Ted Chiang lives in Bellevue, Washington. He is a technical writer who occasionally writes distinctive and highly accomplished short SF that is widely admired, then usually nominated for, or the winner of, awards. His short fiction was collected in Stories of Your Life and Others (2002), and his novella, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, was published as a book in 2007. His short stories are among the best in the science fiction field. And since they are so infrequent, they are awaited with eager anticipation. China Mieville said in The Guardian: “In Chiang’s hands, SF really is the “literature of ideas” it is often held to be, and the genre’s traditional “sense of wonder” is paramount.” Chiang says, “To the extent that a work of SF reflects science, it’s hard SF. And reflecting science doesn’t necessarily mean consistency with a certain set of facts; more essentially, it means consistency with a certain strategy for understanding the universe. Science seeks a type of explanation different from those sought by art or religion, an explanation where objective measurement takes precedence over subjective experience.”
“Exhalation” was published in Jonathan Strahan’s anthology of SF & fantasy, Eclipse 2, the second in this important annual series. The protagonist devises an unusual way to explore the nature of the universe. As Chiang says above, this is a work of hard SF.