Story of Your Life is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in the 1998 anthology Starlight 2 and later collected in Chiang's 2002 book Stories of Your Life and Others. The novella follows a linguist recruited to communicate with an alien species after their spacecraft appear on Earth, and interweaves this first contact narrative with memories addressed to her own daughter. Its central themes are linguistics and determinism, exploring how learning the aliens' language reshapes the narrator's own experience of time. The novella won the 1999 Nebula Award for Best Novella and the 1999 Theodore Sturgeon Award, and was later adapted into the 2016 film Arrival. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Original Language AwardNebula Award for Best Novella 1 AwardSeiun Award for Best Translated Short Story 1 AwardTheodore Sturgeon Award 1 Composed, From (Year) FAQs
What inspired Ted Chiang to write Story of Your Life?
Chiang was fascinated by the variational principle in physics.
In the story notes to Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang writes that the inspiration came from his fascination with the variational principle in physics. After seeing Paul Linke's one-man play about his wife's struggles with breast cancer, Chiang realized he could use that principle to show how someone deals with the inevitable.
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Source Story of Your Life (Wikipedia)
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"Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and later in 2002 in Chiang's collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others.
Lead paragraph
"Story of Your Life" is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and later in 2002 in Chiang's collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. Some of the story's major themes include linguistics and determinism. "Story of Your Life" won the 1999 Nebula Award for Best Novella, as well as the 1999 Theodore Sturgeon Award.
In Genre: Science Fiction, Infobox, genre field
Genre: Science fiction
Authored By: Ted Chiang, Infobox, author field
Author: Ted Chiang
View the SourceWikidata: Story of Your Life
WikidataWikidata P166: Nebula Award for Best Novella
Wikidata P166 (award received): Nebula Award for Best Novella, 2000.
Wikidata P166: Theodore Sturgeon Award
Wikidata P166 (award received): Theodore Sturgeon Award, 1999.
Wikidata P166: Seiun Award for Best Translated Short Story
Wikidata P166 (award received): Seiun Award for Best Translated Short Story, 2002.
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