Exhalation
★★★★★Read Jun 29, 2019
Enjoyed this well enough, but nothing truly blew me away. There's something a little twee in this collection of stories that didn't sit right with me, the common theme of wistfulness for adjacent possibilities. OTOH that's precisely one of the themes Chiang is good at writing so it's wrong for me to criticize it. He remains one of the best sci-fi authors of our generation and with so little written, every piece deserves attention.
Goodreads readers give it 4.27★, from 118,939 ratings. I gave it 3★, −1.3, where I'm usually −0.9: I rated it like most.
Readers call it Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Philosophy, Anthologies.
Won Locus Award 2020, Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire 2010, Premio Ignotus 2021, Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work 2021 and 2 more.
Also nominated for Bram Stoker Award 2019, Hugo Award 2020, Nebula Award 2019, Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2020 and 2 more.