Plaga interworld signaling mechanism
August 17, 2020 9:18 AM   Subscribe

What if you could talk to your alternate reality selves? Ted Chiang’s novella, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom (OneZero/Medium) explores ideas of choice, responsibility, and fate with consummate style and total precision.

The novella originally appeared in his short story collection Exhalation, now in paperback. Previously:
posted by adrianhon (15 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think this story sits comfortably with Chiang's finest.

[Oblique vague spoiler follows]

Think about whether the bit at the end is a happy ending. Would you think it was valid if the information collected had turned out the other way?
posted by straight at 10:03 AM on August 17, 2020


I enjoyed Exhalation a lot, though not quite as much as Story of Your Life and Others. He really has a wonderful imagination.

I find though that I have forgotten the conclusion or "point" of some of the stories, though, since many feel to me more sustained flights of imagination that provoke thought rather than stories with a strongly defined beginning, middle, and end. That's not to say it's a problem per se but it makes them less memorable to me, even the fabulously interesting ones.

Perhaps I'm just a bit too plot-driven. This story at any rate was a great one and like all his others extremely worth reading.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:42 AM on August 17, 2020


Great story.

I don't think I'd be the target market for prism tech. If I'm living my best life, it would hurt to see parallel mes suffering; if I'm in the dumps, it would hurt to see parallel mes living it up, or, worse, finding there are no mes that are enjoying themselves.

My gut reaction would be that people with high self-esteem would be drawn to prisms, and those with low would not, but who knows?

[spoiler follows]

And straight, the way the story is set up, I think Dana was looking for resolution, and either way would have been a "happy" ending. I think in many ways life would be simpler, if guiltier, if they had discovered that they were, in fact, responsible. We all have friends who seem to need a helping hand more often than they can offer a helping hand (I fear I'm one of them)...ideally we extend that hand without needing justification, which is now a decision Dana gets to make, a harder one perhaps than one founded on a sense of obligation.
posted by maxwelton at 11:39 AM on August 17, 2020


Related but more of a mystery format: And Then There Were (N-One)
posted by emjaybee at 12:41 PM on August 17, 2020 [5 favorites]


There's an app (only $1.99!) called Universe Splitter that works a lot like the prisms in this story, although I think they're still working on the cross-branch communication feature.
posted by theodolite at 1:34 PM on August 17, 2020 [2 favorites]


I shouldn't be as excited as I am about every dang T.Chiang novel but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by LMGM at 3:58 PM on August 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Surely I have paraselves who don't immediately click on a Ted Chiang story link. I have no interest in meeting them.
posted by otherchaz at 4:07 PM on August 17, 2020 [5 favorites]


Oh boy! A new author to love. Thanks adrianhon.
posted by haikuku at 7:28 PM on August 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Wow, emjaybee, that Pinsker story ("And Then There Were N-One") is also great. I need to find more stuff she's written. Thank you!
posted by straight at 7:41 PM on August 17, 2020 [2 favorites]


Maybe I missed something, but how can you have more than one Prism per timeline? Say someone uses Prism A, creating timelines with Prisms A+ and A-. Then someone in timeline A+ uses Prism B to create a pair of child timelines which have Prisms B+ and B-. Both of the B timelines now have a copy of Prism A+. When someone subsequently uses Prism A-, which of the copies of Prism A+ will it connect to?
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:24 AM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


That was great, thanks for posting. I've been waiting for Exhalation to come out in paperback, so thanks for the heads up on that as well.

I have so many times in my life where I wish I had done something different, a couple of which definitely changed my future from the moment of decision. For years now, my secret idea of what an afterlife / heaven would look like was that you would get an interview with G-d just to ask him any questions you wanted to know. I guess a prism could solve some of those answers - but because there would be many (infinite?) possible alternatives, I could see becoming obsessed with it.
posted by Mchelly at 6:45 AM on August 18, 2020


Hard pass.

There are several trauma-adjacent what-ifs in my life for which I've spent way too much time contemplating what things would be like if they didn't turn out the way they did. I used to spent so much time sympathizing with the parallel universe RonButNotStupids who didn't have it so lucky and I've found it's actually healthier to just completely reject the idea that any are out there.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:41 AM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


When someone subsequently uses Prism A-, which of the copies of Prism A+ will it connect to?

Probably all of them, creating new branches of A- universes. Once two universes are connected this way, they branch as a unit whenever one of them branches.
posted by straight at 8:56 AM on August 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


Ted Chiang is great but this story didn't quite click for me, because I don't understand the prisms at all. Doesn't the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics prohibit communication between branched realities? Maybe it's a bit of a miserly objection since imagination is always free and certainly so in speculative fiction. Maybe I missed something. I just couldn't get past it.
posted by dmh at 10:34 AM on August 18, 2020


[spoilers follow]

I think Dana was looking for resolution, and either way would have been a "happy" ending. I think in many ways life would be simpler, if guiltier, if they had discovered that they were, in fact, responsible.

But apart from prisms, it is always true that events have more than one cause. She was never solely responsible for her friend's difficulties.

It's not possible to rule out whether there is a universe in which she didn't betray her friend and her friend had a much better life. If there is even one, then her actions were one of the causes of her friend's woes and her actions are what put her in the universe where she betrayed her friend and her friend's life was a mess.

The big takeaway for the protagonist is that it doesn't matter how many universes there are where you did something else, what matters is you are the person who did what you did and get to live in the universe where you did it.

I think evidence at the end is heartening as a reminder that events have more than one cause, but it feels like it risks falling into the problems the patient had who slashed his boss's tires. And of course as an example of the protagonist trying to choose generosity and kindness.

And I say all these things in admiration for the story.
posted by straight at 3:17 PM on August 18, 2020


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