Ted Chiang (1967– ) is an influential US science fiction writer born in Port Jefferson, New York, whose short stories and novellas have won multiple awards. He must be considered one of the—if not the—preeminent SF short fiction writers of his generation. Chiang has also won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and attended the Clarion writers’ workshop in 1989. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science and currently lives near Seattle, working as a technical writer.
Chiang has an astonishing record of winning or being a finalist for awards for almost every of his published works of fiction (fewer than twenty stories). These include: the Nebula Award for “Tower of Babylon” (1990); the Theodore Sturgeon and Nebula Awards for “Story of Your Life” (1998); the Sidewise Award for “Seventy-Two Letters” (2000); the Locus, Nebula, and Hugo Awards for his novelette “Hell Is the Absence of God” (2002); the Nebula and Hugo Awards for “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007); the Locus Award and Hugo Award for “Exhalation” (2008); and the Locus and Hugo Awards for “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” (2010).
“Story of Your Life,” reprinted here, is a unique alien first-contact story centered around linguistics (including heptapod languages!) and an examination of free will. Chiang does a masterful job of conveying a view of an alien culture totally different from our own—and the dangers and pitfalls related to that potential gulf in understanding.
Although Chiang is not a linguist, his portrayal of linguistics in the story—including language universals and writing systems—rings true for those who are professionals in the field. The issue of linguistic relativity plays a role in the story, including the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that the structure of a language affects a speaker’s conceptualization of their world—in other words, that language creates everyday reality. In exploring the topic, Chiang also pushes back against the common science fiction idea that aliens could learn our languages just from watching our broadcasts. The story has been made into a movie starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.