Short Story and Movie Review: Arrival

It caused a sensation around the world when Steven Speilberg's 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' hit the screens.  There was wonder, cinematic drama and Speilberg's signature directing touch.  Coming into contact with Alien's and how we organize to make the connection was the story.  Invasion of the Body Snatchers explored our deepest fears.  And from my understanding, really an allegory of the Cold War and spies amidst us.  Andromeda Strain, based on a story by Michael Chrichton, explored the concept of an alien germ, and our understanding of chemistry and biology (chemistry mostly) to combat it.

In the meantime, our understanding of Physics, Chemistry, Communications technologies have vastly improved.  What I specifically mean is that the Hubble, Kepler and other scientific advancements have enlarged our understanding of the universe.  At the same time linguistic philosophy and others (that inspired computer languages) have advanced our communication tool kits.  Finally Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ever advancing processing speed have given us reach and connectivity.

The time was thus ripe for a gifted story teller to take this exploration of contacts with aliens to the next level.

We have met the aliens.  Now what?

On the strong urging of a couple of friends I decided to take this on.  I saw the movie Arrival, first.  I followed it up by reading Ted Chiang's short story, The Story of your life from his short story collection.  The short story adds a lot of depth to the story depicted in the movie and its underlying concepts.  And provides an even better understanding of mind and language.

By co-incidence (or was it?) I recently saw Shogun by James Calvell where the Richard Chamberlain character tries to penetrate 16th century feudal Japan.  I also saw King Solomon's Mines with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, where they try to penetrate a previously unexplored African culture.   In both these cases, language becomes the chief primary obstacle.  And after that other subtle challenges emerge such as culture, tradition and notions of value and morality.

We needed a contemporaneous writer of talent to pull all of these strands together, without losing the 'art' of the short story.


Some of the concepts explored in Arrival include:

• What methods do we use to communicate with another species?

• What is their purpose?  Do they have a purpose?

• What is their understanding of technology and science?

• Can they distinguish between the one and the many, that is so very important for our own human sense of morality?

• How is time experienced?

Each of the above is a weighty concept all on its own.  To weave it into a short story with relatable characters is a marvelous feat by Ted Chiang.

The movie director Denis Villeneuve's ability to weave it into a visual stunner is commendable.  Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker carry the movie on their shoulders.  What I liked best about all three was that they were under-stated, given the circumstance they find themselves in.

The Terresact

In the movie Interstellar, I was most taken by the concept of the tesseract (it is the four-dimensional analog of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square).

In this movie Arrival, I was most taken by the concept of how actually light travels.  And how as an observer we relate to it, interpret it and experience it.

Perhaps the most intelligent science fiction I have experienced.

A gem!