Story of your Life

This is the short story on which the 2016 film Arrival is based. It is much better than the film.

"The only way to learn an unknown language is to interact with a native speaker." When alien craft orbit the earth and open up a number of communication windows around the world, the military are quite cagey about the information they share, but the colonel takes the advice from Dr. Louise Banks, and she is paired with a physicist and tasked with learning the alien language and learning what physics they can teach us.

The book is not so much about language as knowledge of the future. The aliens know the future, and so are very patient as Louise learns their language. But as she does, she gains knowledge of the future.

This is not liberating, but is instead very restrictive. She is precluded from making actions that deviate from what she knows of the future.

The book is addressed to her unborn daughter, and describes incidents of her life from childhood youth to untimely death.

A thoughtful short story, much better than the film with its nonsense atmospherics and artificial climactic finish.