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Ted Chiang’s Sci-Fi Goes Beyond the Promise of Technology | The Nation

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In his short story collection Exhalation, he builds social worlds where every character and object is deeply intertwined in history and in future possibility.

November 19, 2019 This article appears in the December 2/9 2019 issue . The city of the future. (Chronicle / Alamy) One of the frustrations of science fiction becoming the bedrock of popular culture is that we’ve primarily adopted the genre’s aesthetics. From the sleek Afrofuturism of Black Panther ’s Bugatti spaceships to the gleaming cityscapes of Blade Runner 2049 , much of today’s sci-fi emphasizes kick-ass design. Even the problems of these fictional worlds are stylish: the dangerously sexy AI of Love, Death & Robots , the variegated aliens of Saga , the slick technologies of Black Mirror

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