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The first story in Exhalation is written in the style of the Arabian Nights (Thousand and One Nights). Get the unabridged, original translation by Richard Burton - it is some of the most beautiful literature ever written - comes in 16 volumes so there will be no shortage of reading material!

Didn't know this story was originally published in Nature. I read it in his excellent short story book Exhalation and loved it like I did many others in that collection.

Chiang is like Kafka and Borges in that he writes plain prose that blows your mind.

Mirror in brain surgery reminds me of Ted Chiang's (he's been mentioned on HN a fair bit of late) story Exhalation http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/

Ted Chiang's Exhalation is one of the very best I've read in this vein (also in the GP's sense of "life on different entropic timescales"). Highly recommended if you haven't read it yet.

He only has two collections published so far. I thought the first one (Stories of Your Life and Others) was slightly better than the second (Exhalation), but both are good.

This looks interesting. If you're into surrealist fiction, Labyrinths by Jorge Louis Borge is a great classic and Exhalation by Ted Chiang is sort of like sci-fi surrealism.

Highly recommend Ted Chiang's Exhalation for folks who are down for short (and very good) sci-fi.

(I'm not affiliated in any way - just really liked the book)

One of the short stories in Ted Chiang’s recent book Exhalation deals with this theme. It’s a pretty interesting and entertaining read.

The author, Ted Chiang, recently released his book of short stories, Exhalation. This story is included in the book.

It's good, but not as good as his first book, imo, "Story of Your Life and Others". Story of Your Life was the inspiration for the movie "Arrival". That book was amazing.

I got a few nice sci-fi books for Christmas, including Exhalation by Ted Chiang and Peace by Gene Wolf.

I also want to read Godel, Escher Bach, it's been recommended to me a lot.

Definitely some interesting picks on this thread.

For a good piece of fiction that explores this idea, read the short story Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

I read Chiang's Exhalation [0] prompted by your question. So much story in so few (6505) words! Great use of a crafted universe to tell a story relevant to us. That's the beauty of sci-fi as I understand it. Worth the 30 minutes.

[0]: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Te...

Thanks for noting this.

I enjoyed Exhalation but was not aware of the other collection.

Just get his two anthologies: Story of Your Life and Others, and Exhalation. They’re not long, but you’ll find that his stories are worth rereading.

I’d recommend starting with Tower of Babylon or Understand, then jumping into Story of Your Life.

Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others is the best, single-author collection of short stories I've ever read. If you like that, you might also enjoy The Lifecycle of Software Objects, an absolutely heartbreaking novella about simulated children, and his follow-up collection Exhalation.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is fantastic, and it's follow-up, Speaker for the Dead is even better, and my favorite science fiction novel of all time. They won back to back Hugo and Nebula awards. Card is a polarizing figure for his outspoken political opinions, but if ever the art should be separated from the artist, it's Speaker, which is an incredible exploration of empathy and responsibility, in addition to being a gripping, action-packed, science-literate read. Many more in this series, if you get into it.

John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is fantastic, if you're into military science-fiction, or even if you're not. Smart, funny, engaging and accessible, and reminiscent of Heinlein at his prime, minus the weird incest fetish. Redshirts, a Star Trek parody, rivals Galaxy Quest and only falls short because Galaxy Quest is so goddamn brilliant. Agent to the Stars is less appreciated, but in my opinion his finest novel, rising way above its goofy premise by taking it seriously, exploring the consequences and treating the characters with empathy and respect. Also hilarious.

Seconding Dune, which is a classic for a reason, and Stranger in a Strange Land (though I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a better place to start with Heinlein). Also Neal Stephenson, though I'd suggest Cryptonomicon over Diamond Age.

Here's a list of all 9 stories:

- The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

- What's expected of us

- The Merchant and the Alchemist's gate

- Exhalation (found online at http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/ )

- The Lifecycle of software objects

- The Great Silence ( available at http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/the-great-silence/ and https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chia... )

- Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny

- Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom (new)

- Omphalos (new)

Some of them (and some others) are also available as audiobooks at https://www.sffaudio.com/features/author-pages/ted-chiang/

Sure, but that's just because niches are usually ignored by the mainstream. Sci-fi novels are rarely recognized as great works of literature, but I adore them for the ideas they bring up and the worlds they build. So I go look at the Nebula and Hugo awards, not at the Pulitzer for fiction.

Exhalation and Stories of your Life are two collections of short stories that I think should rank among the top few such anthologies. The fact that they're sci-fi doesn't reduce them, but they're unlikely to be really recognized because of the genre.

For me it was:

* Exhalation by Ted Chiang

* Ride of a lifetime by Bob Iger was a close second

Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff
Brilliant. It's considered "literary fiction" but I found this book to be an absolute page-turner, much more so than what is usually described as a "page-turner". The summaries / back-cover marketing copy can't do it justice.

Florida - Lauren Groff
Sublime, poetic, haunting collection of short stories.

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang
Exhalation - Ted Chiang
Being released in May 2019 (I got an advance copy), but many of the stories are previously published and/or available online. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" is just wonderful. Ted Chiang's work is the definition of economy in storytelling. Absolutely quality over quantity.

The Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death's End - Liu Cixin
I’m not sure how fulfilling it would be to just read the first one. They really feel like a single (big) novel. Worth it.

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O - Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland
Kind of Stephenson-light(?). Smart, entertaining and seems destined to be a TV series.

The Secret History - Donna Tartt
A bit slow to get going. Lots of Greek, snow, and booze at a private liberal-arts college in Vermont.

The Grownup - Gillian Flynn (short story)

"Liking What You See: A Documentary" is an excellent short story by Ted Chiang (these days best known for the story behind the film "Arrival") about this topic.

In the story, a highly-targeted brain treatment exists that can make it so that one is unable to perceive physical attractiveness. The story explores the ethics of such a treatment.

Here is a pdf, but if you like it, I highly recommend supporting the author and getting both of his collections, "Stories of Your Life and Others" and "Exhalation". You won't regret it.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vSPLnv...

Is solar just a stopgap tech? Like, do they still require fossil fuel energy to create, not to mention maintain and rebuild? And I know we’re now strip mining the ocean for battery metals. I don’t yet sense the sustainability in this amid all this economic hand-waving of “it’s getting cheaper”. (forgive my tone, i have a hard time of making sense of the big picture of renewables, hoping to eventually see how it actually fits into a utopic idea of a “closed-loop economy”)

I’m reminded here a bit of Ted Chiang’s short story, Exhalation, where the people devise clever ways to try to put air back in the ground without using more than they’re sequestering. I hope our situation is better than that.

Just finished The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris. I can’t express strongly enough my gratitude that if I were to need surgery, it wouldn’t be in an operating room where “the screams of those struggling under the knife mingled discordantly with everyday noises drifting in from the street below: children laughing, people chatting, carriages rumbling by.”

Currently reading These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lapore where she argues for the pressing relevance of our foundational principles. It’s a hefty tome of about 800 pages, so I still have a ways to go.

Next up are two books which have been featured in several end of year lists: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe and Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

Reading aloud with my 10 year old daughter: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Penguin’s 150th anniversary annotated edition with a Patti Smith foreword). Enough said about how influential this experience is for both of us.

If you want smaller, quicker payoffs (but in no way cheaper!), consider the anthologies of short stories by Ted Chiang. Most of them are 15-45 minutes to read, with a couple longer (1-2 hours).

I've read both "Stories of Your Life and Others" and "Exhalation" in the last month and I turned to my wife and said "that story just blew my mind" for probably 75% of the stories.

You can find a few online. Here is a very short but brain-tickling example: https://www.nature.com/articles/35014679

Some of the books in my 2020 to be read basket:

Cultural Amnesia by Clive James

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Silver, Sword & Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story by Maria Arana

The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy

Alice And Bob Meet The Wall Of Fire edited by Thomas Lin

Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald

Big Bang by David Bowman

White Noise by Don DeLillo

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann

A House for Mr. Biwas by V. S. Naipaul

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

On The Abolition Of All Political Parties by Simone Weil

Collected Stories by Bruno Schulz

On Being The Right Size by J. B. S. Haldane

Bela Tarr, The Time After by Jacques Ranciere

La Vida Breve by Juan Carlos Onetti

The Clown by Heinrich Boll

Memoirs From Beyond The Grave by Francois-Rene De Chateubriand

Blood Dark by Louis Guilloux

The Liberal Imagination by Lionel Trilling

Cuentos Completos by Juan Carlos Onetti

Balcony In The Forest by Julien Gracq

Historia De España Contada Para Escépticos by Juan Eslava Galán

Diez Lecciones Sobre Los Clásicos by Piero Boitani

Waiting For The Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee

97,196 Words by Emmanuel Carrere

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

El Zafarrancho Aquel De Via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda