
A Scientist Who Helped Amy Adams Talk to Aliens in “Arrival” - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-scientist-who-helped-amy-adams-talk-to-aliens-in-arrival
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stared
I read "Stories of Your Life and Others" this year and it was for me the best
fiction in a few years. Cognitive sci-fi, sometimes with religious themes
(e.g. what if Kabbalah were a basis for the industrial revolution).

Also, quite a few stories by Ted Chiang are available online, see links in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Chiang).

EDIT: Freely accessible stories converted to mobi (the Kindle format):
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessib...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbhdyer9qfpexcm/Stories%20accessible%20online%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.mobi?dl=1)

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StavrosK
I will second this, that book was fantastic. I hope the movie is as good as
the story, but I don't think it will.

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stared
But you will go to the movie anyway, fully knowing that it will not meet your
expectations... ;)

(Also, free will vs time seem to be one of his favourite themes - at least two
other stories are about that.)

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StavrosK
> But you will go to the movie anyway, fully knowing that it will not meet
> your expectations... ;)

Yes :( Same with the Martian. The movie was good, but the book was just
fantastic.

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stared
It was a very in-joke (cf.: would you conceive a daughter if.. [spoiler]).
Actually, I heard that the movie is good.

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StavrosK
Oh, haha, I didn't catch it at first. Good one :)

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eganist
Tangentially related:

In a conversation with a producer and a screenwriter after my first film
consulting contract, I quickly learned how much more attractive realistic
scripts can be to potential directors. The fact that the film industry is
actively embracing subject matter experts not only for establishing
overarching themes and very central elements to plots but also to accurately
represent even the most minor details is a fascinating turn in the last twenty
years of filmmaking.

Minor details in the case of this film might be things like deciphering
written sentence structure and realistically assembling new sentences. Minor
details in the case of e.g. the matrix might be the use of SSHNuke. It's just
nice to see.

•••

As for Arrival, it was easily one of my favorites this year, if not one of my
personal favorite film of the last five. You should see it it you haven't.
It's easily one of the most emotionally complex films we've had in quite a
while.

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jack9
While Arrival is emotionally complex, it's also not very original or
"sensical" with cliches and the overblown importance of Amy Adams' character -
a couple other countries arrive at the same conversational point first with
their linguists and the whole mahjong thread is both wrongly simplified (it's
a game of win/lose) and impractical. The immersion in a language giving you
superpowers? The reuse of the final shot of (the movie) Enemy midway in the
film? The purpose of the other ships (oh, earth distraction?). The implication
you can have the concept of weapon without the concept of tool...it's
fundamentally broken storytelling. The attempt at realism (a la Close
Encounters) but with a demonization of the military and mischaracterization of
breaking quarantine rules (taking off the suit initially would have gotten her
removed, obviously and limiting a word list wouldn't be a concern and is
forgotten quickly as the herring it is). Just a sloppy movie that's a vehicle
for an M Night Shyamalan trick. It might as well all have been a dream
sequence and it's the exact same movie.

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taliesinb
> weapon without the concept of tool...it's fundamentally broken storytelling.

You're actually objectively† wrong, at least about _why_ it is broken
storytelling (which I don't think it is).

For example, you're complaining about: the fact that there was a protagonist,
the plausibility of the sci-fi premise, some minor self-plagiarism, a
political slant you don't agree with, a misremembered plot point about why
there were several ships, a debatable concern about medical protocol in an
unprecedented situation, and other sundry things.

These things are all essentially irrelevant to well-crafted storytelling.

If the movie didn't work for you, the things you were noticing are more like
symptoms of the problem. Which by the sound of it was that you were just bored
by the aesthetic choices the movie made.

I mean, I was totally transfixed and fascinated for almost the entire duration
of the film. It might be that the contemplative mood, haunting music,
deliberate editing, subtle acting, subdued lighting, etc. all provoked a kind
of melancholic trance in me that made me insensitive to any story-telling
deficiencies, it's hard to tell, but also, I don't care and the point is
you're wrong.

† I justify the word objectively by claiming that the ensemble of extant human
brains responds pretty predictably to these cultural artifacts we call
stories. And there are people whose profession it is to understand how stories
work and how to tell them. And I've grown up around several such people, and
paid attention to what they have to say. And yeah I have the gall to think
your post is just unbearably wrong.

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martinbalsam
Apparently Stephen Wolfram and his son were involved in the making of Arrival
[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-
the-a...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/11/quick-how-might-the-alien-
spacecraft-work/)

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nkrisc
I very much recommend the short story the movie is based on, The Story of Your
Life by Ted Chiang. I can tell from the trailer they've built upon it but
they'd certainly need to do so to make a feature length film.

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kkylin
Very much agree. The experience of reading it was interesting for me: on first
reading I did not like it much, but the more I thought about the story and
about how to interpret it, the more sense it made, and the more depth it
gained in my view.

I should add I haven't seen the film yet but am looking forward to it. Has
anyone who's read the story seen the film?

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munchbunny
I did, just saw the film last night.

This is a rare case where the film has preserved the feeling and the central
concept of the story fairly well, but the film changes the plot significantly
in order to do it. I wasn't entirely able to predict the plot as it unfolded
based on prior knowledge of the written version, unlike with The Martian.

I still like the written story better, but the movie stands on its own as a
great movie, and I'm happy with their take on trying to tell the same story a
different way.

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nkrisc
I think what they did with the movie was great. It felt totally true to the
story even though the plots aren't exactly the same. Even though I knew what I
thought would be the twist they still got me.

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theoh
For more "making of" information, there's a lot of material online about Eric
Heisserer who wrote the script (based on Ted Chiang's story.)

Heisserer did a recent Reddit AMA:
[https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5ay3h2/im_eric_heissere...](https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5ay3h2/im_eric_heisserer_writerexec_producer_of_arrival/)

It's a bit unfortunate that Heisserer made the visual design choice of a
circle as the basis of nonlinear writing. It's a little trite. Overall, I'm
thinking that maybe this story didn't need to be visually realized, even if
it's a good script. A radio play instead?

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taliesinb
When I came back from watching "Arrival" I immediately looked Heisserer up,
thinking "this guy did his job well, he must be behind some other interesting
movies". Yeah. "Final Destination 5", "The Thing" remake.

Makes you wonder how many very talented people are stuck doing shitty things
in any industry because things just didn't line up for them. At least they
have for Heisserer, now. He's like the inverse of Lindelof, who turned out
after all the hype to be a phony.

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dmarusic16
So much credit goes to Villeneuve, who elevates scripts that could easily go
wrong into works of art. See Sicario if you haven't, for example—a script that
would have been a pedestrian drug war film in lesser hands.

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dochtman
Those interested in language in sci-fi could do worse than to read The Sparrow
(Mary Doria Russell), about a Jesuit exploration mission to a foreign world
discovered after a song signal captured by SETI efforts. The protagonist is a
Jesuit linguist, and the story features a first encounter that I found quite
moving.

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cikidy
Ted Chiang reads the introduction to his latest short story:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZtZZIyuJw&t=2m50s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZtZZIyuJw&t=2m50s)

[20 mins]

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wyldfire
503 for me now, mirror: [http://archive.is/tDOg9](http://archive.is/tDOg9)

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gina650
Computational psycholinguistics is very interesting subject in AI. Language as
a window into the brain. Recently interviewed an expert who works in the
field. Made me aware of the famous "nun" study which was able to predict
dementia 50 years prior based on the idea density of their entrance essays.
[https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/michael-
covington](https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/michael-covington)

