“The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang (collected in “Exhalation: Stories”)

If you heard a deep sigh at some point in the past week and couldn’t place where it came from, it was likely me quickly assuming this story would cover the same ground and come to the same conclusions as “Black Mirror”’s “The Entire History of You”. To say whether my fears were well-founded would be to spoil “Feeling”’s conclusion (at least for those who’ve seen that episode), but suffice to say I didn’t give Chiang enough credit. It’s a real humdinger of a piece that builds to several climaxes and leaves you shaken enough to use the word “humdinger”.

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