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Interview with Ted Chiang

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Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#3

Post by sandworm101 »

The greater the marketing hype before a film arrives in my town, the greater the inevitable disappointment. Perhaps Arrival is great, but imho the truly great ones don't invest in such a hype machine.

The "100% at rotten tomatoes" line in the commercials give me pause. I checked. It's at 95, not 100. I can see why. Scores do change, but it's just more evidence of heavy marketing. The best scifi, the really good stuff, doesn't hit a home run with reviewers immediately. I'm suspicious and so will probably go see this movie myself first rather than suggest a group of us go.

Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#4

Post by mikeash »

Nice, I had no idea Arrival was adapted from a Ted Chiang story. Maybe I'll have to check it out.

For those who aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend Stories of Your Life and Others. It's perhaps the most amazing collection of SF short stories I've read. It's hard to describe it, but there's something about his work that makes it feel both simultaneously more real and more mind-bending than other SF fare. I think it's the combination of his completely outlandish premises (which I can't figure out how to describe without spoiling things) and completely matter-of-fact, mundane way he writes about them.

Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#5

Post by msoucy »

mikeash wrote: post #4

Nice, I had no idea Arrival was adapted from a Ted Chiang story. Maybe I'll have to check it out. For those who aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend Stories of Your Life and Others . It's perhaps the most amazing collection of SF short stories I've read. It's hard to describe it, but there's something about his work that makes it feel both simultaneously more real and more mind-bending than other SF fare…

To elaborate, Arrival is based off of the story "Story of Your Life" from that collection.

Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#6

Post by elorant »

I’ve just finished reading “The story of your life” the other day and I can’t say I’m impressed. Based on the comments I’ve read about the movie I expected it to be mind boggling. The author claims that knowing the future affects free will but he doesn’t bother explaining how could anyone know the future or why would there be only one – quantum mechanics for example states that there could be countless futures/universes. For my standards the story is too swallow. I’m used to reading hard sci-fi where usually authors go into excessive detail to describe their worlds. Chiang doesn’t do that. He just presents a theory and lets it linger in your mind. It reads more like philosophy rather than sci-fi.

Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#7

Post by bbctol »

I'm so glad that this movie is getting Ted Chiang more exposure. He's one of the most interesting and creative science fiction authors out there, despite and unbelievably small output (he has literally published fifteen stories over almost 30 years, and picked up four Hugos, four Nebulas, and a ton of other prestigious awards.) Maybe this will finally motivate him to quit his day job and write more, or at least get more people reading his stuff.

Re: Interview with Ted Chiang

#9

Post by runevault »

mikeash wrote: post #4

Nice, I had no idea Arrival was adapted from a Ted Chiang story. Maybe I'll have to check it out. For those who aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend Stories of Your Life and Others . It's perhaps the most amazing collection of SF short stories I've read. It's hard to describe it, but there's something about his work that makes it feel both simultaneously more real and more mind-bending than other SF fare…

I'm still sad they changed the name of the movie from Story of your Life at the last minute (from what I heard the title did not do well with the initial test viewers). Arrival is so much more generic, but it is doing well for the number of screens they put it on which is the most important factor.
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