Ted Chiang is one of the most remarkable voices in science fiction. Above all else, he is a living symbol that science fiction is a literature of ideas. He writes at a bonsai pace, perhaps 20 short works over as many years, but each of them is a masterpiece.

In Exhalation, Chiang wrestles with the paradoxes of predestination and growth. The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate is a time travel story set in the medieval Arab world, where various characters encounter a wormhole through time, and discover that fate is exactly as Allah wills it, no more and no less. This is a theme returned to in What's Expected of Us, where a machine that blinks one second before you push the button causes mass hysteria, and more generously in Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, concerning a world with common communication with nearby quantum neighbors, and the psychological effects of being able to communicate with your paraselves.

The other major tentpole of the book is forms of childhood, particular through The Lifecycle of Software Objects which focuses on the growth of intelligent if not terribly bright AI pets in a virtual world, and the bonds they form with their humans as they reach a tentative adulthood.

But my favorite stories were Omphalos and Exhalation, relentlessly rigorous extrapolations of a single high concept that showcase a brilliant alternative takes on Young Earth Creationism and the Third Law of Thermodynamics.