Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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Even if you haven’t ready any of Ted Chiang’s stories, you may already be familiar with his Nebula and Hugo Award-winning work “Story of Your Life,” which was adapted into the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival. I haven’t read that story (yet), but the concepts in the film intrigued me enough that when I heard about this new collection, I was eager to read it. If you have seen Arrival, you won’t be surprised that Chiang’s writing continues to explore ideas about time, free will, responsibility, and […]

Breathing in a collection of sci-fi short stories by a master

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

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Exhalation: Stories is a collection of short sci-fi stories written by Ted Chiang. Below is a short review of each story but over-all, Exhalation: Stories made me think. Collectively, each story forced upon a small crisis of identity in how I relate to technology in my own world, and I am a more self-aware person for it. Chiang created a collection of stories that all meshes together. No story feels out of place or like an intruder. “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”: An interesting and […]

“The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”

Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang

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To borrow from 30 Rock, I loved Arrival, as all right thinking people did, because I have two ears and a heart, don’t I? I had read the story that gives this collection its title in some science fiction best of collection shortly after its publication (it will drive me absolutely crazy that I can’t find where I initially read it to get an exact date, but it was at least ten years ago), and weirdly, about ten seconds into the movie before much happens, […]

Should he climb such a thing?

Stories of your Life by Ted Chiang

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I read the second Ted Chiang collection of stories, Exhalation, earlier this year and thought it was very good. But I would be lying if I said I recalled a lot of the specific stories. I think this one will prove to be similar. I think the experience of the stories was riveting, but the consequences will be slight. All of this in light of the fact that I also think this story collection is also very good. So there’s a long section of author’s notes […]

Mixed Bag of Newest Collection by Chiang, but Still Enjoyed

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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Well, I think that all in all I had a mixed reaction to this newest collection of short stories by Chiang. Some were pitch perfect. Others went on too long and just had a garbled message in my opinion. I still love how he talks about things such as fate, faith, love, and even touches upon how technological advancements does not always equal making things better for human beings or other species. Per usual, here are my individual ratings for the short stories. “The Merchant […]

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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I’ve seen Arrival and liked it but didn’t read the story collection it’s drawn from. There’s about ten movies in this book to be made and they should all be very good. There’s two basic kinds of stories in this collection. Very very short ones that explore a singular idea for a few pages and then leave off. These tend to be interesting, but ultimately small and not completely fulfilling. And then there’s longer stories that present a conceit to work through, but also works […]



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