Is there an audiobook of Exhalation: Stories?

Yes. Exhalation: Stories has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Ted Chiang, Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, and Amy Landon.

How long is the Exhalation: Stories audiobook?

The Exhalation: Stories audiobook runs 11 hr 22 min.

Is Exhalation: Stories on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Exhalation: Stories was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 18, 2026.

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang book cover for the Book of the Day short stories book review

Our score

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Exhalation: Stories free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

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EDITION PUBLISHEDMay 2019

Genres

Fiction Short Stories Science Fiction

Themes

Free will and determinismMemory, time, and acceptanceWhat we owe to the minds we createMaking meaning in an indifferent universe

Exhalation: Stories

Name: Exhalation: Stories
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Ted Chiang

Ted Chiang

Nine luminous stories from the most thoughtful science fiction writer alive, each one a fully built thought experiment that arrives at something genuinely moving about free will, memory, and how we choose to live. Quietly profound.

The Review

Our take

Ted Chiang writes so little and so well that each new story feels like an event, and this second collection confirms what readers of his first already suspected: that he may be the finest writer of ideas working in any genre. These nine stories are science fiction in the truest sense, built around a single rigorous premise and then followed, patiently and humanely, to its emotional conclusion. He is interested in big questions, free will, time, the soul, but he never lets the philosophy crowd out the people. Each story is built like a beautifully engineered machine, and yet the thing it is finally engineered to do is make you feel something true about being alive.

The craft on display is a particular kind of magic: Chiang invents a world, explains exactly how it works, and the explanation itself becomes the source of feeling. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a time-travel tale told in the cadence of the Arabian Nights, the mechanism is fixed and unchangeable, and somehow that fixedness becomes a meditation on acceptance and grace. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," the long centerpiece, asks what we owe to digital beings we have raised, and turns a premise that sounds dry into one of the most tender stories about parenthood I have read. "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom" uses a device that lets you glimpse the lives of your parallel selves to ask whether our choices matter at all.

What I find moving is Chiang's fundamental decency. He is not a cynic or a doom-monger; he uses the machinery of speculation to argue, gently and rigorously, that meaning is something we make rather than something we are owed. Even his bleakest premises arrive at a kind of hard-won consolation. The prose is clear and unshowy, a window rather than a stained-glass pane, and it trusts the ideas to carry the weight.

The collection is not flawless. A couple of the shorter pieces read more as elegant briefs than as fully dramatized stories, and Chiang's cool, expository style means the warmth sometimes arrives through the intellect rather than the heart, which won't suit readers who want their fiction to grab them by the collar. This is patient, cerebral work that rewards readers willing to think alongside it. Bring that willingness and the payoff is enormous, an intellectual pleasure that keeps tipping over, almost shyly, into genuine emotion. Chiang asks more of his reader than most, and he repays the effort more fully than almost anyone.

Why you should read

Readers who love ideas-driven, philosophical science fiction
Anyone who wants thought experiments with real emotional payoff
Fans of clear, precise, unshowy prose
Those drawn to questions of free will, time, and meaning

What to expect

Nine rigorously imagined speculative stories
Premises followed to humane, moving conclusions
Cool, lucid, idea-forward prose
Patient work that rewards careful reading

Read it for the rare pleasure of fiction that respects your intelligence completely and still finds its way to your feelings. Few writers can make a logical argument feel like a revelation; Chiang does it again and again, and the result is some of the most quietly profound short fiction of the century so far.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to Exhalation: Stories free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Exhalation: Stories?: Yes. Exhalation: Stories has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Ted Chiang, Edoardo Ballerini, Dominic Hoffman, and Amy Landon.
Listen to Exhalation: Stories free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Exhalation: Stories audiobook?: The Exhalation: Stories audiobook runs 11 hr 22 min.
Is Exhalation: Stories on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Exhalation: Stories was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 18, 2026.

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Common questions

What is Exhalation: Stories about?: Ted Chiang writes so little and so well that each new story feels like an event, and this second collection confirms what readers of his first already suspected: that he may be the finest writer of ideas working in any genre. These nine stories are science fiction in the truest sense, built around…
Is Exhalation: Stories worth reading?: We scored Exhalation: Stories 4.5 out of 5. Nine luminous stories from the most thoughtful science fiction writer alive, each one a fully built thought experiment that arrives at something genuinely moving about free will, memory, and how we choose to live. Quietly profound.