Exhalation: Stories

"A warning letter from the future. A museum exhibit card describing the mechanization of nurturing. An exploration of emergent artificial intelligence. The stories in Ted Chiang’s newest short story collection are tightly focused dramas of individuals whom the future has struck like a wave, or a bomb. And whether the “future” is tomorrow or 100 years ago (as seen from someone witnessing it from 101 years ago), it has the weight of inexorability to it. Tomorrow comes whether we want it to or not. The world changes no matter how tightly we cling to yesterday. And Chiang writes often (almost always) with an understanding that nothing we do, nothing he does, nothing any of his characters do, can change that."