black mirror For Optimists, "Every story seems to have been designed with one goal in mind: pure fear.
It begins with "The Merchant and the Door of the Alchemist", a Arab nights riff on an Iraqi cloth merchant who falls on a time travel device in Baghdad. When he crosses the Door of the Years on the right side, he will be able to visit "Baghdad in 20 years". If he crosses the left side, he will be able to go to the same place twenty years ago. This is the first book of the book among many dilemmas about destiny and self-determination, since the alchemist warns the merchant: "Using the Gate is like taking a secret passage in a palace, one that allows you to to enter a room faster … [but] the room remains the same, regardless of which door you enter. The same theme continues in the darkest story of the book, "What's Expected of Us," in which a gigantic device called "Predictor" flashes green a second before you. press its button. For some, it is a harmless toy, but for others, it destroys the illusion of free will. "A third of those who play with a predictor must be hospitalized because they will not be able to feed," warns the narrator.
On a lighter note, "Omphalos" concerns a religious archaeologist in an alternative universe where the creationism of the young earth has been confirmed by secular science. Growth rings in trees, for example, date back only 9,000 years. But when new evidence suggests that the Earth might not finally be the center of the universe, it is experiencing a crisis of faith all too familiar in our own reality: the terror of free arbitrator in the sudden absence of fate. "Why did primordial humans undertake to build civilization, if not out of desire to fulfill their divine purpose?"
The three longest stories of Exhalation are the best works of Chiang to date. In "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", a Second lifeStylish game developer hires a zookeeper to raise artificial intelligence newborns dressed in animal avatars. Meanwhile, "The truth of fact, the truth of feeling" is a composite of two stories. In the near future, a new technology will allow people to record, access and share every moment of their lives. And in the past, a European missionary learned to read and write to a boy from West Africa, which also has a dramatic effect on how he sees and shares the world. "Writing left[s] you look at your thoughts as if you were just talking, and if you have seen them, you can improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate. "
But if anything in this book has a chance to become the next ArrivalIt's the 70-page novel that closes the collection "Anxiety is the vertigo of freedom". In the future, "prisms" allow people to communicate with alternative versions of themselves in parallel universes. Instead of asking yourself how your life would have been if you had made a different decision, the prisms let you send a text message, an email or Skype to this version of yourself. As with any technology, there are hidden costs. "[T]The quantum measurement that takes place when the prism is activated can still exert an effect on the outside world, "Chiang writes," in determining whether two oxygen molecules collide or whether they are getting close to one another. the other "do not only connect the realities, they modify them.
Chiang's fiction is not for everyone – some stories, like the title track, are essentially thought experiences that sound less like fiction than essay. But every story works. Even "The Great Silence," a five-page fable originally written to accompany a video art installation juxtaposing the Arecibo radio telescope to the wildlife that surrounds it, is both surprising and heartbreaking . Even "Expiration" ends with a grandiose crescendo.
Enjoy these nine stories. Read them one at a time, in a quiet and calm place, and let them sink down. If we get a third Ted Chiang collection, it will probably not be until 15 years old.
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