"The Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novel by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and in 2002 in Chiang's short story collection < i> Your Life and Others . The main theme is language and determinism.
"Story of Your Life" won the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novella, as well as the 1999 Theodore Sturgeon Award. It was nominated for the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Novella has been translated into Italian, French and German.
The film adaptation of the story by Eric Heisserer, entitled Arrival and directed by Denis Villeneuve, was released in 2016. The film stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker and is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture ; it won the award for Best Sound Editing. The film also won the Ray Bradbury Award 2017 for Extraordinary Drama Presentation and Hugo Award for Best Drama Presentation.
Video Story of Your Life
Plot
"Story of Your Life" was told by Dr. Louise Banks linguist on her daughter's day conceived. Addressed to her daughter, the story alternates between telling past: the arrival of aliens and the decomposition of their language; and remember the future: what will happen to his unborn daughter as he grows up, and the sudden death of his daughter.
Alien arrives on a spacecraft and enters Earth's orbit. 112 devices that resemble large half-circle mirrors appear on sites around the world. Dubbed "looking for glasses", they are audiovisual links to aliens in orbit, called heptapods for their symmetrical seven-limbed radial appearance. Louise and physicist Dr. Gary Donnelly was recruited by the US Army to communicate with aliens, and was assigned to one of nine visible-glass sites in the US. They made contact with two heptapods they named Flapper and Raspberry. In an attempt to learn their language, Louise begins by associating objects and movements with an alien-made sound, which expresses language with free wording and many levels of central embedded clauses. He found their writing as a semagram chain on a two-dimensional surface in no linear order, and semasiographic, having no reference to speak. Louise concludes that, because their speeches and writings are unrelated, the heptapod has two languages, which he calls Heptapod A (speech) and Heptapod B (writing).
Efforts were also made to establish the terminology of heptapod in physics. Little progress is made, until the presentation of Fermat's Principle of Least Time is given. Gary explains the principle to Louise, gives an example of refraction of light, and that light will always take the quickest route possible. Louise reasoned, "[light] of light must know where it will end up before it can choose a direction to start moving." He knew heptapods did not write a single sentence semagram at a time, but drew all the ideograms simultaneously, showing they knew what the whole sentence was before. Louise realizes that instead of experiencing events in sequence (causality), heptapods undergoes all occurrences at once (teleology). This is reflected in their language, and explains why the Fermat principle comes naturally to them.
Soon, Louise became very proficient at Heptapod B, and found that while writing in it, the train of thought without direction, and the premise and conclusion can be exchanged. He found himself starting to think in Heptapod B and began to look at the time as the heptapod did. Louise saw the glimpse of her future and a daughter she did not yet have. This raises the question of the nature of free will: the knowledge of the future implies no free will, for knowing the future means it can not be changed. But Louise asks herself, "What if the experience of knowing the future changes a person? What if it evokes a sense of urgency, a sense of responsibility to act exactly as he knows?"
One day, after the exchange of information with the heptapoda, the aliens announced that they were leaving. They turn off their glasses and their ships disappear. It was never established why they left, or why they came in the first place. The heptapod language changed Louise's life, and once she knew the future, she never acted contrary to that future. Gary and Louise started spending time together and eventually got married. When Gary asks Louise if she wants a baby, she agrees, knowing that they will get divorced, and their daughter will die young.
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In the "Story Stories" section of The Story of Your Life and Others , Chiang writes that the inspiration for "The Story of Your Life" comes from its appeal in the variational principle in physics. When he saw the appearance of American actor Paul Linke in his game of Flies As You Live about his wife's struggle with breast cancer, Chiang realized that he could use this principle to show how a person deals with the inevitable. Regarding the theme of the story, Chiang said that Kurt Vonnegut summed it up in an introduction to the 25th anniversary of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five:
Stephen Hawking... finds it tempting that we can not remember the future. But remembering the future is a kids game for me now. I know what will happen to my helpless baby and believe because they are grown now. I know how my closest friends will end because so many of them have retired or died now... For Stephen Hawking and others younger than me, I say, "Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down on your feet, like a dog who knows and likes you no matter what you are. "
In the 2010 interview, Chiang said that "The Story of Your Life" discusses the subject of free will. The philosophical debate about whether we have free will is all abstract, but knowing the future makes the question very real. Chiang adds, "If you know what's going to happen, can you keep it going? Even when a story says that you can not, the emotional impact comes from feeling that you should be able to do it."
Chiang spent five years researching and getting used to linguistics before trying to write "Story of Your Life."
Reception
In The New York Review of Books American author James Gleick says that "Story of Your Life" poses the question: will know your future as a gift or a curse, and free will only be an illusion? Gleick writes, "For us ordinary people, the fateful future experiences of the destiny are almost unimaginable," but Chiang does that in this story, he "imagines it." In a review of Chiang The Story of Your Life and Others at The Guardian , Chinese fantasy writer China MiÃÆ'Â © ville describes "Story of Your Life" as "tender" with "culmination surprisingly, "which he said was" surprising "considering it was achieved by using science.
Writing on Kirkus Ana Grilo calls it "beautiful thoughts, stories". He says that in contrast to the familiar tariffs of fancy tales involving aliens, "Story of Your Life" is a "breath of fresh air" whose purpose "is not only to learn how to communicate but how to communicate effectively . "In a review in Emilyment Monthly Samantha Schraub said that two story stories, Louise recalls the language of the heptapod that decomposes, and tells her unborn daughter what will happen to her, creating" Ambiguity and mystery air, which making readers question everything that is revealed ". Schraub calls this "a prize-winning science fiction novel that will resonate with the reader, and let them think how they will live - or even change - now, if they know their future."
Awards
Publishing history
- Source: Speculative Internet Fiction Database
References
The work cited
- Chiang, Ted (2015a) [2002]. "The Story of Your Life". The Story of Your Life and Others (e-book ed.). Picador. p.Ã, 76. ISBNÃ, 978-1-4472-8198-6.
- Chiang, Ted (2015b) [2002]. "Story Note". The Story of Your Life and Others (e-book ed.). Picador. p.Ã, 223. ISBNÃ, 978-1-4472-8198-6.
External links
- "Story of Your Life" list titles on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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