hsmyth 's review for:

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

5.0

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I really liked this collection of stories. There were so many philosophical and theological questions presented for the reader, and each of them were played out in the stories to generate even more questions to haunt me later. My two favorites were Exhalation and Omphalos. Both stories struck at the heart of the inquiry into purpose. Why do we exist? Even, how do we exist? Both stories bring the answer about as a sense of faith: either in a higher (religious) authority or as faith in oneself - to understand that life or existence is about the experience and the searching, the journey rather than any sort of absolute or concrete answer. I think I took the question of ‘Why?’ and decided for myself that the answer might as well be ‘Why not!’