exhalation

Ted Chiang is up there with Greg Egan as my favourite hard SF living author, and his Exhalation was just as good as his previous books. While the first story about time travel didn't look exceptional (even though it's easily one of the best in that micro subgenre i've read), it's immediately followed by a charming entropy metaphor, an insightful mini-essay on free will, and on and on he goes, in a deluge of originality and, often, insight.

In Science Fiction Doesn’t Have to Be Dystopian, Joyce Carol Oates writes a much better review, but just reading the book is your best option!