>read the book the upcoming film Arrival is based off of >it

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It's actually a masterpiece and pretty clearly a work of genius. Peter watts also ripped of ted chiang hard

I thoroughly enjoyed it, old chap. As I read the book, there is a tension building as the interactions between the aliens and humans get more complex. The interstitials when the narrator addresses her child was confusing at first, until I realized the alien writing was connected to our human notions of linear time/experience.
Based Ted Chiang, anon. Accept no substitute.

>>8463451
Anon, I've read both Blindsight and Story of Your Life. Can you elaborate on why you think Watts ripped off Chiang? I can't quite make the connection apart from xeno life form has a completely different take on reality and time than humans.

>>8463451
>It's actually a masterpiece and pretty clearly a work of genius
why

>>8463461
>there is a tension building as the interactions between the aliens and humans get more complex.
and then it just ends suddenly? and the aliens just leave?

>until I realized the alien writing was connected to our human notions of linear time/experience.
wasn't it the linguist thinking in terms of heptapod language? i'm not sure how she knew the future though

>>8463470
>and then it just ends suddenly?
Negro, that's when you realize it wasn't about the aliens. It was about the aliens gently pushing humans to think differently. Think Space Hippies/Space Brothers.

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/exhalation/

this one's Ted Chiang too, it's great.

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>>8463513
Just get the whole anthology which includes Exhalation. You can't go wrong. Personally I really enjoyed "Hell is the Absence of God". Pic related

>>8463470
> i'm not sure how she knew the future though

Learning their language altered her mind so that it slightly resembled that of a Heptapod, who experience time non-sequentially, instead experiencing it in a simultaneous fashion. A take on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

>>8463542
yes, but how did she know?

>>8463548
Are you fucking stupid? Did you even read the story?

>>8463525
Seconding this, one of the best SF anthologies of the last few years.

>>8463548
The story implies that Eternalism is true, the view that all "places" in time, including what we call the future, exist, and that they exist just as much as what we call the present. Heptapod minds have access, by some vague mechanism, to all the times in their own lives.

>>8463568
They're exactly like trafalmadorians.

>>8463439
Chiang has two pretty good stories, Alchemists Gate and the tower of Babel one and people suck his dick like he's the second coming of Gene Wolfe. Fuck I hate people.

>>8463570
Correct.

>/lit/ suddenly likes this guy now that the movie is coming out
top tier taste /lit/, definitely not bandwagoning

>>8463659
It wouldn't be an apt comparison, as I prefer him to Gene Wolfe

>>8463721
Whose better between Ted Chiang and Alan Moore?

>>8463764
Alan Moore 100000%

>>8463721
You have brain problems.

>>8463770
are you sure he is better than Chiang?

>>8463773
actually you have a problem with his brain, dumby.

>>8463784
From Hell, Watchmen, Swamp Thing and Top 10 say yes.

>>8463804
but is that really better than Chiang's work?

>>8463680
This may be true for pleb 4channers. I would ask you consider another possibility; that is the forthcoming movie (which does have a neat trailer) acted as a 'recommendation' providing much needed exposure for Chiang's works. Think about it, every other thread here is a scifi general or recc thread; it's not a far fetched idea to think a novel trailer would pique our interests. Your critique does not take away from the fact that this work by Chiang is bredy gud.

>>8463525
thirded. I'm surprise anyone liked Hell, though.
It felt as if the editor pushed him to write something extra to add a little volume.
"Lifecycle of software objects" is also very interesting.