Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
Story of Your Life
(1998)
Ted
Chiang
(1967 – )
Notes
"Story of Your
Life" first appeared in the collection Starlight
2 in 1998.
112 Colonel
Weber, I presume?: allusion to the famous greeting that Henry Morton
Stanley gives David Livingstone: "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" upon
finding him in the town of Ujiji (now a part of Tanzania) after a lengthy
search expedition
Stanley and Livingstone,
dir. Henry King and Otto Brower (1939)
A supercut of the phrase being
referenced in various performances
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- "Dr.
Livingstone, I Presume?," QI: Quite Interesting
‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ is one of the most famous quotes
in history and was supposedly uttered by the explorer Henry
Morton Stanley in 1871 upon finding the missing missionary
David Livingstone. However, the quote is now believed to have
been invented by Stanley or his biographer. Stanley’s diary
pages referring to the encounter were torn out and
Livingstone’s account of the meeting doesn’t mention the
phrase.
- Leslie Dunkling, "Quotation
Vocatives," A Dictionary of Epithets and Terms of
Address (London: Routledge, 2006)
Transferred vocatives are usually names. A person who
expresses surprise at someone's deductive powers is told that
it is 'Elementary, my dear Watson'. A meeting in certain
circumstances inspires the use of 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'.
- Andrew Delahunty and Sheila Dignen, "Stanley,
Sir Henry Morton," A Dictionary of Reference and
Allusion, 3rd ed. (Oxford: OUP, 2012): 341
The Welsh explorer and journalist who, sent by the New
York Herald, 'found' Dr Livingstone at Ujiji in 1871,
and, according to the popular account, greeted him with the
words 'Doctor Livingstone, I presume?'.
➢ Someone who eventually finds another after much searching
- Eric Partridge, "Doctor
Livingstone, I presume," A Dictionary of Catch
Phrases British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to
the Present Day, ed. Paul Beale (London: Routledge,
2003): 101
is both a very famous quotation and a remarkably persistent
catch phrase; the words were spoken in 1871 by Henry Morton,
later Sir Henry, Stanley (1841–1904), when he, a journalist,
at last came up with David Livingstone (1813–73) in Central
Africa. Livingstone, physician, missionary, explorer, was
thought to be lost
- Martin Dugard, "Stanley Meets Livingstone," Smithsonian
(2003)
[...]
What Stanley saw was a pale white man wearing a faded blue cap
and patched clothing. The man’s hair was white, he had few
teeth, and his beard was bushy. He walked, Stanley wrote,
“with a firm and heavy tread.”
Stanley stepped up crisply to the old man, removed his helmet
and extended his hand. According to Stanley’s journal, it was
November 10, 1871. With formal intonation, representing
America but trying to affect British gravity, Stanley spoke,
according to later accounts, the most dignified words that
came to mind: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
“Yes,” Livingstone answered simply.
“I thank God, doctor,” Stanley said, appalled at how fragile
Livingstone looked, “I have been permitted to see you.”
“I feel thankful,” Livingstone said with typical
understatement, “I am here to welcome you.”
|
156 Borgesian
fabulation: a story like those by the Argentine author Jorge Luis
Borges
163 that
famous optical illusion: the ambiguous figure often called the
Boring figure after Edwin G. Boring who wrote about it in a psychology
journal article in 1930.
Edwin G. Boring, "An Ambiguous
Figure," The American Journal of Psychology 42.3 (1930):
444.
|
- Edwin G. Boring, "A
New Ambiguous Figure," The American Journal of
Psychology 42.3 (1930): 444–45.
The picture presented herewith is not strictly new. It was
drawn by the well-known cartoonist, W. E. Hill, and reproduced
in the issue of Puck for the week ending November 6, 1915. It
is, however, relatively unknown to psy- [end of page 444]
chologists, and seems to me to be the best of the
puzzle-pictures in the sense that neither figure is favored
over the other. [...] The present cut is from a pen-and-ink
copy of Hill's published half-tone. I am indebted to Mrs. W.
H. Hunt for the copy, which is, if anything, a little better
for the psychologist's use than the original.
This picture was originally published under the title "My Wife
and My Mother-in-law." It shows in one figure the left profile
of a young woman, three quarters from behind. The other figure
is an old woman, three-quarters from in front. The ear of the
'wife' is the left eye of the 'mother-in-law'; the left
eye-lash of the former is the right eye-lash of the latter;
the jaw of the former is the nose of the latter; the
neck-ribbon of the former, the mouth of the latter.
|
Story
Notes
This story grew out of my interest
in the variational principles of physics. I’ve found these principles
fascinating ever since I first learned of them, but I didn’t know how to
use them in a story until I saw a performance of Time Flies When
You’re Alive, Paul Linke’s one-man show about his wife’s battle with
[end of page 333] breast cancer. It occurred to me then that I might be
able to use variational principles to tell a story about a person’s
response to the inevitable. A few years later, that notion combined with a
friend’s remark about her newborn baby to form the nucleus of this story.
For those
interested in physics, I should note that the story’s discussion of
Fermat’s Principle of Least Time omits all mention of its
quantum-mechanical underpinnings. The QM formulation is interesting in its
own way, but I preferred the metaphoric possibilities of the classical
version.
As for this story’s
theme, probably the most concise summation of it that I’ve seen appears in
Kurt Vonnegut’s introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Slaughterhouse-Five:
‘Stephen Hawking...found it tantalizing that we could not remember the
future. But remembering the future is child’s play for me now. I know what
will become of my helpless, trusting babies because they are grown-ups
now. I know how my closest friends will end up because so many of them are
retired or dead now...To Stephen Hawking and all others younger than
myself I say, “Be patient. Your future will come to you and lie down at
your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.”’
—Ted
Chiang, "Story
Notes," Stories of Your Life and
Others, Picador, 2015, pp. 333–34.
Understand
My new language is taking shape.
It is gestalt-oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but
impractical for writing or speech. It wouldn't be transcribed in the form
of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a
whole. Such an ideogram could convey, more deliberately than a picture,
what a thousand words cannot. The intricacy of each ideogram would be
commensurate with the amount of information contained; I amuse myself with
the notion of a colossal ideogram that describes the entire universe.
The printed page is too clumsy and
static for this language; the only serviceable media would be video or
holo, displaying a time-evolving graphic image. Speaking this language
would be out of the question, given the limited bandwidth of the human
larynx. (63)
—Ted Chiang, "Understand," 1991, Stories
of Your Life and Others (London: Picador, 2015): 37–84.
Comprehension Check
- What does the expression to ask
the question or to pop the question usually mean? What is
the question that "your father is about to ask me" (111)?
- Why will the narrator and her
child "never get that chance" of sharing the story of "the
night you're conceived" (111)?
- What does the phone call from
"Mountain Rescue" suggest about how and where the daughter
died (115)?
- When Louise Banks describes her
moose call as "Sends them running," who or what does "them"
refer to (120)?
- What does the daughter's
declaration "'I get the feeling it’s going to be a scorcher.
Good thing you’re dressed for it, Mom'" reveal about Louise
Banks' outfit that date night (124)?
|
Study Questions
- Why are the "alien devices"
called "looking glasses" (116)?
- How does Chiang approximate
Heptapod B-like simultaneity in telling the story with
English which is a sequential language?
- How does the description of the
heptapods' physical radial symmetry (117–8) relate to the
later descriptions of their spoken and written language (ex.
127–29, 132, 137, 145–47)?
- In the Arrival San
Diego premiere hosted by the Arthur C. Clarke Center for
Human Imagination Q
and A session with Ted Chiang, he mentions several
times the "emotional core" of the story that he hoped would
survive adaptation into film (ex. at 20:30–21:20 min.). What
do you think this emotional core of the story is?
|
Review Sheet
Characters
Louise Banks, the narrator – "Right now your dad and I have been
married for about two years" (111); "Louise Banks" (112); "with training
in field linguistics" (114)
Gary Donnelly – physicist (113); "easily identifiable as
an academic: full beard and mustache, wearing corduroy" (112)
You – "the scenario of your origin you'll
suggest when you're twelve. 'The only reason you had me was so you could
get a maid you wouldn't have to pay'" (111); "You'll be six when your
father has a conference to attend in Hawaii" (133); "a grown woman taller
than me and beautiful enough to make my heart ache" (135); "after
graduation, you'll be heading for a job as a financial analyst" (135);
"Your eyes will be blue like your dad's, not mud brown like mine [...] You
will have many suitors" (144);
Colonel Weber
– "wore a military uniform and a crew
cut, and carried an aluminum briefcase" (112)
Nelson – "By then Nelson and I will have moved
into our farmhouse" (112); "Nelson is ruggedly handsome, to your
evident approval" (124)
Flapper – "I dubbed them Flapper and
Raspberry" (125)
Raspberry – "Raspberry began
mimicking Gary [...] while Flapper worked their computer"
(126); "Raspberry left the room and returned with some
kind of giant nut" (126)
Vocabulary
plot
conflict
setting
character; characterization
protagonist
point of view; perspective
internal
diction
pace
imagery
movement
trajectory
metaphor
simile
symbol(s);
symbolism; symbolic
irony; ironic
contrast
structure
frame(s);
framing
relativism
internalization
essentialization
theme(s)
family
parenting; parent-child relationship
language
language
learning
knowledge
memory;
remembrance
expectation(s)
predestination
agency
free
will
time;
past; present; future
space
pain
grief
mourning
joy
love
life
death
alien;
extraterrestrial life
alien
invasion
science
the
military
politics
communication
linguistics
language
thought
worldview
simultaneity
linearity;
nonlinearity
chronology,
chronological
pattern(s)
genre(s)
science
fiction
speculative
fiction
Sample
Student
Responses to Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life"
Response
1::
Ticha Wanichtamrong
2202235 Reading and Analysis in the Study
of English Literature
Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri
April 23, 2016
Reading Response 3
Title
Text.
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|
Reference
Media |
|
- "Speculative Visions with Ted Chiang,"
Asian American Writers' Workshop (2016; 1 hr. 21:44 min.;
Chiang reads new work; Q and A begins at 25:30)
|
|
- "Arrival Premiere with Writer
Ted Chiang," Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination
(2016; 1 hr. 1:22 min.)
|
|
- "Arrival Trailer," Paramount
Pictures (2016; 2:25 min.)
|
Ted
Chiang
|
- "Summary
Bibliography: Ted Chiang," Internet Speculative
Fiction Database
- Interviews
- Joshua Rothman, "Ted
Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction," The New
Yorker (2017)
- Meghan McCarron, "The
Legendary Ted Chiang on Seeing His Stories Adapted
and the Ever-Expanding Popularity of SF,"
Electric Literature (2016)
- Taylor Clark, "The
Perfectionist," The California Sunday Magazine
(2015)
- Avi Solomon, "Ted
Chiang on Writing," Boing Boing (2010)
- Lou Anders, "A
Conversation with Ted Chiang," SF Site (2002)
- Jeremy Smith, "The
Absence of God: An Interview with Ted Chiang,"
Infinity Plus (2002)
|
Reference
Chiang, Ted. “Story of Your Life.” 1998. Stories
of Your Life and Others, Picador, 2015, pp. 111–72.
Further
Reading
Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and
Others. Picador, 2015.
Chiang, Ted, and Allora and Calzadilla. "The
Great Silence." Fantasy and Science Fiction , vol. 130,
no. 5/6, 2016, pp. 134–38.
Chiang, Ted. "The
Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling." Subterranean Press
Magazine (fall 2013).
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Last updated March 12, 2019