The most striking quality of the stories appearing in Ted Chiang's anthology Arrival (which was originally published in 2002 under the title Stories of Your Life and Others) is the author's ability to use fiction as a rhetorical device.
By saying this I don't mean that Chiang's work is comprised only of messages which he seeks to impart upon his audience, or even that his stories explicitly take the form of moral/ethical parables aimed at demonstrating some kind of lesson to his readers. Rather, it's more that throughout this collection, Chiang produces fiction which often strives to explore the tension that exists between two or more subtly contradictory ideas, examining various perspectives on his subjects through the medium of narrative. Via stories as diverse as a very contemporary-minded retelling of a biblical parable, an alien first-contact story that touches on themes of predestination and free will, and a fictional documentary about the ethics of limiting the capabilities of one's mind so as to preserve supposed objectivity, Chiang creates narratives driven not simply by his innovative imagination and skills as a storyteller, but also a quiet debate he engages in with his readers.
Probably the clearest demonstration of this comes in the opening story of this anthology, the Tower of Babylon, which merges two outwardly contradictory narratives to create a subtle tension in the resulting work. Set in a world that at least initially seems to resemble a fictionalized version of ancient Mesopotamia, the Tower of Babylon begins as a very straightforward retelling of the biblical narrative that shares its name. Opening by introducing the readers to a man named Hillalum, the story follows its protagonist as he travels to the city of Babylon, where he finds a massive tower seeming to reach into heaven itself. Entrusted with the monumental task of chiseling a hole in the "sky"--or rather, the solid stone surface encompassing the entire Earth which Babylon's engineers have found at the tower's summit--Hillalum begins the lengthy journey up to the tower's peak. All the while, he learns of the lengthy history and feats of engineering that have gone into this building's construction, and the ways in which the entirety of the Babylonian civilization has in this stories world shaped its own social order so as to accomplish this monumental task.
As a cultural myth, the Tower of Babylon is an intriguing story for a science fiction author to retell. Not only is it a narrative that in many ways questions the place of human knowledge in relation to a wider universe, but it's also a story whose traditional interpretations put it starkly at odds with many of the underlying philosophical assumptions of the science fiction genre. As Chiang points out in a "story notes" section at the end of this collection, the abrahamic version of the Tower of Babylon is usually seen as a story about the dangers of challenging god, with the tower itself being taken as a representation of greed and hubris.
This becomes a critical aspect of Chiang's retelling of this myth. As his rendition of the narrative unfolds, his version of the tower starts to resemble less a representation of hubris and greed, and more a metaphor for the scientific process itself. While slowly making his way up the tower's sides, Hillalum learns of the tower's history, all the while also coming to understand the extent to which the civilization responsible for building this tower has devoted itself so singularly to this one, awe-inspiring task.
One particularly memorable segment comes midway through the text when Hillalum encounters an entire village suspended from the tower's outer walls, and realizes how the tower is not simply a pathway to the heavens as he had originally thought, but also a world in and of itself in which thousands of people have lived and died for generations--all dedicating their lives toward the singular goal that the tower's construction represents.
The way in which Chiang describes this community instantly phrases the tower's existence in a fundamentally different context than more traditional interpretations of his source material would imply. Rather than a misplaced effort doomed to failure, the human ingenuity and cooperation embodied in the tower's existence becomes something awe-inspiring in its own right. The text reads:
By the end of the next day they reached the level of the balconies. They were flat platforms, dense with onions, supported by heavy ropes from the tower wall above, just below the next tier of balconies. On each level the interior of the tower had several narrow rooms inside, in which the families of the pullers lived. Women could be seen sitting in the doorways sewing tunics, or out in the gardens digging up bulbs. Children chased each other up and down the ramps, weaving amidst the pullers' carts, and running along the edge of the balconies without fear. (p.12)
Passages like these demonstrate the extent to which Chiang plays with two outwardly contradictory stories. Initially beginning as a retelling of a religious parable, the tower in this rendition of the myth slowly develops into something more difficult to categorize. Chiang's descriptions of entire towns existing on the tower's sides--their residents living independent of even the Earth itself--almost mirror the much more modern myth of a generational spaceship. As Hillalum discovers in this moment, this entire civilization has dedicated itself to one single centuries-long task, with each generation striving toward a goal that will not come to fruition for hundreds of years.
In effect, just as with generational spaceship stories in which humanity constructs a massive artificial world to sustain itself for the centuries that will pass during an interstellar voyage, Chiang's version of the Tower of Babylon characterizes this structure as a massive endeavor requiring a restructuring of civilization itself. Even more interesting is how the objective which the Babylonians pursue in this rendition of the myth (effectively making first contact with the being whom they conceptualize as god) is not characterized by Chiang as self-serving or misguided, but instead a simple desire to further human knowledge. The tower is even indicated at one point to have been produced not by one single civilization, but instead dozens of distinct and often diverse societies who have all worked in unison over the course of generations, hoping that one day in the distant future their combined efforts might enable a descendant to accomplish this one, simple goal of (literally) touching the sky.
This results in a tension that develops over the course of the story. Readers will almost inevitably know that no matter what happens when Hillalum reaches the tower's summit and begins digging a hole in the sky (as is, we soon learn, his mission), the result surely cannot be a positive one. Yet this foreknowledge also can't easily be reconciled with what the tower clearly represents in Chiang's version of the myth--not a monument to hubris or greed, but a structure that should be celebrated for the immense accomplishment it's existence represents.
I won't spoil Chiang's conclusion to this story, and how he ultimately reconciles these two narratives, but I will say that the question he poses with this conclusion--the philosophical implications of defining all events and actions by the ends they bring about (rather than the means by which they are accomplished)--becomes something of a recurring theme for much of the fiction in this collection.
This subject is also explored in what is probably the most famous story in this anthology, the novella Story of Your Life, which formed the basis of the 2016 film Arrival. Taking the form of an alien first contact narrative, Story of Your Life focuses on the experiences of Louise Banks, a linguist hired by the American military to decode the language used by a group of alien visitors whose spaceships have appeared spontaneously in Earth orbit. With the help of a physicist named Gary Donnelly, Louise sets to work establishing a basic dialogue with these aliens, hoping to uncover some indication as to what their intent in visiting Earth is.
However, this objective becomes increasingly difficult as both Louise and Gary slowly realize that the aliens seem to lack any understanding of the concept of intention itself. As a result they can't understand the seemingly simple questions which the humans have posed to them regarding why they have landed on Earth, or even why they voyaged to Earth to begin with.
This core storyline is further interspersed with brief vignettes detailing the life of Louise's only daughter, a young woman who seems to have died in a mountain climbing accident some years before the main storyline began, and whose various experiences Louise repeatedly recalls throughout the text.
One of the most engaging aspects of Story of Your Life is the way that Chiang draws on what is very clearly a formidable knowledge of both Linguistics and Physics, incorporating concepts from these fields into the questions posed by his plot. For instance, while establishing to the reader the way in which the psychology of the "Heptapods" (as the alien visitors are soon called) works, Chiang provides dense and sometimes disorienting discussions of various natural phenomena into the story, interspersing these with Louise's own speculation on the Heptapod language and it's confusing (from a human perspective) idiosyncrasies.
However, rather than functioning merely as sci-fi technobabble, Chiang uses the ideas elicited by the concepts from physics and linguistics that he introduces to build toward the ultimate realization which the reader comes to regarding the nature of this story, and the chronology of the events which are being presented to us. This is a realization which is paralleled by Louise's own gradually increasing understanding of the nature of Heptapod communication, and the critical differences between the paradigms of thought used by these creatures when compared to those used by humanity.
One passage demonstrating how Chiang incorporates these larger themes into the basic language of his narrative comes when Louise and Gary discuss an unexpected breakthrough in their understanding of Heptapod science--the discovery that despite lacking any equivalent to outwardly basic sciences like human algebra, the Heptapods do possess something similar to the theorem "Fermat's principle of least time."
Via Gary's explanation of this principle to Louise (how it posits that equations describing the path of a photon could be characterized as describing all light as being physically drawn towards the object that light eventually strikes, rather than "fired" from the object which we perceive as emitting these photons), the true nature of how the Heptapods perceive the world starts to become apparent. Rather than lacking any concept of intent (as Louise had assumed), Heptapods actually seem to view all of reality as being driven by an underlying and overpowering objective that can never be resisted. This in and of itself explains why they cannot comprehend a question as simple (and human) as "why are you here." When responding to Gary's comment that this discovery is "neat," Louise says:
"It's neat all right, but how come I haven't heard of Fermat's principle before?" I picked up a binder and waved it at him; it was a primer on the physics topics suggested for use in communication with the Heptapods. "This thing goes on forever about Planck masses and the spin-flip of atomic hydrogen, and not a word about the refraction of light.""We guessed wrong about what'd be most useful for you to know," Gary said without embarrassment. "In fact, it's curious that Fermat's principle was the first breakthrough, even though it's easy to explain, you need calculus to describe it mathematically. And not ordinary calculus; you need the calculus of variations. We thought that some simple theorem of geometry or algebra would be the breakthrough." (p.118)
As Story of Your Life develops further and the reader gains a clearer understanding of what it is that Heptapod's perceive as simple versus complex, Chiang constructs a portrait of an alien civilization whose worldview requires a basic restructuring of thought and philosophy when viewed from a human perspective. Referencing everything from time symmetry in quantum physics, to ancient omnidirectional writing systems practiced by Arabic scholars, Story of Your Life eventually establishes itself as an incredibly dense and interconnected narrative charting its protagonist's slow and almost monumental shift in her core paradigm of thought--a shift that occurs in tandem with the reader's own gradual realization as to the true nature of the story we are actively reading.
The final work in this anthology, Liking What You See: A Documentary, is possibly the only story in this collection that stumbles with its themes. Possessing a setup that is just as engaging as every one of the other seven stories in the book, Liking What You See takes the form of a series of brief two to three paragraph interviews with the students and faculty of Pembleton College. Set in a near future world where a widely available medical procedure called calli (short for calliagnosia) allows people to artificially deactivate their perceptions of beauty and attraction, Liking What You See centers mostly around interviews with Tamera Lyons, a young woman admitted to Pembleton as a first year student who was administered calli as a young child. The result of the calli procedure is that Tamera has lived her entire life being incapable of perceiving beauty in another human being. As the story begins however, Tamera has recently chosen to have her own calli procedure reversed, and is outraged to learn that the Student Government at Pembleton has recently begun debating whether or not to make calli mandatory for all students.
Just as with the Tower of Babylon, there's a tension in Chiang's setup here which prompts his readers to continually keep reevaluating the story's core concept. Whether or not calli is a dangerous attempt to deprive people of free will by limiting how they can perceive the world, or a necessary step needed to enable individuals to exercise control of their own psychology and mental processes, quickly becomes Chiang's main point of debate. Moreover, the ending that the story arrives at--a conclusion in which a large corporation selling cosmetic products uses advanced subliminal marketing technology to influence the final student vote in their favor--leaves the reader with a fascinating sense of unease which Chiang deliberately chooses to leave unresolved.
To the extent that he has one, the author's thesis statement with this story seems to be that while our perceptions of beauty and attraction may be benign phenomena in and of themselves, the hyper-concentrated use of these perceptions by commercial and political interests is not. Instead, Chiang seems to be using this story to comment only on how these cultural trends open people up to forms of propaganda that can be very difficult to resist. This implies that Liking What You See is a story set in a world teetering on the edge of outright dystopia--a future where citizens must abandon beauty in all it's forms not because these perceptions are in and of themselves misplaced or morally corrupting, but rather because they can easily be used as tools rendering free will all but non-existent.
The main problem that I have with Liking What You See is in the scope of the story's narration. For the most part, Chiang's narrative characterizes an awareness of aesthetics and beauty as exclusively female concerns, with the numerous interviews with the students and faculty of Pembleton focusing primarily on either women discussing how calli affects their interactions with male and female acquaintances, or men discussing how calli impacts their interactions with (specifically) women. This imbalance pulls the story toward some problematic subtexts regarding gender and sexuality that Chiang never fully addresses, with the implication of this focus being that a preoccupation with the appearance of oneself and others is predominantly a phenomenon experienced by women, and women alone.
This assumption is demonstrated in the fact that despite the numerous interviews which Liking What You See presents to its reader, there is only one instance I could recall in which a male perspective on the calli procedure was seriously examined in the text. In this passage, a student at Pembleton discusses how receiving calli allowed him to overcome his fear of "talking to girls," curing his social anxiety by making it impossible not only for him to dislike his own appearance, but also evaluate that appearance in relation to members of the opposite sex. Specifically, he says:
I thought about trying calli before, when I was in high school, but I never knew how to bring it up with my parents. So when they started offering it here, I figured I'd give it a try. (shrugs) It's okay.Actually, it's better than okay. (pause) I've always hated how I look. For a while in high school I couldn't stand the sight of myself in a mirror. But with calli, I don't mind as much. [...] Like, for instance: I was helping this girl in the library with a problem on her calculus homework, and afterwards I realized that she's someone I'd thought was really pretty. Normally I would have been really nervous around her, but with calli, she wasn't so hard to talk to. (p.255-256)
While providing an interesting commentary on how alienating a preoccupation with physical appearance can sometimes be, the fact that this passage is the only instance in the story of a male character discussing his experiences of calli very starkly contrasts with the numerous female perspectives on calli that Liking What You See centers. While this is to some extent explained by the focus the story places on Tamera as its main character, the numerous other vignettes in which other women either describe how receiving calli allowed them to stop viewing the world via hierarchies of attractive versus unattractive people, or (as in the case of Tamera) how being able to perceive her own beauty was a liberating experience, still consumes the majority of the text.
The result of this imbalance is that even when Chiang tries to reference some of the most likely feminist critiques of characterizing any experience of attraction or sexuality as antithetical to human objectivity, his story is still unable to completely separate itself from many of the more problematically gender essentialist implications of his narrative. While characters like Tamera (after having her own calli procedure reversed) struggle to learn to manage the societal power and privilege that being attractive (supposedly) gives them, the only male character in the story who seriously discusses his experience of the calli procedure does so in a context that implies his awareness of attraction and physical beauty to have been distractions inhibiting his personal growth.
In effect, Chiang seems to imply, even if only unintentionally, that its natural and perhaps even liberating for women to be preoccupied with how they look, but that this same tendency in men is characterized as being indicative of a pathology.
For the most part however, the stories in Arrival represent fully realized examinations of the social and philosophical issues embodied in the medium of fiction. As in any anthology, Chiang's work here addresses diverse subjects and genres, but he's also willing to engage these ideas and themes from angles normally ignored by other writers. As a result, even in the few times when his work falls short, Chiang is still able to bring something unique and original to his stories.
The stories of Arrival are, in the end, driven just as much by curiosity as they are skill, and so even in the very few times they fall short of their potentials, they always leave the reader with questions that are worth thinking about for quite a long time after the book has been finished.