美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Arrival' Author's Approach To Science Fiction? Slow, Steady And Successful

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'Arrival' Author's Approach To Science Fiction? Slow, Steady And Successful

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What happens when aliens finally come to Earth and we have no idea how to talk to them? That's the premise² of a new movie "Arrival."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARRIVAL")

AMY ADAMS: (As Louise Banks) We need to make sure that they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool.

SHAPIRO: "Arrival" opens in theaters today. It's based on a short story that seems like the exact opposite of a typical Hollywood blockbuster. NPR's Neda Ulaby explains.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE³: The original short story is cerebral⁴ to say the least. It's about linguistic⁶ relativity.

TED⁷ CHIANG: Yeah, I was surprised and a little skeptical⁸.

ULABY: Ted Chiang is the author of "Story Of Your Life." That's the title. Chiang only writes short stories. He's not very prolific⁹, but every few years, he comes out with one that sweeps the science fiction awards. Chiang supports himself as a technical writer, explaining software to programmers at places like Microsoft.

CHIANG: My job is to translate absurdly technical material to merely technical material.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARRIVAL")

FOREST WHITAKER: (As Colonel Weber) You're at the top of everyone's list when it comes to translations.

ULABY: Translating is at the heart of "Arrival." It's about a linguist⁵ who has to save the world by figuring out how to talk to creatures who've arrived in menacing huge black ships.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARRIVAL")

WHITAKER: (As Colonel Weber) Priority one - what do they want, and where are they from?

ULABY: Chiang spent five years researching linguistics¹⁰ before he felt ready to write the story the movie's based on. Clarity, he says, is the only thing his fiction has in common with his day job.

CHIANG: I've always been drawn¹¹ to clear explanations. A good explanation is not just useful. It can also be beautiful.

ULABY: And crucial for the science in science fiction. Chiang's not the kind of fanciful writer who imagines stories like movies in his head.

CHIANG: Never. I'm very much a fan of prose, and I tend to think of my stories in terms of sentences.

ULABY: That's why his fan base includes authors like Grady Hendrix.

GRADY HENDRIX: Ted does something that not a lot of other writers do. So I write speculative¹² fiction. I know a lot of people who write speculative fiction. And we really like to get to the dramatic parts of our story, right? We're going to write a story about first contact with aliens. We want to skip to the exciting parts.

ULABY: Not Chiang. Hendrix says his first contact story asks...

HENDRIX: What would happen first? Well, we'd have to communicate. Well, how would we communicate? Well, we'd have to make sure they understood what communication was, that we even perceive time in the same way so that we can communicate about things in the past, present and the future.

ULABY: The drama inherent in that did not make "Arrival" the easiest adaptation. The movie's screenwriter, Eric Heisserer, got rejected over and over when pitching it to producers.

ERIC HEISSERER: Oh, maybe a hundred times.

ULABY: Other problems - "Arrival" features a female main character - even worse, an academic who solves linguistic problems with aliens rather than punching them.

HEISSERER: We actually have a character say non-linear orthography¹³.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ARRIVAL")

ADAMS: (As Louise Banks) It's their language.

ULABY: One of the challenges in both the screenplay for "Arrival" and the short story it's based on was creating a language for creatures who do not resemble us. Author Ted Chiang says our basic earthling vertebrate bodies eat and make noises with our mouths.

CHIANG: But that is not the only body plan available.

ULABY: To create his aliens, Chiang thought about jellyfish and sign language.

CHIANG: It has sort of a three-dimensional grammar. It uses, like, velocity¹⁴ as a way of inflecting. It is pretty much impossible to do a sort of word-by-word translation into English.

ULABY: Such care for detail and to craft feels rare nowadays, says author Grady Hendrix.

HENDRIX: You know, right now as a writer, what you're told is, the best way to be successful is to be insanely prolific because the more your name is out there, the more every book is an ad for yourself, and you've got to think about your brand. And then you have someone like Ted who just sits and thinks very carefully about what he's doing. And then he does it.

ULABY: It's almost countercultural, he says. Three of Ted Chiang's other short stories have been optioned by Hollywood for adaptation. That's from the only 15 he's had published since 1990.

CHIANG: Fiction writing is very hard for me, and I'm a very slow writer.

ULABY: Author Ted Chiang...

CHIANG: I don't get that many ideas for stories. I don't. It's not easy for me. And I like to take my time when I do get an idea for a story.

ULABY: And readers get to take their time, too, to chew on Ted Chiang's craft and carefulness. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.