Science Fiction Doesn't Have To Be Dystopian

The publication of a new story by Ted Chiang is always an event in the science fiction field; the publication of a new collection of his stories is a major event. He has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, and his story, The Story of Your Life was made into the movie, Arrival. And for a bonus, he's a technical writer.

The New Yorker has a review of his new collection, Exhalation, written by none other than Joyce Carol Oates.

In his new collection, “Exhalation” (Knopf), his second, Chiang again presents elaborate thought experiments in narrative modes that initially seem familiar. Contemporary issues relating to bioethics, virtual reality, free will and determinism, time travel, and the uses of robotic forms of A.I. are addressed in plain, forthright prose. If Chiang’s stories can strike us as riddles, concerned with asking rather than with answering difficult questions, there is little ambiguity about his language. When an entire story is metaphorical, focussed on a single surreal image, it’s helpful that individual sentences possess the windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose ideal.

I've read several of the stories in the collection and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I completely agree with Oates' assessment: "The stories in “Exhalation” are mostly not so magically inventive as those in Chiang’s first collection, but each is still likely to linger in the memory the way riddles may linger—teasing, tormenting, illuminating, thrilling."