We’re told that they need argon to survive. Instead, we get tantalizing clues like this: “I have journeyed all the way to the edge of the world, and seen the solid chromium wall that extends from the ground up into the infinite sky.” Nor do we get a comprehensive description of what the aliens look like. The location of the civilization relative to Earth is never revealed. The story starts in an atmosphere of mesmerizing strangeness, its narrator an intelligent alien citizen of a sophisticated civilization with long-established traditions. “Exhalation,” the title story, is a pocket-sized epic of scientific inquiry. The unifying themes of the collection are the extraordinary ingenuity that can be brought to scientific and technological progress, the tremendous freedom and empowerment that progress can bring, and the varied and unexpected ways in which that progress can transform and even trap us. Ultimately, the collection offers convenient, one-stop access to a selection of Chiang’s finest works from the past fourteen years. The collection presents Chiang’s unique talent in abundance, though those who have been following his work closely for some time may be disappointed to discover that most of the stories have been published before. In 2016, mass audiences were introduced to the power of Chiang’s ideas in an altogether different medium with the release of French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s movie Arrival, an adaptation of Chiang’s mind-bending 1998 novella “Story of Your Life.”Įxhalation comprises nine stories and includes notes at its end revealing Chiang’s inspirations and creative process. Since the publication of “Tower of Babylon,” his work has garnered four Hugo, four Locus, and an additional three Nebula awards.

A profound parable reminiscent of Borges, it follows the exploits of a group of miners summoned by the builders of the nearly completed tower of Babylon to climb to its very top (a journey of four months) and from there to “cut through the vault of heaven.” Here, as in some of his other stories, like “Hell is the Absence of God” and the more recent “Omphalos,” Chiang treats religious cosmology as concrete fact. His first published story, “Tower of Babylon,” won the 1991 Nebula Award for Best Novelette when Chiang was in his early twenties.

The accolades started early in his career. Ted Chiang has built a cult following based on a few dozen exquisitely crafted, intellectually provocative, and poignant science-fiction short stories and novellas.

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