I purchased Story of Your Life and Others after I saw Arrival in theaters, which rocked me to my core, and I wanted to see just how it translated from the page to the screen. The answer? Very differently. For one, Chiang is a lot more technical in his descriptions, and I really appreciate the sparse-ness of his language. He does not use wordy descriptions to manipulate emotions out of his readers; he simply lets the readers draw the parallels between the science-y concepts he talking about to the plot events.
Overall, the emotional punch of the short story is quite similar to the movie, and I will refrain from discussing too much about it lest it ruins the film for anyone. If you haven’t seen it, go. Run. Go see it.
But I will talk about his other pieces in the book. To read more, go to my website.
I loved Arrival. I loved that it was intelligent and they didn’t feel the need to dumb it down for the audience. I will definitely add this to my list!
I am a big fan of the movie! And I think the book version is very different — and slightly more devastating — but it’s definitely worth checking out.