Friends of Words

Author: Swati

  • Hell Is The Absence Of God: Summary, Analysis and Review

    Hell Is The Absence Of God: Summary, Analysis and Review

    Hell is the Absence of God is a short story (novellete) written by Ted Chiang. First published in 2001, this story primarily revolves around Neil Fisk, a recent widower, who lost his beloved wife in the aftermath of an Angel’s visitation.

    “Obedience, he might have managed, but sincere, heart-felt love (for God)? That was a ransom he couldn’t pay.”

    With this short story Hell is the absence of God, Ted Chiang takes us on an exploration, the one where angel visitations, hell and heaven are as real as the physical world around us.

    This story is one of the more celebrated stories of Ted Chiang. First published in 2001, this one has Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards to its name.

    Hell is the Absence of God: Summary and Plot Analysis

    The story primarily revolves around Neil Fisk, a recent widower, who lost his beloved wife in the aftermath of an Angel’s visitation.

    Sarah’s soul was seen to be ascending to heaven, leaving her non-devout husband in pure grief and scampering for means to find pure devotion to God. This, he feels, will help him reunite with his wife in heaven.

    He starts attending support group meetings with similar people who were affected by that visitation. These are people whose faith has strengthened even further than before, either from gratitude or from terror.

    He is not able to relate to either of those emotions and finds himself drawn to another group where people who are feeling quite the opposite, struggling to continue their devotion.

    He finds it increasingly impossible for him to be devout or committed to God now.

    The story then follows two other characters, Janice Reilly and Ethan Mead, both of whom eventually play an important role in Neil’s final fate.

    Janice Reilly is a woman who was born without legs after her mother had an angelic visitation. She is a positive individual and has made a name for herself as a motivational and spiritual speaker.

    One day, after an angelic visitation, she finds herself able-bodied. She is now disillusioned, unsure as to whether to take this act of God as a gift or punishment.

    This uncertainty spills over in her speaking engagements and the crowd begins thinning. She is yet to find a reason as to why she would get her legs back when she didn’t even wish for it.

    As an able-bodied woman, getting used to having legs, she starts getting attention from all kinds of men, which is when she gets to meet Ethan Mead.

    She thinks Ethan has a romantic interest until one day he clarifies his purpose.

    Ethan has been raised in a devout family, who thinks that God is directly or indirectly responsible for the good fortune bestowed upon them.

    His family has never had any visitation and is happy with the status quo.

    Ethan, however, has a strong feeling that God has a special purpose for him and longs for an encounter with the divine to provide him with direction. He doesn’t go to the holy sites where angelic visitations are frequent, thinking that that’s the doing of a desperate man, and patiently waits for it to come.

    The visitation does happen, and Janice gets her legs as a blessing, but nothing out of the ordinary happens for him, and having got no insights about his calling, he decides to pursue Janice to find it.

    Neil, in the meantime, is still struggling to cope with Sarah’s loss and finding devotion to God to reunite him with her in heaven.

    He gets to hear of different perspectives of people in the support group and through a woman called Valerie also comes to know of the humanist movement. The followers of the humanist movements were individuals that advocated people acting as per their own moral sense, nothing else.

    Neil felt drawn to that ideology but refrained from pursuing it for the fear of being driven further apart from Sarah if he did.

    Desperately looking for ways to reunite with Sarah, he chances upon stories of heaven’s light comes to know of people’s encounters with heaven’s light. Heaven’s light appears when angels enter or leave the mortal world.

    People witnessing heaven’s light ascend to heaven regardless of the sins in their lives, no matter how grave they are.

    This attracts people to many pilgrimage sites in the hope that they will witness the sight and ascend. Some even try to follow the angel around when it appears so that they can witness it.

    Upon discovering that Janice will be attending a shrine for a visitation to return her gift, he decides to go on the pilgrimage as well.

    In preparation, Neil uses up savings to buy a truck that could handle the harsh ride on the terrain on his hunt to witness heaven’s light. He familiarizes himself with the terrain and one day sees an angel flying over the holy site.

    He follows the angel through dangerous terrains, crashes his vehicle and is mortally wounded.

    He sees Janice and Ethan approaching  to rescue him and heaven’s light striking Janice. The light strikes him as well. Both of them turn blind.  Neil dies shortly after.

    Ethan witnesses the whole scene, sees Neil’s soul ascending to heaven initially but finally descending to hell.

    Armed with this insight that heaven’s light does not guarantee an admission to heaven, he finds his purpose – he becomes a minister and goes on to spread this message to the world.

    Neil (who is in hell now), however, finds true devotion to God he was desperately after.

    He accepts that he will never be reunited with Sarah but continues to stay devoted  because ‘Unconditional love asks nothing, not even that it be returned.’

    Hell is the Absence of God: Analysis and My Thoughts

    Ted Chiang, in an interview, had said that after watching the movie “The Prophecy”, he wanted to write a book about angels, but could not imagine a scenario where it would work.

    In this novellete, he examines, rather brilliantly, the role of faith in religion. He maintains that if God undeniably existed, then faith would no longer be applicable.

    Neil, who has now moved on to hell, still finds true devotion to God, which goes on to say that Chiang believes that it’s still possible to be devoted to God, even when you’re in hell.

    All in all, this short story presents a rather unique perspective on the role of faith in religion and how people deal with suffering or the loss of a loved one.

     

  • Eisenheim the Illusionist: Short Story Summary, Analysis, Review

    Eisenheim the Illusionist: Short Story Summary, Analysis, Review

    Eisenheim The Illusionist is a short story written by Steven Milhauser. It was first published in 1989. It tells the story of a magician who becomes so good in his craft that people start believing that he has sold his soul to the devil and can therefore perform real magic.

    Eisenheim the Illusionist: Summary & Plot Analysis

    Steven Milhauser’s short story ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’ revolves around a conjurer Eduard Abramowitz, also known as Eisenheim, who is considered the magician da supreme. The story is presented as his short biography, despite the magical occurrences in the plot, which seem other-wordly.

    Very little is known of his origins outside the realm of illusion, except for a few details like, Bratislava, where his roots were, and his father being a widely respected cabinet maker, whose creations adorned the homes of gentry there.

    The eldest of four children, he was fascinated by woodcraft and by the age of seventeen, was a pretty good cabinetmaker, a skill that came in handy for his future work as a master magician. A chance encounter with a travelling magician is what seemed to have spurred his lifelong – passion for magic.

    He accepted his new passion wholeheartedly, albeit a bit slowly, till the age of 24, when he continued to be known for his cabinet making skills much more than those involving magic, .

    However, at the age of 28, he burst into the scene with full vigor, appearing in front of a theater in Vienna.

    His initial public performances were known for their subtle mastery of the illusions of the day, popular one being the Orange Tree.

    As his career progressed, his illusions became more and more nuanced, holding the spectators in awe and aching for more.

    His illusions had now become so realistic that people started thinking of him as a wizard instead of a showman -someone who sold his soul to the devil in return for unholy powers.

    Cashing in on the popularity, Einsenheim opened his own theater, Einsenheimhaus, which saw his creations become even more original than before. His ascent to magical fame was not, however, unchallenged.

    There were two prominent magicians who presented a formidable challenge to Eisenheim – Viennese Benedetti and Bavarian Passauer. Benedetti presented imitations of original Eisenheim illusions with clever variations.

    Benedetti, as part of his magic trick, stepped into a black cabinet, never to be seen again. Thereafter, there were rumors of Eisenheim spiriting him away to hell. Such was the impact of Eisenhiem’s personality!

    The other magician that posed a much more persistent challenge was Passauer. His masterfully done illusions took Vienna by storm.

    Passaeur didn’t attack Eisenheim, and some would say, refused to even acknowledge Eisenheim’s stature as his rival.

    However, both Passauer and Eisenheim continued to out-do each other in their subsequent acts, establishing a rhythm to their rivalry.

    In his final performance, Passauer exhibited frightening brilliance in his illusions, with the act culminating in him exposing himself as Eisenheim. This received a tumultuous response from the audience.

    Following this grand performance, Eisenheim retired from magic for a good one year, perhaps to cope with the strain of a sustained deception.

    He comes back to theater, but  this time his magic is centered around materializations, simple at first but becoming increasingly complex and breathtaking over time.

    Einseheim began materializing holographic images on the stage, people began drawing parallels between the ones manifested on stage to the real world and started believing them to be ghosts instead.

    Ghosts that had an inside track into the other world. His new act brought newer audiences into his fold – psychics as well as spiritualists. People dug around but couldn’t explain this act.

    These acts from Eisenheim had a profound impact on the audience and they flocked to the theaters with anticipation.

    It was around that time that rumors started about Eisenheim’s impending arrest. Finding the policeman Herr Uhl at the theater stressed the audience.

    Police, citing disturbance to the public order as an official reason, justified Eisenheim’s arrest orders. As per police reports, there had been hundred incidents.

    Eisenheim, however, was never caught.

    He used the same mastery in illusions to escape as he used to entice the audience. A deeper analysis of Uhl’s report revealed that it was the extraordinary nature of Eisenheim’s magic – something that blurs the line between reality and illusion.

    Eisenheim the Illusionist: Review

    I couldn’t help but compare the story with its cinematic counterpart – The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton and Jessica Biel.

    If you liked the short story and haven’t seen the movie, there is a good chance that you will be pleasantly surprised with it. Its filmmakers made significant alteration in the plot to add flavor to it.

    At the risk of going completely off-theme, I will leave you with this funny quote from Terry Pratchett – the famous English humorist “Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

    If the movie or the story failed to bring a smile to your face, this definitely will.

  • A Good Man Is Hard To Find: Summary, Review, Analysis

    A Good Man Is Hard To Find: Summary, Review, Analysis

    A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a short story written by Flannery O’Connor. It was first published in 1953 in a collection of short stories titled “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

    You might have heard this old proverb – don’t judge a book by its cover.

    In my recent reading experience, I have found that to be equally applicable to the title of the stories which I have been reading lately.

    First The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, then Cathedral by Raymond Carver and now this.

    I read the title of this story and the first thing that popped in my head was an image of an American version of one of Jane Austen’s leading ladies and her difficult journey to a good man, but hey! What did I know?

    A Good Man Is Hard To Find: Summary and Plot Analysis

    The story opens with a grandmother trying to convince her son to take a trip to Tennessee where she wanted to meet up with some of her connections.

    Her son Bailey and his family, on the other hand, wanted to head to Florida.

    The grandmother lives with her son Bailey, her innocent `cabbage faced` daughter-in-law, her grandson John Wesley, her granddaughter June Star and a toddler.

    Despite the grandmother trying to convince Bailey to go to Tennessee, citing all sorts of reasons including the presence of an escaped convict in Florida, the family does not budge and it is confirmed as the destination.

    On the day of the trip, the grandmother hides her cat in a basket and puts her in the car. She wears a dress and a hat that says she is ‘a lady’ in case they meet with an accident.

    She sits with June and John on either side of her. The children engage in their banter and John calls Tennessee a ‘hillbilly dumping ground’ resulting in his grandmother chastising him.

    She narrates a rather funny story of her suitor named Edgar Atkins Teagarden.

    He used to bring a watermelon for her everyday, leaving it on her porch with his initials on them resulting in a black child eating it mistaking the initials E.A.T as an instruction.

    Enroute, the family stops at a restaurant called the Tower, owned by Red Sammy Butts.

    Red Sammy mentions people are becoming more and more untrustworthy these days, quoting one incident from the recent past where he let two decent looking men buy gas on credit.

    A conversation about Misfit – the escaped convict – starts somehow and the woman worries that he will rob them.

    Sammy laments that good men are hard to find these days and the world is worse off for it.

    The family gets on the road again and the grandmother takes her intermittent naps, waking up from one to realize that she had visited the plantation in the past and wanted to see it again.

    Knowing fully well that her son will not entertain the idea of stopping to look at that place, she crafts a story about the house with a plantation that has secret panels.

    This spurs the children’s imagination and they start yelling and screaming to visit it.

    Bailey, who is completely against the idea at first, finally agrees to take the family there to handle the ruckus children have created.

    The grandmother points him to a dirt road and the family drives deep into the woods, the grandmother suddenly realizes the house that she was mentioning was actually in Tennessee.

    Horrified, her feet jerked, upsetting the cat. The cat jumps on a startled Bailey’s shoulder, and he loses control of the car.

    Although the car is wrecked, the family escapes unhurt with the exception of Bailey’s wife who had a broken shoulder.

    The grandmother decides not to mention anything about her mistake to her son, who is fuming at this point.

    They wait for someone to come by to seek help. They see a car approaching from far away and grandmother waves her arms dramatically to attract their attention.

    The car stops and three armed men come out of it.

    The grandmother has a strange feeling that she recognizes one of those men. One of them asks the mother to settle her children down as they make him nervous.

    The grandmother, suddenly realising that one of the men is Misfit, screams out at the Misfit with recognition, upsetting her son, who curses violently at her.

    She starts crying and the man starts consoling her. She asks if he would shoot a lady, and the man mentions that it wouldn’t be his preference.

    The grandmother keeps telling him that he is a good man and he agrees to that, calling his mother the finest woman and his dad to have had a heart of pure gold.

    Hiram and Bobby Lee take Bailey and John into the woods.

    The conversation continues between the grandmother and Misfit. Misfit agrees that he is not a good man but not the worst either.

    He apologizes to the ladies for not wearing a shirt because they had to bury their clothes after they escaped. He mentions that they borrowed the clothes they’re wearing from some people they met on their way.

    The grandmother asks Misfit if he prays to which he says No.

    Two gunshots fill the air.

    He tells the grandmother that he was not a bad child but remembers having gone to the prison for the crime that he didn’t remember committing. He gets to know from a psychiatrist that he had killed his father. Misfit has no memory of this.

    The grandmother urges that he prays so Jesus helps him. Misfit denies doing that as he does not need any help and he is doing good by himself.

    Bobby Lee and Hiram come back from the woods, without Bailey and John and hand over a shirt to Misfit. Misfit asks the children’s mother to take the child and June Star with her and go with Bobby Lee and Hiram.

    Bobby Lee tries to hold June Star’s hand who ridicules him for looking like a pig.

    Realizing her soon-to-be fate, the grandmother starts chanting “Jesus, Jesus”.

    He thinks himself to be like Jesus except that he had not committed a crime. He calls himself Misfit because he thinks that the punishment that people get for their crimes do not fit their crimes.

    The grandmother hears gunshots again, three this time and cries out for Bailey. She implores him to not shoot a lady.

    Misfit continues her conversation about Jesus saying that Jesus confused everyone by raising from the dead. Because if he actually did that, then everyone should follow him.

    But if he didn’t actually do that then indulging in meanness in one life is a natural thing for people to do.

    The grandmother agrees with him. Misfit wishes he was there to see Jesus raising the dead, he would have known for sure then.

    Seeing Misfit’s voice breaking and face contorted as he was going to cry, in her moment of clarity, the grandmother calls the Misfit “one of my own babies,” and touches him on the shoulder.

    As if bitten by a snake, Misfit springs on his feet and shoots her in the chest three times.

    Bobby Lee and Hiram return, remarking on the grandmother being a talker.

    The misfit observes that the grandmother could have been a good woman “if someone was there to shoot her every moment of her life.”

    The Misfit says life has no true pleasure.

    Want to buy A Good Man Is Hard to Find?

    A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a short story which is published in a novel alongwith other short stories written by Flannery O’Connor. You can use the links given below to buy this short story collection on Amazon:

    Check Price on Amazon US
    Check Price on Amazon Canada
    Check Price on Amazon India

    A Good Man Is Hard To Find: Analysis and Review

    There is a quality to this story that’s haunting to the core. The author paints a picture of a regular family taking a trip to Tennessee, talking about things that any regular family talks about, including the news of a cruel murderer who’s on the run from the law.

    No one in the family, in fact, not even the reader of the story expects the murderers to actually meet the family in the end and then kill them in cold blood.

    There’s a bone-chilling aspect to this story – the further you go in the story, the scarier it becomes, mostly because of the fear of “what’s going to happen next”.

    A true classic! The accolades that A Good Man is Hard to Find has received is a testimony to that. This is certainly Flannery O’Connor’s best work.

    First published in 1953, this story has inspired a lot of scholarly work and on-screen adaptations.

    The story was adapted into a film called Black Hearts Bleed Red in 1992 and a modern chamber opera in 2003.

  • A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert: Summary, Plot Analysis, Review

    A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert: Summary, Plot Analysis, Review

    In his simple but heart-wrenching short story A Simple Heart, Gustave Flaubert portrays a simple woman, with a big heart devoted to the service of her mistress for the majority of her life. The tale, simple on the surface, has deep messages for the reader inside

    A Simple Heart: Summary and Plot Analysis

    The story opens with an insight into the working life of Félicité, a maid employed by Madame Aubain, a not-so-easy-to-get-along-with widow.

    Her service to Madame Aubain and her two kids, a girl Virginie and a boy Paul, has been nothing short of exceptional. So much so, that people intend to steal her from Madame Aubain.

    The story moves to Félicité’s past where the reader comes to know of hardships in her past – being orphaned early on, working as a servant – being tortured and beaten, and in her youth, having her heart broken by a young man Théodore, who deserted her in favor of an older, wealthier woman.

    She finds employment with Madame Aubain shortly after.

    Simple, but endowed with a big kind heart, Félicité forms a series of deep attachments over her years of service.

    The first was her profound devotion for Virginie. She closely followed and imitated all her religious observances.

    She also grew fond of her nephew Victor, a sailor, facing hardships in Dunkirk, ultimately succumbing to yellow fever on his trip to Cuba. She had hardly coped with the devastating news that her beloved Virginie also started showing signs of terrible sickness.

    The sickness was followed by an early death and she was completely grief-stricken.

    She resigns to her mundane life; years pass one after the other until one day, Madame Aubain receives a parrot from a guest.

    cover of the short story titled 'a simple heart' written by Gustave Flaubert

    This parrot Loulou now becomes the center of Felicite’s world, who dedicates a significant chunk of her day looking after it, with the same devotion that she had felt for Virginie or Victor initially.

    Atlhough, a parrot, Loulou is nothing short of a son to Felicite. She talks to him doing her chores and  simply dotes on him. Upon Loulou’s death, she sends him off to the Taxidermist and continues to keep him alive in her heart.

    Quite a few lonely years pass by, interspersed with news of death of people she once knew. Madame Aubain dies and leaves her in possession of a small pension and her house.

    There are no interested parties, either to rent or purchase the house, and with passage of time, the condition of the house as well as her health continues to deteriorate.

    She donates the stuffed Loulou to the local church and dies shortly after, at a time when a church procession is underway.

    In her final moments she envisions a huge parrot hovering over her head, as the heavens part to receive her.

    A Simple Heart: Analysis and Review

    Gustave Flaubert has been called equal parts romantic and realist and it is plain as day from his portrayal of Felicite, her experiences and the world that she lives in.

    He does it so convincingly and with such striking details that you couldn’t help but see her world so vividly, as if you were there and everything was happening in front of your eyes.

    “For two nights Félicité never left the dead girl. She said the same prayers over and over again, sprinkled holy water on the sheets, then sat down again to watch. At the end of her first vigil, she noticed that the child’s face had gone yellow, the lips were turning blue, the nose looked sharper, and the eyes were sunken.

    She kissed them several times, and would not have been particularly surprised if Virginie had opened them again: to minds like hers the supernatural is a simple matter.

    She laid her out, wrapped her in a shroud, put her in her coffin, placed a wreath on her, and spread out her hair. It was fair and amazingly long for her age. Félicité cut off a big lock, half of which she slipped into her bosom, resolving never to part with it.”

    Felicite finds it hard to accept the death of her beloved Virginie, but in her mourning, never leaves her side. She displays the same dedication to her as before, with her big kind, yet simple heart.

    Her expectation on Virginie opening her eyes when she kissed them and taking a big lock of hers to always keep with her, is of childlike purity. Her simple heart is precisely that – Simple, gives everything it got, to everything she does.

    Her simplicity was such a profound message for me. I can’t say that it does not sound cliché, because it does, but to me it was Felicite saying in her humble way- ‘Give it everything you got’.

    “Mistress and servant embraced each other, uniting their grief in a kiss which made them equal.” Felicite has been a dedicated servant to the Aubain household for a number of years, and Felicite and Madame Aubain have just been that – mistress and a servant until the death of a beloved kid joins them together in a bond much stronger than that – a bond of love.

    Seeing this display of emotion from her mistress, her dedication is more amplified than ever – like that of a dog to its master.

    Jose N Harris, an American author, remarked in his book Mi Vida: “Tears shed for another person are a sign of a pure heart.” And drives home the purity of this simple heart.

    Flaubert has been known to be a perfectionist. Famously called by Walter Pater as ‘Martyr of Style’. He has been known for his relentless pursuit of ‘le mot juste’ (French for ‘the right word’).

    A Simple Heart will tell you why.

     

     

     

     

  • Exhalation by Ted Chiang: Summary, Plot Analysis, Review

    Exhalation by Ted Chiang: Summary, Plot Analysis, Review

    Exhalation is a short story written by Ted Chiang. It’s a short story from his collection titled “Exhalation: Stories”. It is a story about cyborgs who live on a different planet and use metal lungs to breathe everyday.

    ‘Will it be preferable to remain mute to prolong our ability to think, or to talk until the very end?’

    Exhalation is every bit mind boggling and overwhelming as his more famed piece Story of your Life (which also inspired a Hollywood movie called Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner) if not more.

    This short story is a perfect blend of science and philosophy and has something to offer to avid readers of both philosophy and science.

    Exhalation: Summary and Plot Analysis

    The story is set on a planet inhabited by Cyborgs, who install mental lungs to breathe every day. Filling stations – where they replenish their air supply – also serve as the primary means for social conversations.

    They derive shared pleasure through this communal activity of replacing lungs. Just as lungs are passed between persons and districts, so are news and gossip.

    In one of those conversations, the protagonist, an unnamed scientist, gets to hear the rumor about turret clocks in their district to have sped up, chiming earlier than they were supposed to. He also got to hear about same news from nearby districts as well.

    Horologists investigated further but couldn’t find any imperfections in those turret clocks, which piqued his curiosity.

    Due to lack of available reference material to research this, the scientist takes it upon himself to solve the mystery. He decides to perform auto-dissection.

    He sets up a complex machinery, stocks up on additional lungs, creates a backup plan for rescue in case of a mishap.

    Through his deftly performed surgery, he begins to see the structure of his brain and eventually realizes that their memory was the pattern of air flow in their brains.

    He realizes that it was not the clocks that were fast but that the air flowing through every person’s brain was slow.

    Based on his understanding that they were simply converting air at high pressure to air at low leading to achievement of final albeit fatal state of equilibrium. Due to an increase in the background air pressure of the universe, thoughts were slowing down.

    The scientist’s findings spur a lot of debate in the community to an ultimate confirmations that they actually seemed true and that end to their world, as they knew it, was a certain thing.

    This understanding bestows upon our protagonist an appreciation for the life that he is living right now and he records this for the future explorers.

    Exhalation by Ted Chiang: Review and My thoughts

    This story will appeal to the scientist and the philosopher alike. However, scientifically you would see the messages worded, there are always some deep philosophical messages to take home.

    Consider for example, the scientists discovery of the truth that death is certain.

    “It will be the end of pressure, the end of motive power, the end of thought. The universe will have reached perfect equilibrium.”

    Perfect equilibrium and death are synonymous. It cannot get any more eye-opening than that. Ah Ted!

    Although the scientist does talk about the cyborgs and presents a very futuristic view, he does not do that without making them humane, cyborgs enjoying community time, loving to be social, Chiang asserts very humanely, through his writing that science fiction does not have to be dystopian.

    We all keep spare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one’s chest and replacing one’s lungs can seem little better than a chore. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal activity, a shared pleasure.

    And then there are observations made within the story that are as applicable to humans as to cyborgs. I am sure human meditation enthusiasts will attest to this understanding-

    Air is in fact the very medium of our thoughts. All that we are is a pattern of air flow.

    He does leave us with this gripping message, simple yet no less profound-

    “Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”

    You will find it extremely difficult not to be pulled into this universe so tastefully created by Chiang, that’s bound to leave you pondering, aching for more.

    In an interview to Manifold, Chiang defines hard science fiction as something that spurs an endless debate.

    Exhalation does just that.