This book was really good. He takes outlandish sci fi concepts and questions what would happen if they were used practically, in the real world. Time portals, sentient computer programs, instant memory recall devices, and my personal favorite, prisms that allow you to create alternate timelines.
I skipped two of the stories. Good collection overall, very impressive.

This transcendent collection of short stories (and 1 novella) is hard to describe. Every story seems contrived to render the reader helpless in the wake of gut-wrenching emotional blows, often deployed on the last page or in the last sentence (looking at you "The Great Silence"). These sci-fi stories are highly conceptual and introspective. Characters often find themselves simply reflecting on their unique worlds and situations. What went wrong? What went right? How did we get here? Questions that often feel unmistakably current but also timeless. Ted Chiang is asking the BIG questions through common sci-fi tropes such as time travel, alternate worlds, dystopia, and AI. It feels sometimes, as Chiang asks these big questions, like a challenge. His characters are warnings, pleas, and reflections. I recommend this book for lovers of philosophy and for those who like reflecting on the nature of humanity. It will not disappoint.

Very interesting read; definitely recommend. Here is my rating for the nine stories in this book:
1) 4.5/5
2) 4/5
3) 3.5/5
4) 4/5
5) 3.5/5
6) 4.5/5
7) 5/5
8) 4/5
9) 4.5/5

Overall: 4/5

Quite different from his first collection, Stories of Your Life, which is one of my favorite books of all time. Nonetheless, Exhalation is powerful and amazing in its own rights. It's like reading Margaret Atwood, you are immersed into a unique world when you are hardly past the first two paragraphs!

Confident, economical writing that suspended my disbelief before I even noticed, allowing exploration of mind-stretching ideas. Good fun.

Chiang explores so many thought-provoking themes in this book of short stories, two novellas, and a novelette; e.g. free will, the implications of creating and caring for AI beings, the effect on society and individuals of accurate memory. Two of the stories were just nominated on 8 April 2020 for Hugo Awards: "Omphalos" and "Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”. Chiang’s writes with great clarity, explaining any complex technology or science that underlies his stories with succinctness. His writing style is compact and direct, yet the ideas he examines through simple narratives are profound. He doesn’t moralize; readers must think about the story and draw their own conclusions. At the end of the book, he provides a paragraph or two about each story describing what inspired him to write it. This would be an excellent book for a book club.

The stories within Exhalation were thought provoking and had a theme in common - collective humanity and perhaps what it means to be human. I had to take a break between stories to contemplate the meaning of what I had just read and how it might relate to my life. The length of the stories varied, some very long and others very short.

NYT 2019 Top 10

Extraordinary. I found each story to be very powerful and thought provoking, with the exception of the longest (The Lifecycle of Software Objects). Most had very powerful endings that, with a few simple sentences, made me sit back and take some time to consider the entire story.
I'll note that I did find some content involving sex, mostly some brief but explicit sex robot discussions, made me add an age recommendation (15+?) to my review. Just wasn't really expecting that and while I normally throw most sci fi material at my kids, this one made me sit up and think that I need to be a bit more conscious about recommendations. Though in today's world, nothing is really hidden so it may all be moot.

Part of former US President, Barack Obama's summer reading list for 2019.