Ted Chiang’s Exhalation is a collection of nine science fiction short stories. Published in 2019, the stories feature time travel, robots, artificial intelligences, and human beings grappling with an everchanging world. Seven of the nine stories appeared in previous publications, going on to win multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. Through the science fiction/dystopian genre, Exhalation explores forgiveness, parenting, technology ethics, free will, and climate change. This is Ted Chiang’s second collection, following Stories of Your Life and Others, published in 2002.

Plot Summary

The first story, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” involves a Gate of Years that allows time travel. The fabric merchant Fuwaad travels back 20 years prior to the accidental death of his wife, where he finds closure.

The title story “Exhalation” is about a mechanical being who lives in an enclosed universe. Wanting to better understand how its memories work, the unnamed narrator dissects its own brain and learns its thoughts are air powered. Tragically, the air pressure in the narrator’s world is slowly equalizing; eventually, there will be no air currents to power his consciousness. The narrator begins writing down its story, encouraging its readers to appreciate the time they have.

“What’s Expected of Us” is a warning from someone in the future. A small device called a Predictor causes users to disbelieve they have free will. Millions of people fall into waking comas, not seeing the point of life. The narrator encourages the reader to, for the sake of civilization, pretend they still have free will.

“The Lifecycle of Software Objects” is a novella about Ana Alvarado, a former zookeeper who accepts a job raising artificial intelligences called digients. Over the course of 20 years, Ana raises her digient, Jax, coming to love him deeply. The novella demonstrates that raising a complex artificial mind, much like a biological one, requires time, patience, and love.

“Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” mimics a museum exhibition catalog, giving the reader the strange history of the Automatic Nanny. Originally created by Reginald Dacey in the late 1800s, it fails to catch on with consumers. Reginald’s son, Lionel Dacey, later takes up his father’s pursuit, but fails; his son Edmund becomes attached to machines and can’t recognize other humans. To redeem himself, Lionel installs machinery in his home that will allow him to continue raising his son through a mechanical intermediary.

“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” tells two stories about memory and how technology can change cognition. In the first, a journalist tests out Remem, which records a user’s memories. The journalist learns he has misremembered a fight he had with his daughter years ago, and the machine-assisted memory can help him become a better father. In the second, a missionary introduces a Tivland man named Jijingi to written language. Jijingi later chooses to honor the oral traditions of his tribe.

In “The Great Silence” a parrot wonders why human beings look to the stars to find life to communicate with, when parrots are on the same planet. The parrot mourns its inevitable early extinction caused by humans, but isn’t angry, wishing humans love and luck instead.

“Omphalos” focuses on Dorothea, an archaeologist and devout believer in God. In Dorothea’s world, people use science to validate creationism. Dorothea reads an astrological article, however, that makes her question her faith. In the end, Dorothea decides that if God doesn’t have a purpose for her, she can create one for herself. 

The collection concludes with a second novella, “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom.” In this world, devices called prisms allow users to communicate with versions of themselves in parallel timelines. The main character, Nat, helps trick a man named Lyle into selling his prism to the company she works for. Lyle’s prism carries a timeline where a celebrity’s dead husband is still alive, and Nat and her coworker Morrow plan to sell it for a fortune. Before the transaction can occur, Morrow is killed, a consequence of his opportunistic behavior. Nat still sells the prism to the celebrity but uses the money to help other people instead of herself. The story demonstrates that personal growth is difficult, but the more we try, the easier it becomes, and the more it becomes a part of who we are.