Exhalation
Stories
-
-
4,2 • 5 Bewertungen
-
-
- 6,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories—two published for the very first time—all from the mind of the incomparable author of Stories of Your Life and Others
Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory.
Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.
In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hugo- and Nebula-winner Chiang's standout second collection (after 2002's Stories of Your Life and Others) explores the effects that technology and knowledge have on consciousness, free will, and the human desire for meaning. These nine stories introduce life-changing inventions and new worlds with radically different physical laws. In each, Chiang produces deeply moving drama from fascinating first premises. The title story follows a scientist whose self-experimentation reveals both the origin and eventual fate of consciousness. In "What's Expected of Us," a small device horrifically alters human behavior. Chiang's rigorous worldbuilding makes hard science fiction out of stories that would otherwise be fable, as in the Hugo and Nebula-winning novelette "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a time travel story that employs both relativistic physics and an Arabian Nights style structure. Others grapple with robots parenting humans, humans parenting AIs, the Fermi paradox, quantum mechanics, and what it means to be a sentient creature facing a potentially deterministic universe. As Chiang's endnotes attest, these stories are brilliant experiments, and his commitment to exploring deep human questions elevates them to among the very best science fiction.
Kundenrezensionen
Lesenswert
Bereits die erste Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten von Ted Chiang zeigte eine gelungene Kombination von klarer Sprache und interessanten Themen. In bester Tradition wird in seinen Geschichten eine interessante Frage in ein passendes phantastisches oder futuristisches Setting gebracht oder aus einer unerwarteten Perspektive betrachtet. Dabei stehen technologischen Errungenschaften nie im Mittelpunkt, sondern bieten Anlass und Gelegenheit, sich mit zutiefst menschliche Fragen auseinanderzusetzen.
Die Themen umfassen folglich Religion und Mythen, Philosophie, Verhaltensforschung, Neurologie aber auch moralische Fragen der KI oder die simple Frage „Was ist Glück?“. Sie sind dabei aber nicht moralisierend oder dogmatisch, sondern stellen im Gegenteil bestehende Dogmen und nie hinterfragte Annahmen in angenehm unpolemischer Weise in Frage.
Der vorliegende zweite Band setzt dieses Muster fort. Mein Favorit ist „The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling“, die Entscheidung fällt aber sehr schwer, denn alle Geschichten sind für das Genre überdurchschnittlich gut gelungen.
Fazit: keine Geschichten für Fans der harten Science Fiction, für Freunde von Philip K. Dick oder Stanislav Lem aber unbedingt lesenswert.