Sample

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Exhalation  By  cover art

Exhalation

By: Ted Chiang
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, Amy Landon, Ted Chiang
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.25

Buy for $20.25

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
activate_primeday_promo_in_buybox_DT

Publisher's summary

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.

©2019 Ted Chiang (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES • THE WASHINGTON POST • TIME MAGAZINE • NPR • ESQUIRE • VOX • THE A.V. CLUB • THE GUARDIAN • FINANCIAL TIMES • THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

“Lean, relentless, and incandescent.” —Colson Whitehead

“Illuminating, thrilling. . . . Like such eclectic predecessors as Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree, Jr., Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, China Miéville, and Kazuo Ishiguro, Chiang has explored conventional tropes of science fiction in highly unconventional ways. . . . Individual sentences possess the windowpane transparency that George Orwell advocated as a prose ideal. . . . It is both a surprise and a relief to encounter fiction that explores counterfactual worlds like these with . . . ardor and earnestness. . . . Human curiosity, for Chiang, is a nearly divine engine of progress.”—Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker

“Delirious and exciting as hell . . . [Chiang’s] stories brim with wonder and horror, spectacle and mundanity, philosophy and religion. Tapping into a range of speculative traditions, from pulp and fantasy to the rigorous scientific accuracy of hard sci-fi and the popcorn thrills of soft sci-fi, his work has a profound richness.” —Stephen Kearse, The Nation

Editor's Pick

From the Author who brought us Arrival
"Ted Chiang’s stories are incomparable. They are mathematical and uniquely scientific, but not hard to understand, and they never fail to deliver on an emotional level. His most famous work—Stories of Your Life and Others (which contains the story that was the basis for the movie Arrival)—made me cry when I first heard it. That's something I can’t say for the movie, even though Denis Villeneuve is my favorite director of all time. In my mind, Chiang is a modern day Italo Calvino: an empath who can simultaneously tap into the perspectives of totally alien or inanimate entities, and deliver absolutely mind-blowing and borderline-mystical plots and concepts. His reputation and writing certainly deserve a top-notch cast of narrators, and Exhalation uses them to full effect. Offering an experience that feels as ancient as it does futuristic—as if life was one big circle."
Michael D., Audible Editor

What listeners say about Exhalation

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2,462
  • 4 Stars
    927
  • 3 Stars
    350
  • 2 Stars
    97
  • 1 Stars
    52
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1,968
  • 4 Stars
    866
  • 3 Stars
    343
  • 2 Stars
    89
  • 1 Stars
    31
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2,172
  • 4 Stars
    714
  • 3 Stars
    266
  • 2 Stars
    90
  • 1 Stars
    52

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great book. Not so great reading.

The book overall was great. Lots of interesting ideas. However, I find that if a male can't do a female voice well or vice versa it always takes me out of the story. The female reader was particularly bad when it came to male voices. Her voice sounded like a voice you'd use to make fun of someone like they are dumb. Hence all her male characters sound like they are supposed to be dim. It's not really the case if you read it without her voice. It changed the tone of the story for me. This was surprising for me since I find that female readers typically do a better job with male voices than the other way around.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

In you are fan of black mirror

An amazing mix of technology and philosophy in a highly information dense stories. I love how Ted takes weighty topics and applies the lens of the practical or even day to day. Highly enjoyable and would recommend

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great

Read it. Don't listen to it. Ted Chiang is very thought provoking, but the actors don't always got their roles. A great mix of works.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

An incredible exploration of concepts new and old

For a lot of short story collections, many of the stories retread the same paths. Those paths frequently expose interesting ideas and cause one to think differently about those ideas. The challenge in my opinion of great new sci-fi is either to identify new ideas that have not yet been explored well or so Adeptly re-double one’s understanding of the concepts One forgets the previous takes.

In this collection I was astounded at the ability to do both.

the only failing in my opinion was that some of the audio performance were disappointing in the vocalizations. The stories themselves lacked almost completely any sense of corniness or taking the easy road. I’m very happy to have read this.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Smart

Really thought provoking fiction. This was an excellent collection. The authors comments, while not needed are a bonus and add to the value of the story. This is SF unlike any other SF I have read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

5 Stars. Would recommend.

So glad to finally finish this short story collection by Ted Chiang. If you've seen the movie Arrival, it's based on one of his books. This is some damn good sci-fi. The kind of sci-fi that makes you think long after you're done.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What an interesting and so different type of audiobook

I was left with awe with some of the stories. I did not expect a book like this. It has been a while since I’ve had a book with multiple stories within and on top of it with authors notes for each individual story. At first I was rather surprised by it. And I really got more and more into it. I could barely leave the audiobook alone. Looking forward to the evenings when I got to listen to it again. Especially the story about the life of software products was very compelling to me. I also very much like the story about the prisms that allowed one to communicate with another dimension. How wild. I highly recommend this book to everybody who is interested in broadening their in horizon and who want to truly enjoy listening to another persons mind.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Wow

Went down a rabbit hole after watching The Arrival and decided to try reading Exhalation. So good!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent collection of fiction

Excellent collection of science fiction short stories which feels like non-fiction. You will love it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Some great and some not so great.

All the stories are thought provoking and diverse. A few themes reoccur but all the stories are fresh although of differing quality and length. Most of our current social order is replicated, our social order as envision by CA and NY conventions. There is no creativity there whatsoever or any challenges to that world view. He actually challenges creationism as if that was in any way relevant today. On top of that, he mixes determinism and quantum theory. More apparently profound than actually philosophical in any way above the level of a mediocre intro to philosophy class.

Despite these few critical things. TC is a good writer and I will be looking for more work from him. Ted tackle some of today’s social norms that’s more ripe for dissection than straw men you have erected here.
The readers are good but I wish that they would not try to act out voices and just read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!