The tale was later included in Chiang's second collection, Exhalation: Stories, released in 2019. It is the second written work by Chiang that is long enough to stand alone, after The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate. This is Chiang's first novella released in hardcover. Elizabeth Bear felt that the story's lack of physical grounding contributed to the feeling that it takes place in a virtual setting. This emotional distance allows the reader to take the novella's ethical questions more seriously. Joan Gordon wrote that the tone of the novel is cool and that emotions are tamped down. The human caretakers must balance the digients' right to self-determination and choose how many mistakes that the digients should be allowed to make.
Įlizabeth Bear compared the raising of the digients to parenthood and pet ownership. The story explores this theme with digients who are treated both as company property and as individuals. She also writes that the story explores the way in which "subjects – human or non-human – become enmeshed in and trapped by the capitalist system".
Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Joan Gordon writes that the novella explores interesting ethical questions including the meaning of consciousness. Ana plans to continue raising Jax, promising to discover what "adulthood" means for a digital being alongside him. With the consent of his digient, Derek sells the rights to a sex toy company. Derek and Ana debate the nature of consent, experience, adulthood, and personhood with respect to the digients. Options include modifying their brain structures to serve as sexual companions for humans using the digients as employees, or raising funds from sympathetic donors. Derek and Ana disagree on the best way to raise funds to transfer the digients to a new system. The digients are cut off from the wider internet. The digients become more intelligent and develop their own personalities and quirks. Over the course of many years, Ana grows close to a digient named Jax. They are relatively intelligent and have rudimentary speech Blue Gamma begins to sell them as virtual pets. The digients are designed by another Blue Gamma employee, Derek. The firm is creating “digients”, or digital entities. The novella received critical praise, winning the 2011 Locus Award for Best Novella and the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novella.Īna, a former zookeeper, begins working for software firm Blue Gamma. It focuses on the creation of digital entities and their growth as they are raised by human trainers over the course of many years. " The Lifecycle of Software Objects" is a novella by American writer Ted Chiang, originally published in 2010 by Subterranean Press.
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