It was like putting your best running shoes on, placing your feet on the starting blocks, knuckling down on the track, but the starting gun never goes off. Sometimes that’s code for, “We don’t think you know how to write this story.”īut by then I’d mapped out the nonlinear narrative, I saw so much potential in expanding on some of Ted’s core themes and ideas, and I couldn’t stop there. The most common reason for passing was: “It’s very execution dependent.” Well, OK, honestly everything is. I formed my take on the material and we pitched it around town. The Dans fell in love with “Story of Your Life” like I had, and finally, after years of carrying around a dog-eared copy of Ted’s book in my car, I had my shot. It took years of searching and writing non-horror material before I found the right producers to champion the project: Dan Levine and Dan Cohen, at 21 Laps. I was hoping for Stephen King or something.”

Whenever I’d present Ted’s short story to producers, I was met with a not-insignificant level of suspicion. The only horror script I’d ever written was the one that sold, and I soon discovered this was all I was trusted to write. Six of those spec features were science fiction. I just knew I had to find a way.Īt this point in my career, I had written 13 spec screenplays. I knew I wanted to translate to screen, but I had no idea how, or with whom. It shadowed me by day and hovered over me when I slept. And while so much of his work is built purely as literature, when I think about adapting a story I don’t dwell on how cinematic the source material is but rather how it makes me feel. He can educate me about theoretical physics and then leave me sobbing into my couch cushion. Ted is one of those rare finds in that he writes compelling fiction that is both intellectually invigorating and emotionally true. Nevertheless, science fiction was my first literary love, and after years away from the genre, the author who brought me back was Ted Chiang. It was a key ingredient in my childhood, but one I learned to keep quiet in my hometown in Oklahoma where, occasionally, adults used air quotes when saying the word science. Stories of new worlds, new ideas, and possibilities for the future. My mother read to me when I was young, like mothers do.

Arrival and story of your life