(Untitled)

[moon_custafer]

After watching the trailer for Arrival last week, I went and read the source work, Ted Chiang's 'Story of Your Life.' I've been wondering ever if they'll be able to translate such a intimate, quietly tragic story into a feature-length movie as-is. I think, from hints in the trailer, they may have constructed a third act, perhaps one in which the

Comments

Love Ted's stuff

[palain_7]

Everyone is so jealous of him. Literary agents follow him around checking to see if he's taken some more time off of his day job (programming languae manual writer) to write something else. He's dumped out less than a dozen short pieces and every one is great and most have won some award or other.

I love his "Understand!" which is the best portrayal of super-intelligence ever. Sort of a Brainiac vs. Lex Luthor cage match. There's also a great little piece called "Exhalation" about the scariness of Entrophy.

Interestingly a lot of his early stuff seems to have been leveraged off of his day job. "Story of your life" is about an inhuman language and "Understand!" is full of the sorts of self-modifying code that you see in the languages that he writes about: in this case the super-intelligences rewriting every aspect of their own minds to suit the situation.

[sovay]

sovay, have you read the short story? It strikes me as your sort of thing, given that it's about learning another language and as a result being forced to confront the idea of immutable fate.

No, I haven't. I don't care about spoilers, though, so what about the story short makes it feel (perhaps appropriately) untranslatable?

[moon_custafer]

I suppose it's the fact that the plot consists of the slow reveal that the events are not being recounted in chronological order -- that the protagonist's experience with the alien language has allowed her to see her family's immutable future, and unlike Cassandra, she doesn't even try to talk about it, because she's seen her future and knows that she never does tell anyone. It's interesting and heart-rending, but it leaves her with very little agency, which for a contemporary feature-length thriller is a bit unusual.