In Chiang’s tale, Banks and Donnelly work in a large tent that houses a semicircular mirror-like device that allows for video chats with the heptapods (think Alien FaceTime), whereas in the film, those conversations occur inside the visitors’ spacecraft. Maybe they think our form of writing is redundant, like we’re wasting a second communications channel.’ ”Īs befitting a movie adaptation, Arrival (beautifully scripted by Eric Heisserer) sometimes diverges from its source material. “ ‘For the heptapods, writing and speech may play such different cultural or cognitive roles that using separate languages makes more sense than using different forms of the same one.’ They converse in two ways: by emitting confusing sounds (dubbed “Heptapod A”) in non-chronological sentence structures and by writing in semantic graphics (“Heptapod B”) whose overlapping shapes convey meanings that don’t necessarily correlate with their verbal expressions. The creatures are dubbed “heptapods,” in a nod to the seven appendages protruding from their barrel-shaped bodies. Gary Donnelly (renamed “Ian” in the movie, and played by Jeremy Renner) on a project to understand the communications of extraterrestrials who’ve suddenly appeared across the globe. government to work alongside physicist Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist appointed by the U.S. Award, and Best Novella at the Nebula Awards.

It received three distinguished sci-fi literary accolades in 1999: the Sturgeon Award, the James Tiptree Jr. “Story of Your Life” first appeared in the 1998 anthology Starlight 2, and is now available in Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others collection. It takes its inspiration from Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” an acclaimed novella with an inventiveness and poignancy that make it not only a stand-alone work of disarming power, but a fascinating companion piece to its cinematic counterpart.

Equal parts haunting, touching, and terrifying, it’s a drama about the fundamental role language plays in connecting us to each other, and to our pasts, presents, and futures. Arrival is the best big-budget sci-fi film in years, thanks in large part to Denis Villeneuve’s ominous yet lyrical direction, and Amy Adams’ captivating performance as a linguist trying to find a way to communicate with mysterious alien visitors.

Arrival short story ted chiang