Review | Exhalation by Ted Chiang: new collection of sci-fi short stories explores human relationships
- Nine tales include little masterpieces and a couple that don’t quite hit the mark
- Chiang’s earlier work, ‘Story of Your Life’, was the basis of hit movie Arrival
Exhalation
by Ted Chiang
Pan MacMillan
4/5 stars
Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 science-fiction masterpiece, was one of those rarest of films: an effortless critical and commercial smash, which earned more than US$200 million at the box office and eight Oscar nominations.
“Story of Your Life” was a highlight of Chiang’s debut collection, Stories of Your Life, published in 2002 by niche sci-fi imprint Tor Books. Reviewing the book in The Guardian newspaper, author China Miéville broke a world record for using “rationalism”, “human” and “emotion” in an attempt to pin Chiang down: “In Chiang’s universe, humanism is inextricable from rationalism. Far from being counterposed as ‘cold’ to emotion’s ‘warmth’, it is the rationalism of the characters – and the writer – that makes them emotional and human.”
This is longhand for: don’t let the clockwork precision of Chiang’s cerebral plotting fool you. He may seem like a cross between high-minded pranksters Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, but his elegant, intellectual structures envelop deeply moving meditations on war, religion, death, technology, love and loss – of both life and faith.
