Ted Chiang's EXHALATION -SciFi Metacognition

EXHALATION is a spectacular collection of sci-fi short fiction that covers.  Ted Chiang's clever & thought provoking stories encompassing theology, sociology, physiology, archeology, humanities and eons of possibilities.   Chiang's captures the reader's imagination & stimulates metacognition.  Chiang's stories gives us cause to marvel at human evolution.  He cracks open our craniums to ponder  the origins of thought and consider the omnipotence & onus of human decision making.  In the titled story "Exhalation" a scientist explores inside his own brain and found it tore "an engine undergoing continuous transformation, indeed modifying itself as a part or its operation."  We're made mindful of the miracle of free will and clarity of thought.  The clever writing leaves us with conflicting views allowing us to derive our own judgements.  Betwixt are some bemusing opines. "The Church as an institution has always been able to derive strength from the evidence when it's useful and ignore it when it's not."  The stories mirror our own tendencies to process in this fashion.  It's suggested there's merit in withholding information as well as disclosing it.  Some stories take opposing views.  The sci-fi intrigue of time traveling is broached in intriguing ways with emphasis on the possibility of changing our past and thus our future.  The cryptic consideration of the past and the future being the same or malleable are profound.  "The future and the past are the same.  We cannot change either, but we can know both more fully."   Repentance and atonement's power to erase the past are shrouded in doubt.  Chiang employs lyricism with wisdom. "Four things that do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity."  Serious & humorous considerations are given with the ability for technology to enable us to revisit our pasts.  Spouses used this technology to prove their points in arguments.  But then what is the point?  And grieving individuals are enabled to revisit loved ones or examine the trajectories their lives might have taken had they chosen the road not taken. These are very thought provoking conceptions.  Artificial intelligence (AI) is another anomaly the collection contemplates philosophically.  EXHALATION also examines the incredulous developments of man's abilities to read, write and process thought.  EXHALATION is a no brainer - it's a masterpiece of creative genius.