Arrival, Story of Your Life, and Gossamer

Arrival came out today, and it was awesome. It's based on the novella "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang, like really faithfully too I was surprised, considering it's a story about, ummm, spoilers never mind; but it gets into some pretty heady areas of perception and linguistics and the nature of spacetime and aliens that aren't even vaguely anthropomorphic, in some ways that get really involved in the plot near the end. But the SF stuff is only part of what makes the movie and short story so good...

Jeremy Renner is quoted as saying that it's going to wreck you if you're a parent. I'm not a parent and it basically wrecked me; after seeing this movie I think I have some understanding, however small, of what it is like to be a parent. The love, the altruism, the joys and sorrows wrapped up so tightly into each other that it's impossible to pick apart. It's not even a subplot, in a sense it is the plot itself of the movie, but it's not something that's shown in any of the trailers, this story (the story that the original short story is named after.) I really don't want to spoil anything, but, that final line of the movie, that one word, the implications of that, why it would be said in spite of and because of everything, that, that wrecked me. I was breaking down into tears for a solid hour (by which I mean 10-15 minutes) afterwards.

If you can't wait to see it, maybe read the story first- it's in the totally awesome anthology "Stories of Your Life and Others," on Amazon here, or here republished under the film's name. There's also a bunch of other great stories in that, of course- one or two of which I've actually read, and the others vouched for by people a lot smarter than me.

And I couldn't bring that up without bringing up the other thing. Story of Your Life also inspired/was homaged in the short story "Gossamer" by Ken Liu, he of the Three Body Problem English translation* (it's getting a movie; I'm so psyched!**) You can read that (Gossamer) for free on Ken Liu's website here, if you don't want to have to pay for anything but still want to read an award-winning short story about a woman who has to try to communicate with an alien race- in this case (and I'm not afraid of getting into spoilers here,) she's an art critic who attempts to review contemporary art shows and convey them into some form the alien "Gossamers" can understand, via hand signals over this holographic lightpad deal- but right when she thinks she's making headway in communication, the Gossamers respond positively to this latest art piece- which is actually not her hand signals conveying an art piece at all, but literally the cat walking across the keyboard. It's awesome.

So yeah. See the film, or read the book, or read the short story, or read the other short story. I'd recommend doing all of them...

*The beginning of the month this month also saw the release of "Invisible Planets," an anthology of contemporary Chinese SF translated and compiled by Liu; I haven't gotten a chance to get my hands on it just yet but am on such a Chinese SF kick right now, so it shouldn't be long. 

**Did you know that 三体 (Three Body) also has a fan-OST album made about it? It's great. Chinese rock is just like American rock, except Chinese. Go figure.