Title: Exhalation

Author: Ted Chiang

Publisher: Vintage 2019

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 368

Rating: 2/5 stars - Disliked it

Reading Challenges: Winter TBR

Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories. Two being published for the very first time. All from the mind of the incomparable Ted Chiang.

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.

With my newly recalibrated star ratings, I decided to give this short story collection 2 stars. That sounds terrible, but I do think that some others might give it more stars. I was in a conundrum when it came to rating. Most of these stories felt very bland and frankly reductive. I think my biggest problem with this collection is that they all seem like bad copies of classic scifi stories from Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, et al. I didn’t find anything new in this collection and I didn’t have a lot of enjoyment from the stories that I did read. Overall, this just wasn’t to my liking at all.

Next up on the TBR pile: