February 2021 books
Exhalation, Ted Chiang
My favorites were The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate (time, desire), The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling (memory, infallibility, objectivity), and Omphalos (writing, words, truth). I liked how almost each story was based on an advanced invention or a dystopian retelling of a past society and how a theme or two was tied into the story. Personally I felt that some of the stories were really dragged out but I can see he’s doing it to emphasize some danger posed by each situation. Black Mirror could draw inspiration from some of these.