SciFi Novella Review: Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom is a novella by award winning and otherwise acclaimed (think "Arrival") SF/F author Ted Chiang.  The novella is actually part of his short fiction collection "Exhalation", which was released last year, and is one of two stories from that collection nominated for a Hugo this year (the other is the novelette, "Omphalos").  Despite Chiang's reputation, I've never actually read any of his work before, so this was a first for me - that said, I wasn't surprised to see at least some of his work nominated this year given his reputation.

And Anxiety is a really interesting piece of idea based science fiction, with the central idea in question being that of how one's free will - and whether we have free will - reflects upon one's character.  It takes a SF concept of multiverse theory - where different universes branch off from our own based upon choices taken and not taken - and extrapolates it to hit those themes, with a story centered around two characters in particular.  And it works very well in doing so.  It's certainly not a mindblowing or must-read type of story, but it's very good and the award nomination is not undeserved.

More specifics after the jump:


Quick Plot Summary:  The Development of Prisms changed peoples' lives in some ways...and in others didn't at all.  Prisms are devices that, when you switch them on, essentially create a parallel universe in which another version of you also switched that device on at the same time, and allow you to communicate with those people...to a point - after a certain amount of time and communication, the device dies.  Through such devices, people can talk to other versions of themselves who made different choices in their lives, and see worlds where different things happened, at least until the prism dies and communication is cut off for good.

Nat is a worker at a store that rents out Prisms for people to use - but mainly she serves as a sidekick to her boss's attempts to con people out of money using Prisms.  Her boss' recent scheme to obtain a specific Prism and to sell it for a fortune has taken her to a support group for those who have psychological issues relating to prism usage.  There she meets Dana, the psychiatrist leader of said group, who tries to help people move forward with their lives, even as she herself tries to make up for a mistake from her own past....

Thoughts:  Honestly, don't want to put more in the summary than the setup, because this is a short novella and that'll spoil the way it goes if I go any way in depth, or just feel too long for a story of this length (it's already too long honestly).  But let me just say that it works really well in all three of its angles - as the story is so split, with the narrative repeatedly rotating between Nat's perspective, an omniscient narrator explaining the history of Prisms and how they work, and Dana's perspective.  Chiang uses the Prisms to essentially pose the question: if multiple versions of you, exactly the same up to the moment of choice, do a thing subsequently differently, what does that say about you?  And if multiple versions of you instead do the same thing every time, what does that say?  After all, if our actions reveal who we are, shouldn't the range of our actions do the same, perhaps even more specifically?  This question is shown quite clearly in the therapy sessions Dana mentors, as one patient in particular argues that because most of his parallel selves didn't do his bad act, he himself can't be that bad of a person.

But we see this most directly through Nat and Dana, two people who DON'T use prisms for themselves really.  Nat has had problems in the past - a drug problem for real as well as a pattern of bad behavior, and she thinks of herself as a result as a bad person - and doesn't feel too guilty about helping her boss' con man schemes.  And yet when one of those schemes goes wrong and winds up putting her in more control of her own actions, she decides to take one good act as a result - in hopes that maybe it'll reflect that she can - through effort - not be the bad person she once feared.  Dana by contrast is well aware of how we each have free will and how we all need to take responsibility for our actions (unlike Nat at first), but at the same time takes too much responsibility for a single past bad act, and has to learn that not everything is her own fault and to let it go.

In short, the two characters both have to figure out the right level of responsibility they should feel towards their past actions and what those actions reveal upon themselves, and how to be better in the future rather than being stuck in the past.  And the novella suggests that we can indeed take that step forward and we have that opportunity - whether in multiple worlds or just our single one.  It's really well done.