Posted on 08/25/2016 10:51:38 AM PDT by pabianice
As a big scifi fan, I noted the recent trailer release for the movie "Arrival." I also noted its connection to a short story written in 1998 by Ted Chiang.
The trailer shows a fast-paced actioner including big explosions, zero-gravity, NBC suits, and an allusion to the aliens being unable to tell the difference between weapons and other tools.
The story is very different. It is slow -- plodding, even --, boring, and unspectacular. The story relates the aliens' coming to Earth and setting-up rooms wherein the aliens face humans through a transparent wall. The entire story deals with attempts to learn to communicate with the aliens and the aliens' maddening refusal to share any secrets of their society, history, or technology. Their perceptions of actions somehow involve knowing both the cause and the result of an action as a simultaneous whole. The "sting" is that, after finally learning one of the aliens' languages, the human linguist somehow picks-up the ability to see any part of the entirety of a person's entire life history. She spends time watching the entire life of a not very affectionate daughter that has yet to be conceived. Then the aliens suddenly close up shop and leave, having revealed absolutely nothing. And that's it.
How they changed this story from a slow, boring one to a slam-bank alien invasion movie has yet to be seen.
There is no connection. The title was lifted from Nourse’s book just because it sounded cool.
The degree to which leftist authoritarians adhere to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as dogma is terrifyingly dystopian, but it isn’t fiction.
That's what I figured. I was always hoping they would make a movie based on the Nourse book. It's a good plot.
I’m still hoping for DeChancie’s “Starrigger” series. It’s a closed trilogy, good plot, and nothing that can’t be filmed (all action takes place on planets; virtually no spacetravel in the books).
Anyway, I just wanted to plug a favorite book I read last century.
The Werewolf Principle
https://www.amazon.com/Werewolf-Principle-Clifford-D-Simak/dp/0980167140
I suspect it’s all dreck nowadays. If you care to look back a bit and sample some gems from the past ...
Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle
James Schmitz
Jack Vance
Roger Zelazny
Sharon Lee/Steve Miller
Keith Laumer
David Brin
And of course, Heinlein, Asimov, etc...
...
And others I can’t remember at the moment.
There’s more than enough good reading out there.
Those are all on my shelves, along with not that much in recent years (except from Baen Books, who put out stuff I like to read).
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