Story of Your Life

"Story of Your Life"
Illustration for "Story of Your Life" by Hidenori Watanave for S-F Magazine
Author	Ted Chiang
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science fiction short story
Published in	Starlight 2
Publication date	1998

"Story of Your Life" is a science fiction short story by Ted Chiang. The winner of the 2000 Nebula Award for Best Novella, as well as the 1999 Sturgeon award, the major themes explored by this tale are determinism, language, and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. A film adaptation by Eric Heisserer titled Arrival and directed by Denis Villeneuve, was released in 2016. It stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner and was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture.

The story is narrated by Dr. Louise Banks, writing in the past tense. After a race of aliens, known as heptapods (due to their 7-pointed radially symmetrical appearance), initiate first contact with humanity, the military hires Dr. Banks to discover their language and communicate with them. The story revolves around Dr. Banks and Gary Donnelly, a physicist also working for the military to gain knowledge of physics from the aliens.

The heptapods have two distinct forms of language. Heptapod A is their spoken language, which is described as having free word order and many levels of center-embedded clauses. Understanding Heptapod B, the written language of the aliens, is central to the plot. Unlike its spoken counterpart, Heptapod B has such complex structure that a single cannot be excluded without changing the entire meaning of a sentence.