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Chiang's "Understand" and "Story of Your Life" are two of the best stories ever written in my view. They evince a mastery of prose craftsmanship that's incredib

Chiang's "Understand" and "Story of Your Life" are two of the best stories ever written in my view. They evince a mastery of prose craftsmanship that's incredibly rare, combined with fascinating but logical plot ideas. Being a Chiang fan is frustrating though because he writes so little!

kbenson 10y ago
I specifically read "Story of Your Life" a few months back prior to watching Arrival, as some people here claimed they liked the movie Adaptation better. I have to say I agree. It was a fine short story, and had some very good conceptual elements, but I found his explanation of the phenomenon and it's consequences for people subject to it lacking (or perhaps I misunderstood a portion of it). The movie skirted actual explanations with respect to this, but thus wasn't subject to scrutiny that may have shown it to be less solid than was supposed.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  SPOILERS AHEAD I don't like how the movie makes her daughter to be dying of a disease. In the book, she dies in a climbing accident, which the protagonist knows full well will happen but does nothing to prevent it, thus demonstrating how committed she was to an immutable, deterministic future. I liked the story better. I think it helped that the actress reading the story in the audiobook was excellent.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I think some aspects of that are covered that well in the movie, in that she knew her daughter would die, and made a choice to have one anyways, and subject her husband to that pain presumably without his knowledge or consent. The problem I had with the story, if I understood it correctly, is not that she chose to be committed, but that she actually had no choice. This is, essentially the part of the story I found problematic. It was explained enough to bypass my suspension of disbelief, but not enough to provide an explanation I could accept. How do you have free through without free action? I would love to revisit the story and find evidence to support that point, or to find that I misread or misunderstood, but I unfortunately don't have a way to do that right now. :/
    - lz400 10y ago
      In the book she has no choice, knowing the future doesn't allow you to change it, it's deterministic. Free Will doesn't exist. In the movie they went out of their way to make it clear the future can be changed, and she does change it with the phone call. Which undermines the much cleaner scientific premise of the book and also makes her a bit selfish to decide to have the child anyway and only tell her husband months before she gets sick.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        I don't think the suggestion is that she can change the future in the movie. My interpretation of the phone call is that it demonstrates the reverse causality that is now possible thanks to her new understanding. It doesn't mean the cause nor the effect are mutable, just that they are now accessible in a different order than is typical. I think in the movie the decision to have the child is also immutable. So when in the final scene she commits to that path - it is because of the paradoxical freedom born of fatalism that she manages to be cheerful. There is literally no other way things could go - so why worry? If she's selfish - she's deterministically, immutably selfish. Under the new model - the concept of a "change" to the future through action is incomprehensible. The future just "is".
        snarf 10y ago
        According to the screenwriter, they hedged a bit on the question of free will in the movie compared to the book. He specifically addresses this here: https://youtu.be/xzEPU2PTjT4?t=23m55s https://youtu.be/xzEPU2PTjT4?t=23m55s
        lz400 10y ago
        She can act on the knowledge of the future. She could have decided not to have the child right? The same as she decided to act to stop the Chinese. It's very inconsistent to argue she had to have the child and that he couldn't have told her husband earlier, since she eventually told him. In the book that's impossible, the present is not affected by the knowledge of the future. Things go along exactly in the same way, it's just that she perceives the future the same way as she perceives the past. It's difficult to understand because we are use to thinking we have free will. The book takes away that and makes us face the strangeness of this hypothetical reality. In the movie it's just inconsistent in my opinion.
lz400 10y ago
Agreed, he's one of the best sci-fi writers. He's got the rigor and imagination of Greg Egan but he's a much better writer and his characters are better defined. For me, the perfect combination. If he wrote more he'd be the best. Unfortunately his output is tiny.

kbenson 10y ago

I specifically read "Story of Your Life" a few months back prior to watching Arrival, as some people here claimed they liked the movie Adaptation better. I have to say I agree. It was a fine short story, and had some very good conceptual elements, but I found his explanation of the phenomenon and it's consequences for people subject to it lacking (or perhaps I misunderstood a portion of it). The movie skirted actual explanations with respect to this, but thus wasn't subject to scrutiny that may have shown it to be less solid than was supposed.

StavrosK 10y ago
SPOILERS AHEAD I don't like how the movie makes her daughter to be dying of a disease. In the book, she dies in a climbing accident, which the protagonist knows full well will happen but does nothing to prevent it, thus demonstrating how committed she was to an immutable, deterministic future. I liked the story better. I think it helped that the actress reading the story in the audiobook was excellent.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I think some aspects of that are covered that well in the movie, in that she knew her daughter would die, and made a choice to have one anyways, and subject her husband to that pain presumably without his knowledge or consent. The problem I had with the story, if I understood it correctly, is not that she chose to be committed, but that she actually had no choice. This is, essentially the part of the story I found problematic. It was explained enough to bypass my suspension of disbelief, but not enough to provide an explanation I could accept. How do you have free through without free action? I would love to revisit the story and find evidence to support that point, or to find that I misread or misunderstood, but I unfortunately don't have a way to do that right now. :/
  - lz400 10y ago
    In the book she has no choice, knowing the future doesn't allow you to change it, it's deterministic. Free Will doesn't exist. In the movie they went out of their way to make it clear the future can be changed, and she does change it with the phone call. Which undermines the much cleaner scientific premise of the book and also makes her a bit selfish to decide to have the child anyway and only tell her husband months before she gets sick.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      I don't think the suggestion is that she can change the future in the movie. My interpretation of the phone call is that it demonstrates the reverse causality that is now possible thanks to her new understanding. It doesn't mean the cause nor the effect are mutable, just that they are now accessible in a different order than is typical. I think in the movie the decision to have the child is also immutable. So when in the final scene she commits to that path - it is because of the paradoxical freedom born of fatalism that she manages to be cheerful. There is literally no other way things could go - so why worry? If she's selfish - she's deterministically, immutably selfish. Under the new model - the concept of a "change" to the future through action is incomprehensible. The future just "is".
      - snarf 10y ago
        According to the screenwriter, they hedged a bit on the question of free will in the movie compared to the book. He specifically addresses this here: https://youtu.be/xzEPU2PTjT4?t=23m55s https://youtu.be/xzEPU2PTjT4?t=23m55s
      - lz400 10y ago
        She can act on the knowledge of the future. She could have decided not to have the child right? The same as she decided to act to stop the Chinese. It's very inconsistent to argue she had to have the child and that he couldn't have told her husband earlier, since she eventually told him. In the book that's impossible, the present is not affected by the knowledge of the future. Things go along exactly in the same way, it's just that she perceives the future the same way as she perceives the past. It's difficult to understand because we are use to thinking we have free will. The book takes away that and makes us face the strangeness of this hypothetical reality. In the movie it's just inconsistent in my opinion.

lz400 10y ago

Agreed, he's one of the best sci-fi writers. He's got the rigor and imagination of Greg Egan but he's a much better writer and his characters are better defined. For me, the perfect combination. If he wrote more he'd be the best. Unfortunately his output is tiny.