Omphalos (story)

"Omphalos" is a science fantasy short story by Ted Chiang, about the omphalos hypothesis. It was first published in Chiang's 2019 collection Exhalation: Stories.

Synopsis

In a world where Young Earth creationism is true, Dorothea Morrell is an archaeologist who discovers an unsettling fact about the universe.

Reception

"Omphalos" was a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.[1]

The Nation considered the basic premise — a creationist archaeologist in conflict with a creationist astronomer — to be "hilarious", but noted that the story is not a humorous work, and emphasized that Dorothea is an empiricist who uses the scientific method.[2] In the Washington Post, Paul Di Filippo called the story "masterful and striking", and found it evocative of Philip Jose Farmer's "Sail On! Sail On!".[3]

gollark: Probably. You'd have to have some way to train off past real-world flights too.
gollark: Humans are expensive, sensors are dirt-cheap.
gollark: It's obviously possible to stabilise helicopters because people can control helicopters.
gollark: Also, you could plausibly have a way to communicate telemetry and stuff to knowledgeable ground control people.
gollark: How common are ridiculously unplanned failure modes? And how much do the humans actually get them right?

References
  1. 2020 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved August 1, 2020
  2. The Rest Is Up to Us, by Stephen Kearse; in The Nation; published November 19, 2019; retrieved August 1, 2020
  3. Ted Chiang’s ‘Exhalation,’ like his story that inspired ‘Arrival,’ fuses intellect and emotion, by Paul Di Filippo, in the Washington Post; published May 3, 2019; retrieved August 1, 2020
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