TU's 2024 Common Read: "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang - Oklahoma Center for the Humanities
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TU’s 2024 Common Read: “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang

The Oklahoma Center for the Humanities is pleased to announce Exhalation by Ted Chiang as the common read selection for the 2024-25 academic year.

Called “the best kind of science fiction” by former President Barack Obama, Exhalation consists of nine original short stories where Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions and newest quandaries. In one story, Chiang uses time travel as a backdrop for confronting past mistakes and second chances. In another, the concept of alternative universes prompts questions of choice and free will.

Exhalation was a finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and listed as one of the New York Times best books of the year.

Incoming students will receive free copies of Exhalation, along with discussion questions, in the mail this summer. Students arriving to campus early for the Hurricane Prep program or Neurodivergent program will receive their copy on campus. Student athletes moving in early will receive their books from their coaches. You can learn more about TU’s Common Read program here.

About Our Theme

Every year, TU’s Oklahoma Center for the Humanities selects a common read that aligns with its programming theme. Throughout the 2024-25 academic year, we will explore the theme of space by looking to the past, crossing cultural boundaries, and working across disciplines to reveal unexpected insights.  This theme will also look to the way humans have sought to organize space on this planet, from the design of homes and cities to the drawing of maps and the fashioning of virtual environments.


 

  • The Common Read and the First Year Experience

    College is a place to make connections, to dig deeply into a whole range of topics, then try to piece it all together into a big picture that will help launch a successful life and career.

    The Common Read program at TU offers a piece of common ground for the entire incoming class to share.  It will be a conversation starter: the book you loved or hated, ranted about or celebrated with other students while in line for coffee. In your first days and weeks on campus, it will help form the connective tissue a college education is designed to create.

    University President Brad R. Carson, who initiated this program, calls Common Read a hallmark of world-class universities: “By establishing the Common Read, a unique bond is forged among first-time students and between the new students and our outstanding professors. We are living our mission of cultivating interconnected learning experiences, exploring different cultures, and fomenting a lifelong love of learning.”

  • Why this Book?

    The stories that comprise Exhalation resonate across the globe because they ask open-ended questions many of us face day-to-day, especially with the rise of technology. While about time travel, robots, and artificial intelligence, Chiang’s stories are innately human, allowing readers to identify with sentient machines or question whether they’d want to challenge their own free will with the touch of a button. These stories interrogate our increasing reliance on computation and inspire us to reconnect with each other in creative and refreshing ways.

  • Why Tulsa?

    As technology advances, the federal government has named Tulsa a “tech hub” in recognition of the city’s initiatives in creating, utilizing and selling cutting-edge technology to strengthen the local economy.

    Outside of TU, Tulsa is home to a variety of space-related institutions and projects such as the Tulsa Air & Space Museum, Black Tech Street, Tulsa Innovation Labs, the Springdale Aviation Club, Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology, and more. In addition to the global themes found in Exhalation, this backdrop of Tulsa’s thriving technology sector–from aviation to cybersecurity–enriches the reading experience and encourages TU students to reflect on the physical and digital spaces that define their campus life.

  • Some Questions to Consider
    The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

    If you encountered the Alchemist’s Gate, would you go forward or back in time, and why?

    The main takeaway of the story comes in one of its final sentences: “nothing erases the past” (36). How does this compare to other time traveling stories you’ve watched or read? What does this say about Chiang’s belief in fate?

    How do the characters alter history without altering its inevitable outcomes?

    Exhalation

    In the titular story, the protagonist performs surgery on himself, suggesting that “it is the promise of finding the answers within our own brains that makes the inscription hypothesis so seductive” (41). The quote recalls Plato’s arguments about the nature of knowledge. Plato theorized people are born with all the knowledge we will have in our lifetime, and that we access those bits of knowledge through an educational process. Thinking of this theory and the rest of the short story, how do you think Chiang would describe the value of self-knowledge?

    The protagonist asks a rhetorical question: “will it be preferable to remain mute to prolong our ability to think, or to talk until the very end?” (55). Which would you prefer to do, and why?

    What’s Expected of Us

    With the rising prominence of personalized algorithms comes a curiosity around their ability to predict and modify human behavior. Likewise, the Predictor device illustrates the determinability of one’s behavior. Compare and contrast the Predictors to personalized predictive algorithms. How does each limit, or enhance, our ability to think and act freely?

    Chiang writes this story as a “a physical demonstration” of a convincing argument for the pointlessness of life (341). In your opinion, does it work? Does the Predictor make the argument for the pointlessness of life more convincing?

    The Lifecycle of Software Objects

    Are the digients in the story “real” living things as you define it? Why or why not?

    How do you relate to the digients? Are they interesting, cute, fascinating, alarming, funny? Would you purchase one?

    Derek and Ana’s perspectives diverge at the end of the story. Do you agree with Derek or Ana? Are digients responsible for their own choices after a certain age, as Derek believes, or do people have a responsibility to steward digients indefinitely, as Ana believes? For another perspective, consider the ways by which Voyl legally becomes a person (119).

    Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny

    Both “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” and “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” imagine a world in which one part of the parent-child relationship is automated by technology. In one, Chiang imagines an artificially-intelligent child, and in the other, he imagines an artificially-intelligent parent. Using evidence from one or both of these stories, how do you think Chiang views the responsibility of parenthood?

    Chiang writes, “what Edmund needed was not more contact with a person, but more contact with a machine” (181). Consider how you use technology to interact with others. How do those interactions affect daily face-to-face interactions? Do you relate to Edmund’s need to interact with machines?

    The Truth of Fact the Truth of Feeling

    Jijingi explains to Moseby the difference between two kinds of truth: “what’s right, mimi, and what’s precise, vough” (212). The two mark the difference between belief and fact. While both types of truth are useful to acknowledge, when should we favor precision when making decisions, and when should we focus on respecting the earnest perspectives of multiple parties?

    How would you react if, tomorrow, a major tech corporation announced a technology like Remem? The protagonist concludes the story by noting the value of a digital memory as a means to reckon with one’s personal past. Do you share his enthusiasm? If not, what pitfalls of the technology does Chiang neglect to anticipate?

    The Great Silence

    The fable juxtaposes humanity’s never-ending search for extraterrestrial life with our relatively meager understanding of our fellow earthlings. What sorts of animals seem so unfamiliar that they may as well be extraterrestrials?

    In terms of human interactions, what sorts of ideas, opinions, and worldviews have you encountered that feel uncommunicable, or otherwise otherworldly?

    Can we still call this fable a sci-fi story? Why or why not?

    Omphalos

    For the protagonist of the story, “science is the true modern cathedral, an edifice of knowledge every bit as majestic as anything made of stone” (251). What problems does the marriage of creationism and the scientific method address? What new challenges arise when science appears to verify religious faith?

    The story concludes with the protagonist’s thoughts on the way science is uniquely situated to motivate humans to become better versions of themselves. Do you agree with the protagonist? By contrast, how does science limit the protagonist’s ability to live a meaningful life?

    Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

    The story’s title is a quote attributed to Danish thinker, Søren Kirkegaard, often cited as the father of existentialist philosophy. How do the characters overcome this symptom of “dizziness,” as it were, attributed to freedom?

    If you had access to a prism, what would you use it for? What sorts of questions would you ask another version of yourself?

  • About the Author

    About the Author

    Ted Chiang’s fiction has won four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards, and has been featured in The Best American Short Stories. His debut collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, has been translated into twenty-one languages. He was born in Port Jefferson, New York, and currently lives near Seattle, Washington.

  • Resources

    Books and Audiobooks

    • Arrival (previously published as Stories of Your Life and Others) by Ted Chiang
    • Exhalation (audiobook) by Ted Chiang (free with Spotify Premium)

    Podcasts

    • The Author Behind ‘Arrival’ Doesn’t Fear AI. ‘Look at How We Treat Animals.'” Interview with Ted Chiang on The Ezra Klein Show from the New York Times
    • “’The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate’ Part 1 by Ted Chiang.” LeVar Burton Reads from Stitcher (available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)
    • “’The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate’ Part 2 by Ted Chiang.” LeVar Burton Reads from Stitcher (available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify)

    Articles (by Chiang)

    Articles (by others)

    Videos