Ted Chiang’s book of short stories, Exhalation (2019) offers speculative fiction that is both otherworldly and rooted in time-honored philosophical questions. Chiang's stories range from very short stories to novellas, all in exquisitely crafted prose.  Among them, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” addresses now-classic questions about the personhood and rights of artificial intelligence, but in so doing, asks questions as well about sexual maturity, language acquisition, young adult reasoning, and what forms parenting, as well as sacrifice and love, can take. 

"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a Nebula award winner, tells the story of a portal through time in the style of a tale from the Thousand and One Nights. The alchemist's "gate of years" enables those who travel through it opportunity to see themselves and others twenty years forward or backward in time. Although the protagonists can never alter the future, they are able to learn from their past and future realities. Two other stories, "What's Expected of Us" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" similarly explore issues of predestination, parallel universes, and the extent to which the future can be altered.  "What's Expected of Us" chronicles the shutting down by individuals who learn that everything they can accomplish has already been predicted. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" tells of the obsession by those, enabled by "prisms" that allow them to see their lives in parallel dimensions, who rethink their life choices based on what might have happened. 

The story "Omphalos" presents a world in which young earth creationism is fact--but the verification of a geocentric universe such as that posited by Ptolemy causes people of science to lose faith. One other story of note, "The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling" weighs the constant recording of experience such as that by lifeloggers against the possibilities of the written word in Tiv society. Altogether, the stories address memories and truth, second chances, the cosmos, and the meaning of existence.

Excerpts, Exhalation

"I Free Make My Own Mistakes: An Analysis of Digient Sexual Consent and Independence" from "The Life Cycle of Software Objects"
From "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"
From "What Is Expected of Us?"