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.
Sounds like they were satisfied with just jacking the title.
Different title. The story is “Story of your Life.”
I have a good friend that sold the movies rights to a book she authored.
She is at the age where she doesn’t really care if it ever gets made. The check cleared. That’s all that mattered.
Hollywood often does that. What works on paper in a novel or short story is often unwatchable on screen. Imagine a movie about an earth linguist struggling to understand an alien language: Boring! The movie though that eventually emerged under the name The Arrival is watchable, even engrossing at points.
Go read the original “Bladerunner” story sometime (not the post-film novelization). Borrowing cool titles for something completely unrelated happens in film.
Plan on another ‘World War Z’ing. There’s a reason my movie views tend toward the few $$ Redbox variant, instead of the big screen.
The book is titled: "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"
No offense, friend, but you might want to put a spoiler warning in your title.
I saw the preview for this movie and thought it looked very good. Am looking forward to see it. But you just revealed a huge chunk of the story that I did not know.
I’d never even heard of the short story.
Explosions make everything better.
Arrival started all the Global Warming Bull
As long as the movie portrays Amy Adams’ perky b-cups in a positive manner, e.g., braless, I will see this movie.
It seems a safe bet that the short story has nothing to do with the movie.
To Serve Man
"It's a COOK BOOK!"
And that summary is why I gave up reading SF short stories. Too many depressing navel-gazing arty “think” pieces. Not enough plot. Unfortunately that leeched over into full-length books and now it’s darn hard to find good SF/F novels on bookstore shelves.
The title "Bladerunner" came from an Alan B. Nourse Novel in which medical care was rationed and the general public could only get it by hijacking ambulances and stealing medical supplies as they were being transported between heavily fortified elite enclaves of the wealthy.
I never could see the relationship between "Bladerunner" and the "Android" movie that was made. The only one possible was the gritty setting with the rich living in enclaves and the proletariate living in basic squalor and there being little connection between the two.
Look for Marko Kloos. Very good alien invasion/space battle books.
Sounds like an interesting book. I will have to look for it. Thx.
No, I mean the actual book titled “Bladerunner”. Yes, the story that was eventually turned into the Movie was called “Do androids dream of electric sheep”, but that’s not where the title came from.
A movie based on the book “Defenders” is thus more interesting, where they are telepathic to a degree we can barely fathom. And the aliens in “Arrival” even look like the ones in “Defender”.
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