WIRED Book Club: Loved Arrival? Check Out Ted Chiang's 'Story of Your Life'

Here at WIRED Book Club, we tend to read newer writers. Since publishing his first short story, "Tower of Babylon," in 1990, he's averaged less than a story a year, quietly cultivating a modest but devoted fan base that recognizes his work for what it is: sharp, spare, intensely thought-through science fiction. "Literary," as some like to call it. And that probably wouldn't have changed, had it not been for the release last year of Arrival, Denis Villeneuve's lovely meditation on time and psycholinguistics. Widely celebrated as cerebral, meaningful sci-fi, it sent people flocking to the source material--a Chiang short called "Story of Your Life," published in 1998 (well before the Internet and 1D corrupted that phrase).