If they hadn't seen the ending, readers would never know that the physicist who followed the colonel to find Qiao Yu at the beginning of the novel would be her future husband!
What's more, there is a certain reason for his modification. Although the heptapods occasionally make strange neighing sounds in the novel, the language system is a written language.
The biggest question this novel raises is: If you saw your life from now on, would you change it
These are similar to ancient Chinese hieroglyphics, so it is more convincing for Qiao Yu, a linguist, to be inspired by hieroglyphs and master this alien writing faster!
This writing method has its own advantages and disadvantages with the online writing method. There is no distinction between them, it’s just the author’s different choices.
Therefore, this novel is actually narrated in the form of memories, but it recalls experiences at two different stages at the same time.
Another main line of the novel is about the heroine Louise, who is also a mother, and her memories of her dead daughter’s life.
The reason why the novel presents an alternating narrative structure is to express that the content stated by the heroine who is influenced by alien text thinking is like a scroll, and the past, present and future are all called "memory".
In short, the sense of time in "Story of Your Life" is very good. At first, readers will think that the heroine started to have contact with Octopussy after the death of her daughter. She is working while recalling her daughter's past.
The result of thinking too much is to become mentally ill. Lin Han still plans to live a good life. No matter whether this life is true or false, there is nothing wrong with living seriously.
Before, it was all tender and affectionate. I thought it was a memoir written by the mother to her daughter. Who would have thought that she would suddenly find out that her daughter was dead!
When he first read this book, Lin Han had not yet realized the result of the intersection of the two lines. He almost thought that the memoir was written for ghosts, which scared him.
The full text of "The Story of Your Life" is just over 30,000 words, which fits the category of short stories and is also very suitable for Tan Lin's previous request. This is a unique science fiction novel that will probably get many readers talking.
Lin Han has not read the English version of "The Story of Your Life". What he has read is the translated version. So what he has to do now is to replace the protagonist and background of the story with a Chinese background, and also work hard to convert the original translation. The accent should be localized so that the novel can be as complete as possible.
Different from Chinese hieroglyphics, the Heptapod script does not rely on words with independent meanings to express meanings, but unifies all the semantic meanings that need to be expressed into one word.
The past, present, and future have no boundaries in their eyes, just like a complete history book that can be turned to the end or to the beginning.
When aliens arrived on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, he was recruited by the government to communicate with the aliens in order to obtain the purpose of these aliens coming to Earth. In the process, Qiao Yu learned the alien language and gained the ability to foresee the future. And she fell in love with her colleague Gu Yuchen!
"Your father will soon ask me that question. This will be the most important moment in our lives as a couple. I want to listen attentively and take note of every detail. In the dead of night, your father and I spent the evening out, having dinner and watching a show, and we have just returned.
Unfortunately, in "The Story of Your Life", what the author wants to express is a person's attitude towards inevitable consequences. After the protagonist Louise learns everything about her life from the beginning, she takes every step willingly. Towards the future, rather than being manipulated as a puppet of fate.
Everything is a fact, just like the moment of contact with aliens, you can feel it and you can't escape it!
When Lin Han was reading this novel, the huge doubt that arose was that since he knew that his daughter would die and her husband would divorce her, she should not marry her boyfriend at all, and even if she did, she should not have children. Can you change your destiny
Even now that Lin Han has come to this new world, he is still confused. Is it a joke made by aliens, or is he living in an illusory world like the humans in the matrix world
Aliens are not necessarily bad. Although these heptapods look scary in appearance, you will feel a sense of intimacy after reading them.
Of course, Ian in the original novel was changed by Lin Han to Gu Yuchen. He is a theoretical mathematician and physics professor. He works for the government with Qiao Yu and leads their team to decipher the signals emitted by the heptapods in the spacecraft. noise.
The novel uniquely adopts the method of alternating first-person perspective and second-person perspective, and the lines are filled with the unique sense of strangeness of science fiction novels.
Only after reading later did I realize that the real chronological order is: Louise met her daughter’s father during her contact with the Octopus—and then the birth and loss of her daughter—and this is the memory of her lovesickness!
The arc-shaped lines (heptapod characters) drawn by ink sprayed from places that look like fingers are quite similar to Chinese hieroglyphs!
In other words, communication between them does not rely on speaking, but on writing! These words are sprayed out from their tentacles, and they look like squid ink!
Louise and her colleagues tried to explain the symbols of the "Heptapods" through data analysis. They found that each symbol expressed by the "Heptapods" is actually a sentence, with neither beginning nor end.
Different from the human causal perspective, aliens believe in effects first and causes later, that is, they know the effects first and then the causes.
There was a hint of coolness in the night air, but I didn't feel cold at all. Then your father said: 'Do you want a child? ']
In fact, this is somewhat similar to the popular setting of online novels. The protagonist knows the ending of the entire story from the beginning, but there is no rebirth, system or time travel!
The two of us came to the yard, and there was a full moon in the sky. I told your dad I wanted to dance and he said yes. What we danced was a slow dance. A couple in their thirties danced like two children under the melting moonlight.
The official organization organized experts from all walks of life to crack the information. Although there are also villains in it, there is no doubt that this is a success full of positive energy. I believe that no matter how critical readers are, they cannot say that there is anything wrong with Lin Han!
That's right, Lin Han simply changed the name of this story to "Arrival", and also changed the heroine Louise to Qiao Yu, who is also a linguist.
The alien in the novel has seven long limbs that radiate from the four sides to the center. There is a barrel hanging on the axis, which humans call the "heptapod."
And because of the "Heptapod's purposeful way of thinking", the two stages of memory are inevitably connected.
"The only way to learn an unknown language is to communicate with native speakers. And by communication I mean asking questions, talking, nothing else. So just Analyzing recordings is not enough. If you really want alien languages, you must send someone who has received language training and can actually communicate with aliens to speak the language, and let him have a conversation with the aliens!"
Although it is not detailed in the novel, the movie version has improved these words to a considerable extent. It looks like a big circle made of black ink, but it actually contains quite a lot of content.
In the paragraphs that alternately describe the daughter's life, it is the theme that the author wants to express. Such a life is the heroine's perception mode that is affected by the "Heptapods", and the foreseen facts have not yet happened but are already doomed.
Seeing one's own life through at a glance is very popular in online novels, especially in the rebirth genre. Rebirth is about coming back to make up for regrets and mistakes. Avoiding these risks and turning dangers into safety are the important and exciting points!
The story is divided into two main lines. The first one is the process of the heroine as a linguist trying to learn the alien language.
Of course, Lin Han actually has no research in linguistics. He can only follow the settings of the novel in the core part of his profession, so that Qiao Yu, a linguist, will not be questioned by readers.
The opening chapter did not waste too much pen and ink. Lin Han made a false shot in time to describe that the protagonist and her husband had been married for two years, and then adjusted the time back to the first time the two met.
While readers feel the unique charm of the heptapod language, they also feel a kind of sadness due to fate: that sadness is blended with poetic imagery, and finally condensed into the heroine's exclamation - "At a glance, the past and the future are suddenly at the same time. At the same time, my consciousness became ashes that lasted for half a century, and it was already ashes before the time was up. The rest of my life is in it."
Whether it was the birth of her daughter, or recognizing her daughter at a glance in the nursery, or telling her daughter softly stories, explaining what a "win-win" meant, quarreling with her daughter, or finally her daughter passed away for some reason at the age of 25.
Of course, the name of the protagonist is not particularly important. What is important is that Lin Han was finally willing to change the background of the novel. He has not written a novel with this background for quite some time!
They made completely incomprehensible sounds. After various analyzes by the heroine Louise, she finally believed that she should communicate with them through written symbols instead of language!
Lin Han's hands began to type on the keyboard. The beginning of the story was about the heroine and her husband who had been married for two years and settled in Beijing.
The more complex the meaning, the more complex the word is.
Lin Han once read the sentence "Then, suddenly, I was already in the morgue. A handyman lifted the cover and revealed your face. What I saw was you when you were twenty-five years old." He was attracted by the author. I was deeply hurt by the malicious intent, and this unexpected shock was very scary.