Exhalation

The 2016 science fiction film Arrival is based on Story of Your Life, a short story by American writer Ted Chiang, which I thought might be interesting to read because I recall finding the movie rather unimpressive. I probably should have read the blurb on Exhalation: Stories more carefully because the anthology doesn't include that particular story -- it's in another one. That didn't stop me from reading this one, though.

I would say that the short stories and novellas in Exhalation are pretty much what one would expect from science fiction works of their scope: built around one or maybe few ideas related to science. The novellas perhaps go on too long, the point having already become clear and the plot not adding to it anymore. Despite that, Chiang's works do tend to get nominated for various awards regularly and win them too, it would seem.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects is one of the novellas that is too long to my liking though it was the best of the longer stories. It's about ethics involved in the creation of sentience from artificial intelligence. There's also an element of capitalism to it because the entities in their infancy need upkeep and that takes resources. I liked the Web 3.0 backdrop the story had going on although it suffers a bit from being in novella format, changes happening in leaps instead of having a more gradual progression.

The titular story of the anthology is what I would expect from a science fiction short story -- and maybe even from some adjacent genre. It begins with a rather mundane, everyday life situation but there's something odd about it that just keeps getting weirder until you understand what's going on. Omphalos is another such story in the book.

Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom deals with parallel realities, which have been a bit too common elemental in entertainment media in the recent years -- damn theoretical physicists and their string theories. At least in this story it doesn't create too much nonsense.

The final short story worth mentioning -- and the best one by far too -- is The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling. A journalist is working on a piece about Remem, a lifelogging technology that allows its user to remember everything they've experienced in perfect accuracy, effectively granting a complete eidetic memory. With the tech, memories can be shared as well.

There's a parallel narrative in which an African tribe is being introduced to writing by European missionaries. It contradicts with the natives' oral tradition, which has separate -- especially in quarrels -- truths about what actually happened and what is agreed upon to have happened: what is fair and appropriate. To have an unchanged record of events clashes hard with their culture.

Thanks to Remem, the journalist learns that his perception of why his relationship with his daughter went so sour had been completely off the mark. He notes the drastic change to human behavior the technology will have.

I think the story was far more deserving a literary award than the many Chiang's stories that have actually won one. Human memory is so fallible and we trust it way too much. To have an absolutely objective recollection of events would be incredible.