Exhalations

Author: Ted Chiang
Genre: Sci-Fi Short stories
Original publication date: May 2019
Book Description (from Good Reads): In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest question on Earth - What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human? - and others that no one else has imagined. Each in its own way proves the complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning and compassion.

Thoughts:

So this has a few different stories mentioned. As usual, you can't love them all but in the majority I really enjoyed them.
In order to discuss it lets give a few details on what they were about.

1. The merchant and the Alchemist Gate-
This is the story of a man who moves to a new town and opens a shop. Here comes a customer and instead of buying furniture he gets the opportunity of a lifetime. Fuwaad ibn Abbas gets to know a merchant who has in the back of the shop a gate created using Alchemy that allows you to travel in time, you are sent wither to the future or past, but you always exit in the other side of the gate.
The man does not believe it at first and yet he is convinced. Fuwaad wants to use the gate to travel to the past, not the future but he gets a few stories of warning.
He wants to go back to 20 year before and change an event.

2. Exhalation
It retells an investigation of a man, he wants to know the mind, he wants to know how memories are stored. The way they work, they change their lungs when its close to being out of the air and if not done on time by the time the person gets a new set of lungs that person has no recollection of his life, they are a blank slate.
He makes interesting theories and undertakes a risky experiment to prove and find out how memories are stored.

3. What's expected of us?
A letter sent acknowledging the lack of free will.
This and pretty much all of the stories give you a lot of things to consider and ponder, and if you are reading it along with someone this is a great topic to open discussion/dialog.

4. The lifecycle of software objects
The story is mainly of Ana who starts to work in Data Earth a company that creates virtual life forms as pets, they have a very developed artificial life, learn to speak, and create bonds with their human. She gets called in as she is a Zoo expert and they want to use her knowledge of real animals and incorporate it on their programming.
Throughout this story we see developments advance real fast and some programs become obsolete, at the same time the bond with their digients (their artificial pets), it is a very complete short story, we have a few topics covered, friendship, artificial intelligence, technological advancements, relationships, support for partners, I mean it has a lot.
It is a story that makes you question and evaluate several moral dilemmas.

5. Dacey's patent automatic nanny
This is an absurdist or at least it features a few absurd people as main characters. It follows a man who is very privileged and not very bright in social and psychological situations with children.
The man thinks very little of women and people of lower social status therefore he thinks the only option to take care of children and make sure they are raised right is by a machine that can be programmed for it.
The man tries to replace real nannies of his young son but he is not a baby anymore so it might not succeed. The son grows up and tries to take on his father's theory as well.
It is very interesting, as he tries to raise his own son in turn entirely by the Automatic Nanny and see the effect it can have on the infant.

6. The truth of fact, the truth of feeling
We have a two different storylines taking place, one is a scholar who is evaluating the use of technology designed for the human mind, especially about memory and recollection. Trying to evaluate the technology he describes the story of a remote village that receives "help" from European governments and they send a pan to teach Christianity. The story is used to reflect the way humans perceive the truth and how tradition can be helpful or deceitful about it.
We cover the acceptance of wrongs, taking responsibility, the appreciation of truth and how it can be defined, our main character is very flawed and the way you discover that is pretty good, also it feels very realistic, not everything can be ok simply because you say sorry.
Great story! One of my favorites included here.

 7. The Great silence
It describes a very plausible theory for the lack of proof of other life forms in the universe.

8. Omphalos
It describes a world where the date of creation is able to determine and people take that as the irrefutable proof of the existence of God. One day an archeologist discovers something that puts their religious belief on doubt.

9. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom
This describes the story of a young girl who is getting out of a bad patch in her life and in her work she comes to see an opportunity of doing the morally correct way.
This world discovered a way to communicate with parallel worlds, each choice take differently can lead for your other self to have a similar or not so similar life. We get to see how different and what it would be if people could see other themselves in parallel universes.
It is very thought-provoking as well. I especially loved the realistic way the people here behave.

So this is officially my favorite short story collection so far.