Exhalation

In the collection, technology appears in its wonderful potential and irksome consequences. Often, a technological innovation comes along and throws society into disarray. The Predictor nearly destroys society, turning millions of people into waking vegetables. Digients are neglected and tortured. Lifelogs and Remem destroy marriages. Prisms cause people to seek out support groups. Conversely, those technologies promote personal evaluation, inspire empathy, and repair relationships. Each technology can be abused, or used responsibly, and Chiang shows us the results of each.

In terms of technology and worldbuilding, many of Chiang’s worlds are like our own with a few heightened details. By keeping the reader mostly grounded in near-future environments on earth, the collection avoids mere imaginative spectacle, instead portraying complicated situations with technologies not entirely unimaginable. Chiang’s inventions can still be fantastic, but the characters use them in ways that ask important questions about the human experience. He uses technology to speculate on how the human experience will continue to change.

Corporations, however, are typically portrayed as being opportunistic and amoral in regard to technology. The prism data brokers of “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” are seen as “promoting unhealthy behavior in their customers” (302). In “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” Ana raises Jax to be a happy and complex digient, Corporations like Exponential Appliances and Binary Desire, on the other hand, want Jax for work and sex. The exception to corporate evil in the collection is Whetstone, the makers of Remem in “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.” In that story, the narrator comes to agree with the Whetstone spokesperson and finds a productive way to use Remem.

Exhalation uses climate change as both a major plot device and as a worldbuilding detail. For example, the title story “Exhalation,” may take place in an extraordinary world, but the environmental concerns are nonetheless relevant to readers. The narrator discovers that, simply by existing, it is complicit in bringing its world to a deathly equilibrium. Humans, too, produce waste and pollute the planet daily, often without realizing it. The narrator’s inevitable death in part serves as a warning for humans to not let the same happen and to take care of the planet.

More directly, “The Great Silence” gives us the perspective of a victim of humanity’s ecological actions. In this story, Chiang shows us what we will lose if we continue down our current path of ecological destruction: a companion’s voice in a lonely universe.

Lastly, in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” Ana’s original dream of “following Fossey and Goodall to Africa” doesn’t happen because “there were so few apes left” (66). The zoo Ana works at closes as well. Ana’s hopes and employment are both altered because of changing ecological factors. Across all these stories, we see both the victims and perpetrators of climate change and extinction. Interestingly, the story portrays the perpetrators with sympathy and innocence, suggesting that through awareness, our relationship to the planet can improve.

Chiang isn’t afraid to put science fiction and faith side by side. Even futuristic, non-human characters still recognize the possibility of an omnipotent being. When the narrator of “Exhalation” dissects its own brain, it states “I could tell it was the most beautifully complex engine I had ever beheld, so far beyond any device man had constructed that it was incontrovertibly of divine origin” (44).

“Omphalos” commits itself to these themes as well. Dorothea’s interest in science comes entirely from wanting to be closer to God. Even after her crisis of faith, she ends the story praying. With Dorothea, Chiang demonstrates that faith will change the more we learn, but we won’t necessarily adopt a purely atheistic mindset.

The characters of “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” are all unwavering in their devotion to Allah. Even seeing something as extraordinary as the Gate of Years doesn’t make them question their religion. When discussing the buried treasure, the older Hassan says, “As to how we came to know its location, I have no explanation except that it was the will of Allah, and what other explanation is there for anything?” (13). The story, too, doesn’t give anymore explanation, encouraging the reader to consider that maybe it is, in fact, fate. 

Free will dominates several stories: “What’s Expected of Us,” “Omphalos,” and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom.” In the case of “What’s Expected of Us,” the lack of free will is fatal, nearly destroying society. However, in “Omphalos,” people find comfort in believing God has a plan for them. During her crisis of faith, Dorothea finds the idea of work pointless. In “Anxiety,” prisms prompt people to question the consequences of their actions, especially when the opposite might be made in a parallel universe. By the end, Nat discovers it still matters how she lives her life, the content of her character. Predetermined or not, her actions have an impact on her life and the people around her. In ending Exhalation with “Anxiety,” Chiang is focusing the most on that final message.