In what ways can you explore ethical issues and human emotion through speculative fiction?

Ted Chang will be here to talk about his new story collection, Exhalation.

What's so terrifying about motherhood?

Novelist Helen Phillips will tell us about her latest book, The Need.

Alexander Altair will give us an update from the publishing world.

Plus, we'll talk about what we and the wider world are reading.

This is the Book Review Podcast from The New York Times.

I'm Pamela Paul.

Ted Chang joins us now.

He has a new short story collection, Exhalation, with nine short stories,

and is the author of a previous collection of short fiction, The Story of Your Life and Others,

which was published in 2002.

He has won roughly 27 awards for his short fiction, and listeners who have not yet read his work

may be familiar with one of his stories, The Story of Your Life,

which was adapted into a film by Dennis Villeneuve called Arrival,

which starred Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker.

But his new book is Exhalation, and we will mostly talk about that.

Ted, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

So I want to start with another kind of writing that you have done,

which is for a long time, in addition to writing fiction,

you've also been a technical writer for software companies.

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