I am very curious to see what comes with this film. I am a long time fan of Chiang’s work, and as far as I know, this is the first and so far only attempt at a film adaptation for one of his stories. The success or failure of this film could really affect the possibility of further adaptations.

It is interesting to me that they picked this particular story to adapt. None of Chiang’s stories I have read (and I am pretty sure I have read them all) really fit into the usual sci-fi action genre you see in most Hollywood sci-fi. One of his earlier works, “Understand,” is probably the closest in that it features some cat and mouse espionage and some level of lethal conflict, but if made into a film would look too much like a blend of Scanners and Limitless. In “Story of your Life” there is no real external conflict, no villians or heroes, no threat to humanity or individual characters. It really is just an exploration of some connections between language, cognition, and ultimately perception of reality (common themes in Chiang’s work). I think the story will be ill-served if they tack on some generic evil bad guy who has to be stopped, even if the evil bad guy is one of the humans rather than the aliens. So I am curious to see what they do with this story and how much they change to make it more Hollywood sci-fi.

Chiang has other works that I think would work better for a film adaptation. I’d love to see “Exhalation” but to see a visual representation of his intricately described clockwork, pneumatic robots, but I’d say “Seventy-Two Letters” would make for better cinema, especially if we crank up the combat golem action.