Exhalation - Ted Chiang

Summary

A story about the discovery of the second law of thermodynamics. But instead of entropy, it's "pressure" which will reach equilibrium.
Combined with musings on consciousness as a process (consciousness as fire)

Ted Chiang does such a good job of turning scientific ideas into romantic stories. Not romantic as in love, but as in "gives me a feeling of some higher beauty."
Interesting that, again as in The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - Ted Chiang, there's religious themes. In particular, the narrator gives religious/spiritual meaning to the phenomena they discover

The intro worked really well. Got me intrigued, without really revealing any information about what the hell was going on.
- And I like that it's just matter of factly revealed slowly that these are metal people in a metal world.
- And the subtle world building. Not enough space to really create a fully formed image for us, but enough subtle details here and there for us to see where they're like us and where they're different
  - E.g. how the people's first reaction to the criers being late is not that the criers had erred, but rather that clocks had become messed up!
    - Which subtilely reminds us that these are robots - precise, mechanical beings
And the ending! That I, the reader, am one of the discoverers of the narrator's land.

Ted Chiang likes to have the protagonist narrate the story to someone (the Caliph in The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - Ted Chiang, and "me" someone who discovers the narrators world in this story)
- This lets him justify putting in a lot of scientific explanation near the front. As opposed to telling the story "in the moment" via the character's thoughts. As in the moment, the character likely isn't thinking about (even if just due to constraints of how much one can think about in a given period of time) all the intricacies of how things work. It lets the character weave in things they came to understand later on. (telling a story by having a character recount a tale)
But what Ted Chiang doesn't do is create new ideas per say. In this case, he takes an idea that exists (second law of thermodynamics) and explores the philosophical and human aspects of it.
How does he create a compelling story out of an idea?
- release of information - story telling: we're made to feel as if we are making a scientific discovery alongside the narrator