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“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (2008)
- AceJohnny2 10y agoFirst story by Chiang I read years ago, and loved it. Took me a while to remember who it was by when I looked for it again later. I assume it's coming up because the movie Arrival [1] is based on Chiang's "Story of you Life" [2]? [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life
- huxley 10y agoA sizeable contingent of Hacker News readers love Ted Chiang's stuff so it's not uncommon for links to his stories to surface on HN from time to time, but I think you're correct that Arrival's success has revived interest in his older stuff.
- gumby 10y agoA friend just gave me a book of TC stories and I'm really enjoying them! Arrival was, well it was a Hollywood movie, but I was so glad to see linguists in a film I had to see it and enjoy it.
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- quanticle 10y agoAnother favorite Ted Chiang short story: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate". To me, it's one of the few stories that manage to incorporate time travel and still have it be meaningful while avoiding paradoxes.
- bangonkeyboard 10y agoWhat's great is that it's a straight sci-fi story that could be dropped into the Zipes adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights and none would be the wiser.
- da-bacon 10y agoDefinitely. It's actually one of those stories that I wouldn't be surprised if it inspires some new ideas for those who try to do serious research on time travel (or the polite way to say time travel among physicists: closed timelike curves.)
- firegrind 10y agoThere's a splendid audio version at http://www.uvulaaudio.com/merchant.html http://www.uvulaaudio.com/merchant.html
- rimantas 10y agoThe first book about time travel I read nailed it — The Technicolor Time Machine.
- ajmurmann 10y agoThis is one of my favorite short stories and such a fantastic metaphor for climate change.
- wyager 10y agoI think you may have not entirely understood where he was going with that. It's a metaphor for entropy. It's actually a much more poignant and beautiful topic than something as short-term and universally inconsequential as climate change on earth.
- ajmurmann 10y agoThat is indeed a more interesting interpretation. Thank you for making this already great story even greater to me!
- syncsynchalt 10y agoAlso a metaphor for the Simulation Hypothesis!
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- joggery 10y agoI like the way the narrator-hero is trapped in a sinister bell jar world and yet works optimistically to improve his knowledge of it. Regardless of outcome he sees no malevolence built into reality.
- klodolph 10y agoMore than a metaphor, it is actually about entropy.
- sangnoir 10y ago> It's actually a much more poignant and beautiful topic than something as short-term and universally inconsequential as climate change on earth. I disagree- these mechanical people are well-nigh immortal and will leave to see the end of their world, no one alive today on earth will live to see the heat death of the universe. However, we might just get to experience the effects of climate change. The beauty of literature is we can both the right - our interpretations of the work is what matters. Additionally, while they are inspired by them,authors do not necessarily do a 1:1 mapping of real world issues to their stories
- imh 10y agoHaving just watched Black Mirror and Westworld, I was totally bummed about how much near-future sci-fi is so goddamned depressing. Yesterday I decided to reread a story I love, "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," coincidentally also by Ted Chiang. It's a nice AI story that you can get through in one sitting. Highly recommend. Read it here: http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_lifecycle_of_software_objects_by_ted_chiang/ http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_...
- wyager 10y agoThat might be my favorite Ted Chiang story overall. Unfortunately Hollywood couldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, so I'm not expecting a movie out of it any time soon. His biblical fiction is quite good as well, and I could see them getting movie adaptations.
- bangonkeyboard 10y agoI'm not sure that "Lifecycle" is less palatable to mainstream Hollywood than "Hell Is the Absence of God", but would be thrilled to be wrong.
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- wyager 10y agoI think Absence could be done as a cool horror movie, kind of like Legion but not shitty and more existential.
- nine_k 10y agoConsider "72 letters": it's brilliant, long but no overly long, packed with ideas and plot twists, and it does stand a chance of becoming a Hollywood movie. (Not that the latter is necessarily a good thing, but still.)
- sooheon 10y agos/unfortunately/fortunately I disagree with your implication that a Hollywood adaptation is the ultimate aspiration of all written works.
- j_s 10y agoFuther discussion just over a week ago, where Exhalation was called "one of the best SF stories ever written", and several other recommendations were made: Ted Chiang on Seeing His Stories Adapted and the Ever-Expanding Popularity of SF https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13053377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13053377
- StavrosK 10y agoThe site is down for me, here's a mirror: https://www.pastery.net/skwyyr/ https://www.pastery.net/skwyyr/
- stared 10y agoTed Chiang's stories on Kindle (including "Exhalation", "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "The Lifecycle of Software Objects"), if on-screen reading is tiresome: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessible%20online%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.mobi?dl=1 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessib...