Book review: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Exhalation by Ted Chiang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let's just put it this way: I don't think Ted Chiang is a very good writer. There's a kind of university essay style about his prose; something a little bit cold, distant, like the way your mind's eye might describe a neutron star, or the first actions of a digient if you were wearing a lab coat.
But in a way this kind of style is just perfect for the kind of stories Chiang is telling, for the ideas he is exploring, because he gets out of the way as an author, doesn't seem to be concerned with imposing a style, HIS style, on things, as a lot of authors seem to be. As I am probably annoyingly doing as I write this review. Gah.
It's the ideas at play here that count, and Chiang weaves them brilliantly into his stories be it time travel, autonomous AI, the nature of consciousness and free will, creationism versus evolution, quantum mechanics-based many worlds theory and more. For me, The Lifecycle of Software Objects was the most intriguing and best told story and I wish the title of the book had been this and not the rather more generic and boring Exhalation. Just sayin'.
But it's teasing out these ideas - that's Chiang's strength - same as with his previous collection of stories in the 'speculative fiction' sphere, Stories of Your Life. He goes deep into these ideas, into their philosophical and moral consequences, and sometimes it gets dark, which is why some have compared his stuff to that other speculative noiriste, Charlie Brooker and his Black Mirror TV series, with some justification I'd say.
Chiang is an 'ideasman'. That's why Barack Obama likes him I guess, that's why Alan Moore likes him, that's why contemporary writers like Junot Diaz say things like: "As perfect a collection of stories as I have ever read." Or others like Blake Crouch say "his name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Borges, and Kafka" which I think is a stretch too far, because, well I said that already...the essayist thing.
...to wit - this is an awesome collection. Looking forward to the next one.

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