The Short Story Collection That Sets the Genre Standard

Ted Chiang publishes slowly and the world is better for it. Exhalation contains nine stories and each one is built around a single idea taken to its absolute logical conclusion. The title story, about a pneumatic creature who performs surgery on its own brain to understand what air is, is fifteen pages long and contains more genuine philosophical inquiry than most novels twice its length. I read it three times before moving to the next story.