Ted Chiang is a master, and this collection of his stories shows his range. Imaginative, deeply understanding of human nature, and very moving.

Thank you for providing this collection as part of the 2020 Hugo Awards Voter’s Packet. Congratulations on two stories making the ballot.

Hey, I finally got around to reading the oldest book on my NetGalley list! This is how rich and miserable my reading backlog has been: I verily feel like King Midas on the days I don't feel like Ado Annie.

But enough with my random allusions: how is the book, Doreen? (Forgive me, I'm a bit loopy off illness and cold meds.) I actually read it in chunks, covering the relevant stuff for their nominated Hugo year. I enjoyed <a href="https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/18/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-by-ted-chiang/">Anxiety Is The Dizziness Of Freedom</a> well enough, but was definitely not a fan of <a href="https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/06/11/hugo-awards-2020-novelette-nominees/">Omphalos</a>, as my religion is all about both science and metaphor (i.e. none of this young-Earth nonsense. Literalism is death to faith, ime.) Thus the thought exercise presented here was less sympathetic than so much typical "why am I not the center of the universe?" wankery to me.

I felt similarly with What's Expected Of Us despite it being less about faith than secular humanism. My religion believes in fate being a map of fixed points, with free will determining how we react to each and how we get from point to point. Muslim lives, unlike the lives of most pre-determinists, aren't lockstep marches from birth to death. There's also the important caveat of no one actually knowing what their fate will be, which is why it's important to live your best life and not judge others'. Ted Chiang actually does an incredible job portraying how Islam deals with future science in the opening story of this collection, The Merchant And The Alchemist's Gate, which is probably the most colorful -- in the sense of evoking visceral setting detail -- of the stories included here.

Not that that's very hard: the stories in Exhalation are rich in intellectual thought and conversation, but emotions tend less towards passion than pathos. And forget about action. Exhalation is mostly thinky speculative pieces that bend towards resignation rather than resolve, with the prime example being the story that gives the collection its name. There's the occasional touch of sweetness, as in the ending of The Great Silence. The Lifecycle Of Software Objects has a lot of interesting things to say about bonding and affection between humans and AI, with a really thoughtful extrapolation of what AI can be and how humanity's responsibilities towards them must also evolve. Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny was another interesting short riff on parenting, and while The Truth Of Fact, The Truth Of Feeling isn't technically about parenting, that part of the narrative is what will linger with me longest. I really liked the circular nature of the story within a story, especially with the therapist's observation that a memory tool will only damage a relationship if the participants use it as a wedge instead of a bridge. Ooh, that's actually my own turn of phrase and I rather like that, I should keep it.

Anyway, this was a wonderfully cerebral collection of stories that are best suited for when you're in or pursuing a meditative frame of mind. Mr Chiang is deeply talented at examining the ethics of bleeding edge technology and extrapolating them via science-fiction, portraying (often in best-case scenarios) how they might collide with the real world. The real world, ofc, is far uglier and less dispassionate than he portrays, but his style serves to elegantly and cleanly present the facts as he sees them and his resulting theories. Excellent speculative work, if a bit less hot-blooded than I prefer.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang was first published May 7 2019 by Knopf and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781101972083">Bookshop!</a>

I received a copy of this book as part of the Hugo voting pack. It's a really beautiful collection of though provoking and imaginative stories that explore human nature and our place in the universe. I will definitely be looking out for more works by this author.

A collection of mind-blowing SF stories by the author of "Story of Your Life" (the basis for the movie "Arrival"). Every story is sophisticated and thought-provoking but my two favourites were "Omphalos" and "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", both of which were nominated for 2020 Hugo Awards . Reading a Ted Chiang story reminds me of the mind-expanding potential of good SF and why I love this genre so much. My thanks to Ted Chiang, Vintage Books and NetGalley for this great reading experience.

I received this anthology to evaluate two stories from from Ted Chiang's Exhalation for the 2020 Hugo Awards.. The first story nominated was Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom as a novella. The second story was Omphalos, a novelette. Both stories were well written.

I received this as part of my voter's packet for Hugo Award voting in 2020. At first I only read the two stories that were nominated (Omphalos and Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom), but recently finished the entire collection. It was my first from Chiang, as I haven't read Stories of Your Life and Others (yet, I do have this book sitting on my TBR cart at the moment). Anxiety reminded me a great deal about a study I once read about how we are more satisfied with our choices when we choose between less options, because we don't feel like there were so many other choices that we could have made that would have been better. As a person who constantly, and to my own detriment, sits with and obsesses over choices that I have made, it hit me really hard. I felt chastened. The Lifecycle of Software Objects was another favourite, as it asked a lot of questions about what it means to be considered a person, which I personally find incredibly interesting, especially in this advanced technological moment.

Overall, a lovely introduction to Chiang's work, and the spur I needed to jump into his other work as well.

“Incredible author!

Another excellent collection! Chiang’s words are infinitely quotable and his stories stay with you long after you have finished them. I read this and Stories of Your Life recently. I read a LOT, but I can safely say that Chiang now rates among my top authors ever.”


Review posted on Goodreads and Amazon

These stories were every bit as enjoyable as I expected. The author has a cold way of setting forth a story, heavily invested in the plot construction as a way to get at the characters' inner lives, and a build toward an epiphany toward the end of the story, maybe right at the end for the shortest stories, when you feel like you've been given enough information to begin rumination on what the whole thing meant. This kind of painstaking work must cut into the rate at which new stories come out, but it also makes them immensely rewarding. Every one of the stories is firmly in the speculative fiction mold, where some counterfactual feature proves to be indispensable to the telling of the story. He does also pay attention to ordinary character traits including flaws, so that there is a kind of realism there too. I do not really know anyone else in the field who writes quite this way and we are fortunate to have this caliber of work.

The stories are very different as to settings, area of technology being probed, and demands upon the reader. I had read one of the novella length stories 'The Lifecycle of Software Objects' before, but I am sure I got a lot more out of it the second time through. The outcome of this story, like many of the others, doesn't seem inevitable, but it does feel plausible given the characters and the situation. There is poignancy without overt depiction of emotion, partly because these characters don't have full access to the range they would need to release their emotions. I don't think any of the stories is for the reader who likes a lot of action and high-stakes tension, more like medium-stakes discomfort and dissatisfaction going on typically.

I obtained my advance reading copy of this book through Netgalley in order to provide my observations in this review.

Really enjoyed what I read of this (for Hugo nominations). Ted Chiang is amazing, and I always get excited to hear he has a new collection out.

This is a wonderful collection of stories that is thought provoking and really interesting. It covers a variety of different ideas and themes and it is obvious that Chiang has a real knowledge of the scientific background behind his tales. Looking at the profound impact on human nature that scientific and technological advances might have, Chiang writes flawlessly and presents a series of fascinating tales. I was particularly impressed with how the science, however highly developed, never overshadows the humanity of the tales and how Chiang balances psychology, sociology and religion with the science.

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate; 4.5/5 stars.
In the first tale Chiang weaves science fiction and fantasy together with an in depth historical portrayal of the Baghdad Bazaar. This is a gentle tale, taking a philosophical and very human approach to the conundrum of time travel and Chiang truly captures the imagination in each of the mini tales he weaves to make up the whole. It’s wonderful how well this captures place and time, even as it delves into the intricacy of the human psyche.

Exhalation; 4/5 stars. From a gentle mix of science fiction and fantasy, this thrusts you straight into technology and science. It’s cleverly written and intriguing, although wasn’t my favourite in the collection.

What’s The Expectation of Us; 3/5 stars. At a mere handful of pages this is the shortest piece in the collection and looks at how free will could be influenced by the simplest of technological advances. There wasn’t a lot to get your teeth into here and it was over as soon as it began.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects; 5/5 stars. One of my favourite stories, this is a tale that scans decades and looks at how humans might interact with intelligent AI’s. I loved how Chiang brought to life the various digients, giving them characters and personalities and how people treated them as a strange amalgamation of a teachable pet and a digital object. My only complaint is that the ending felt somewhat unsatisfactory.

Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny; 3/5 stars. An interesting proposition here of the impact of technology raising children, but the characters felt rather flat. Perhaps would have been better if built up into a full novella, rather than the snippet you get.

The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling; 4.5 stars. Another brilliant novella, taking two different timelines and events and portraying the impact of various advances on human memory. I particularly liked how Chiang doesn’t restrict himself to science fiction, although that is key to one narrative line. Instead the narrative reaches into the past and looks at the difference between oral traditions and written documents. A fascinating look at the fallibility of human memory and how we instinctively protect ourselves even in our own personal recollections.

The Great Silence; 5/5 stars. Beautiful and poignant. When humanity is looking to the skies for other intelligent life forms when there is one right here that we just don’t seem to notice.

Omphalos; 4.5/5 stars. Another fascinating portrayal of a world not much unlike our own, but one where science backs the claims of religious fundamentalism- all the signs are there that God created the world and that humanity is at the centre of it. Except when it’s not.

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom; 4.5/5 stars. It took me a while to get into this one as the science is far heavier, but once it got going it really got going. In a world where Prisms can connect two alternate timelines, the issues with meeting your own self in a lifeline that did far better or even worse than your own are complex. But some people are using the prisms for more nefarious means and there are consequences to every action, even if we don’t see it in this timeline.

All in all, a wonderful collection exploring the complexities of humanity as well as science in all its glory. I’m very interested in reading more of Chiang’s work.

Some of the stories were great, some were forgettable. Many of them were too long for their concept. I think this whole book could have benefited from having more of it cut. The ideas themselves were great though, it was the execution I sometimes had problems with.

I received this book to review the two stories which were nominated for the Hugo awards. Both stories had interesting concepts, but neither of them really stuck with me after reading them.

I read this for Hugo voting purposes. My reviews of the two relevant stories are below. They have/will be reproduced on my book blog.

* "Omphalos"
An unexpected story told in an unusual way. Almost an epistolary story, but told through prayers rather than letters. Set in a world a bit less technologically developed than ours, and following a scientist who knows exactly how long ago the world was created. And that it was created by a divine being. I enjoyed it more than I expected.
* "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" -
I really enjoyed this novella. It is possibly my favourite take on the manyworlds hypothesis/parallel timelines. The story follows a few different people as they interact with a new technology that allows them to communicate (via digital information only) with parallel timelines. The character driven story is interspersed with explanations of the technology, which I thought worked well and were not at all boring infodumps (though others might disagree). Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable read.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Exhalation is a science fiction short story collection by Ted Chiang. Chiang is best known for writing the novella Story of Your Life, which was adapted into the film Arrival, the 2016 movie for which Amy Adams should have won an Academy Award. Unlike some other short story collections, this short story collection coheres pretty thoroughly to one specific theme.

Ted Chiang - Exhalation

Exhalation collects nine stories, each of which illustrates how people react to technology (that we may or may not recognize as such). Altogether, this is a cohesive collection that centers around one theme: how technology affects humanity.

Technology and Humanity in Exhalation
All of these stories, in one way or another, are about how technology can change humanity. The kinds of technologies seen here vary widely, from the implementation of writing to creating and raising digital creatures known as digients. We like to think that every new technology makes us better people. However, Chiang argues that technology changes us, but we cannot always say that it is for the better. In some cases, we lose something while we’re looking at this new innovation. In others, the technological innovation improves our lives in some ways, but changes what we focus on.

Two of the stories contained in Exhalation are Hugo finalists. “Omphalos” is a finalist for Best Novelette. “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” is a finalist for Best Novella. In “Omphalos,” a female archeologist discovers a truth about the universe that shakes her faith in God and science after someone steals an artifact. It is written as a historical fiction story, but there is a major divergence point that would be a spoiler to disclose, as well as some other points that influence the story greatly. The technology element is more oblique in this story than it is in others, but the truth discovered would not have been possible without it.

In “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom,” products exist that allow people to communicate with their parallel selves. The point-of-view characters all react to the availability of this technology differently. Both of these stories are written very well, and lead the reader to ask interesting questions about the world around them.

Conclusion – Exhalation Looks at Futures We May Not Wish to See
In Exhalation, Ted Chiang explores the effect of technology on society. What becomes clear through these stories is that technology should be carefully considered. Even if we think an innovation can only provide good, all nine of these stories weave tales where that good has unintended consequences. Although not all of these stories take place in the future, they are all still about potential futures humanity could face. Several of these stories are easily visualizable as Black Mirror episodes. However, that television series has an oppressive feeling of darkness that this collection never really reaches (thankfully). If you’re looking for a short story collection that looks forward, this might be the work for you.

Don’t forget! Hugo Voting closes Wednesday 22 July 2020 at 23:59 Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7)/Thursday, 23 July 2020 at 18:59 New Zealand Standard Time (UTC+12).

I got this as part of the Hugo Awards Voting Packet. I look forward to reading the author’s next book. Whenever that may be.

Exhalation is a strong collection with some slight tales and some that didn’t fully work, but none that were weak or that failed to inspire some thought or emotional response. I’m always satisfied when a collection meets me at half the stories being good, pleasantly surprised when it nears seventy percent, and thrilled at three-quarters or more. Here I loved two of nine, liked several others, and loved the concepts of ones where I thought the language a little flat. Definitely a winning collection. More specifically:

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”
Probably my favorite story in the collection. I love the nested story within the story Arabian Nights structure, the narrative voice, and the quietly moving intertwined themes of regret, redemption, and forgiveness.

“Exhalation”
A neat sideways twist on entropy in our universe and a lovely paean to the marvel of existence

“What’s Expected of Us”
A cute exploration of free will that is exactly as long as it should be

“The Lifecycle of Software Objects”
I loved the idea of exploring the implications of artificial/virtual life: how people would bond (or not) with them, how they would grow and develop, the legalities of their personhood, the potential for abuse. The problem for me was that the story felt betwixt and between, feeling not long enough to bear the weight of all Chiang is trying to do with the detail he’s trying to employ. I’d have been happy to see it stripped of some of its details and events to create a zippier short story and even happier to see it longer for better characterization, transitions, and a richer style.

“Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny”
A solid enough story that didn’t do a lot for me but as with “What’s Expected of Us,” Chiang shows a strong sense of just how far to take the concept.

“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”
The theme of how our memories work both individually and culturally is a fascinating one, and I liked how Chiang used the parallel structure here to make the point about the impact of new technology and ways of remembering/expressing on a culture (as well as a point about about colonialism in the earlier timeline story). It’s a thought-provoking tale, though the language was a little flat and at times the narrator’s voice a bit too on the nose for my personal liking.

“The Great Silence”
This one didn’t do much for me. It was an interesting tidbit, and again, Chiang knows not to run too long with it, but it just didn’t hold together for me.

“Omphalos”
Similar to “Exhalation,” I liked how Chiang took an idea from our world and turned it slantwise. Like “The Truth of Fact,” I liked the concept and thoughtfulness of this story but felt the language was somewhat flat.

“Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”
My second favorite of the collection. I loved the concept of the parauniverses connected by “pads” and how Chiang used the strict parameters of allowable communication to drive the plot. Even better was the emotional journey of the main character and that melding of sci-fi concept and character-driven emotionality was what made this so appealing to me.

Nine stories in a collection by Ted Chiang are eagerly anticipated. The two stories not reprinted form other sources are both finalists for the 2020 Hugo Awards. I received a copy of the collection in the Hugo Voter packet.

The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate – A Time Travel story, which finds a silver lining in the type of Time Machine which prevents travellers from interfering with the past. If the traveller is fortunate, perhaps learning or solace might be obtained. Some examples are explored in an exotic setting.

Exhalation – A robot scientist explores the physical laws of its universe, which sobering results. The Heat Death of our universe writ small, as entropy will get us all in the end.

What’s Expected of Us – Ted Chiang often returns to the matter of free will in his stories. This one is short and sharp, and posits a device which demonstrates that free will is an illusion, that determinism rules. A little tale, but asking big questions.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects – In this Novella, Chang tells the story of and easily the most wrenching, exploratory of the lot. Touches not only on artificial life and AI, but the same kind of feelings we might have for autistic children and trying to save Zoos. For pretty much the same reasons. And I got rather invested in this. I can see it becoming a problem in our future.

Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny - So cool! A mix of our recentish Science History and a very plausible alternate past, part psychology, part 'oh, crap, we definitely could have done this to ourselves'.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling – An analysis of memory and how it is created and maintained. As a species, we have gone from retelling our oral history to writing it down and setting it in stone in only a few centuries. But how will we change if it is possible to accurately record video and audio of our lives, so that when in the court of life, the prosecutor ask what happened then, we can no longer rely on the assertion ‘I don’t recall’.

Chiang demonstrates this from the POV of a father who must reconcile with an estranged daughter. If truth can be incontrovertibly proven, then does that mean that history will no longer be written by the winners?

The Great Silence - A Fermi paradox story, posing the question ‘What if we are missing something obvious?’.

Omphalos – This new story recalls Chiang’s ‘Hell is the Absence of God’ by putting a literal interpretation on Old testament writings. In this reality, the Young Earth Creationists have it right. Proof of God's intervention, creation, is everywhere, but scientists have found data which leads to a very different crisis of faith in Mankind’s exceptionalism. This one is a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Awards.

Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom - Another novella, also a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Awards. Chiang explores the nature of free will and morality, in a many universes setting, where one can converse with alternate versions of oneself, and maybe learn something or accrue some advantage. But if alternate you makes bad or immoral choices, does that reflect on your version of you?

https://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/exhalation.html

Ted Chiang does not publish enough fiction, but when he does, it is always the cause for celebration. Of course, when Chiang publishes stories, they frequently are in out of the way places and not necessarily easy to find, even if the reader is aware of them. Fortunately, Chiang has published his second collection of stories, Exhalation, a mere 17 years after he published Stories of Your Life and Others. These stories come from a variety of sources: magazines, e-zines, stand-alone volumes. Two are being published in this collection for the first time.

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” tells the story of Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a merchant fallen on hard times. When the opportunity presents itself, he begins telling stories of a magical gate to another world to the Caliph of Baghdad. Each of the stories Fuwaad ibn Abbas tells the Caliph are different in the protagonists' intentions and the results of their work. Underlying all of them is a sense of predeterminism, as all that can be done is the will of Allah. Chiang packs in plenty of characterization and setting to make the story feel longer than it actually is.

"Exhalation" focuses on the theme of memory, which features in many of the stories in the collection. It is the story of a self-aware robot in a society of robots. When a regulated task appears to take longer than it should for robots in many districts, he comes up with an experiment to determine how robots' brains work, something they don't fully understand. In a theme that recurs throughout the collection, the robot is trying to understand how memory works and what can be done to improve, extend, and retrieve forgotten memories. The act of using a robot to do the research instead of a human (which don't appear to exist within the robot's consciousness) offers up a separation between the activity in the story and the reader/humans Chiang is writing about.

While “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” touches on the concept of predestination, that becomes the focus of “What’s Expected of Us,” which looks at a simple gizmo that reacts a second before it is activated, reminiscent in many ways of Isaac Asimov’s “The Endochronic Properties of Reublimated Thiotomoline.” Chiang explores the negative impact of the realization that free will is illusory, resulting a world that seems similar in some ways to Larry Niven’s “All the Myriad Ways.” While the fate of Chiang’s narrator is less permanent than Niven’s, the worldview of this story is not any less bleak.

Originally published in its own volume, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” looks at the rise of artificial intelligence in a virtual world and how flesh and blood people will react to such constructs when they are linked to lovable avatars called digients. Chiang shows these digients maturing from simple constructs who essentially have play dates with each other, to individuals with their own cares and concerns, not least of which is the knowledge that digients frequently disappear when their owners lose interest or the fact that they can be rolled back and lose some of their experiences. The digients become even more interesting when Chiang allows them to develop their own personalities and interests.

“Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” was written for Jeff and Ann VanderMeer’s anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, which is a collection of short stories focusing on the strange relics of a pseudo-Victorian England that have made their way into the titular doctor’s collection. Chiang focused on a mechanical nanny designed to raise Reginald Dacey’s son and also help Dacey raised the funds to create an educational engine that governesses could use to teach their charges. The machine worked, but after a publicized injury was a commercial failure. Chiang follows Dacey’s son’s attempts to reintroduce the device a generation later, using many of the same techniques his father used to sell an automated Mary Poppins.

Chiang takes a look at memory and technology in "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Fiction," which examines the introduction of two different type sof technology for recording memories and how it impacts that way people view their history. In the primary story, the narrator is discussing the invention of Remem, a lifeloggingin service which uses the sort of videos, recordings, and photos people take of their own and other people's lives and indexes them so people can access the recordings of events instead of just relying on their memories. In a secondary story, he relates teh tale of the Tiv, a Nigerian people to whom the British introduced writing in the 1940s. In both cases, the introduction of a new way of recording memories causes the characters, both the narrator and the Tiv scribe Jijingi, to realize how malleable memory is and, perhaps even more importantly, how people can reject the evidence of what "really" happened when it clashes with their own memories of the events.

“The Great Silence” is a look at the Fermi Paradox, which questions why we haven’t been able to find any sign of alien life. However, while the humans are looking for intelligent life in the galaxy, Chiang is looked at intelligent life on Earth, focusing his attention of the parrots of Puerto Rico whose speech is a hint that there might be more to learn from and about them. The narrator, one of those parrots, is philosophical about humanity‘s quixotic search even as he realizes that parrots will most likely go extinct before humans realize the level of intelligence they possess, making for a bittersweet story about missing the things that are right under your nose.

"Omphalos" posits a young earth and looks, in part, at how that would impact science. Atacama mummies without navals and dendochronology that can be used to date the exact year of the creation are evidence of the creation. The world Chiang has built is similar, but not the same as ours and religion plays an enormous part in the social polity since the Biblical story of creation can be demonstrated as having a basis in fact. The discovery of a star that appears to orbit a distant planet sparks a crisis of faith since it implies that at best the humans on Earth were created as a test run for another race which is actually the primary focus of the divine.

“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom” is an original story to the collection and it returns to the question of predestination that was discussed in earlier stories, with an even stronger parallel to Niven’s short story. Chiang has been worlds in which communications between timelines is possible via a device called a PRISM. Chiang meticulously sets up the rules for how the communications works and follows several people with intersecting paths. His protagonist is Nat, a woman who is a drug user working in a story that provides access to PRISMs and who helps her manager, Morrow, with scams to supplement her income. One of those scams involves her going to a PRISM support group run by Dana for people who are addicted to PRISM use the way Nat has been addicted to drugs. Using the stories of the various people in the support group, as well as Dana’s other patients, Chiang explores how the knowledge that there are multiple versions of oneself who can act and react in different ways raise questions about destiny and intention. While Niven’s story was focused on an individual, Chiang opens his worlds to a much broader interpretation, bringing a complexity to his story that Niven could only hint at.

Ted Chiang's authorial output is famous both for its relative sparseness, and for the fact that almost every individual story hits it out of the park in their exploration of various science fictional concepts. This collection, of nine mostly longer stories, definitely lives up to the hype, with a number of stories that focus on free will, religious belief and tests of faith, and our connections across the boundaries of species and life-altering technology

The reason I read this now, of course, was for its Hugo nominated pair: "Omphalos" is the story of an alternative earth in which the evidence of divine creation a finite period of time ago is evident all over the natural world, from ancient trees which stop containing rings eight thousand years ago to human skeletons which show no evidence of having grown form childhood. In a world where religiosity is therefore far more prevalent going into the 21st century, a discovery by an astronomer threatens to overturn humanity's confidence in itself at the centre of creation. It's a story that thematically pairs nicely with another free will explanations in here, notably "The Merchant and the Alchemist", an Arabian Nights-style nested story about time travel in an immutable timeline; in both, characters have the foundations of their beliefs about humanity challenged, but we come out with a feeling that the potential of their future is undiminished. "What's Expected of Us", one of the collection's flash-length pieces, offers a far less optimistic view.

The Hugo nominated novella, "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom", also looks at free will, this time in a world where a technology, "prisms", exist to allow communication between two diverged quantum timelines, letting people try different, branched-off lives but also opening up a host of new ways for people to feel anxious, dissatisfied or unhappy about their lives (I appreciated that a significant part of this story happens in group therapy, normalising the fact that envy between life paths is something to be taken seriously in this world). The storyline of the novella follows a minor con artist and his assistant, who discover they have access to a prism that could be hugely valuable to the right buyer. What really makes this story tick, though, is not how that story plays out, but all the meetings and partings and intersections with other people trying to live their lives in a world where humanity's concept of our individual choices have fundamentally changed. It's understated and quietly powerful and, quite simply, an excellent story to round off an excellent collection.