User:Barbs/PersonalReader
THE TERROIR
"Terroir's direct translation is 'a sense of place', and what it means is the sum of the effects of a localized environment, inasmuch as they impact the qualities of a particular product. Yes, that can mean wine, but what if you applied these criteria to thinking about Area X my personal reader?"
- Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (& me)
To Annotate
Fiction
⟢ Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer
⟢ The Castle of Crossed Destinies - Italo Calvino
Non-fiction
⟢ Ways of Being - James Bridle
⟢ Computer Lib / Dream Machines - Ted Nelson
⟢ Staying with the Trouble - Donna Haraway
Interactive
⟢ Chants of Senaar - Rundisc
Fiction
Story of your Life - Ted Chiang (1998)
⟢ Read: 11/10/2025
⟢ Source: Physical copy
SUMMARY
Story of your Life is a science-fiction novella.
The entire story takes place in one moment: When Gary asks protagonist Louise if she wants to have a baby together.
It then switches between her memories of the past, working as a linguist in first contact with the alien species Heptapods and her process in learning their language, and her memories of the future, their yet unconceived daughter growing up until her untimely death at 25 years old.
The use of tenses in the future memories is strange. Louise remembers her daughter in future tense: "I remember I will.."
The story's themes are language and communication, linguistic relativity, free will and determinism, teleology, child loss, first contact with alien beings.
I had read the story before a few years ago, along with watching the movie adaptation Arrival, but wanted to reread and annotate it for SI28, as the linguistic relativity and free will themes feel very relevant to the project.
EVALUATION
Heptapod physics
Fermat's principle of least time = the path taken by a ray of light between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time.
- Human physics are
causal:- A difference in the index of refraction caused the light to change direction.
- Experience events in an order, and perceive their relationship as cause and effect.
- Heptapod physics are
teleological:- Light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination.
- To satisfy goal of minimizing & maximizing, they need to know initial & final states to meet that goal.
- Heptapods experience events all at once, and perceive a minimizing/maximizing purpose underlying them all.
Both are valid ways of parsing the utterance of a physical event.
Heptapod linguistics
Their bodies have no "forward" direction, so their writing doesn't either. They use a semasiographic writing system, conveying meaning without reference to speech, using a visual syntax.
They make use of the two-dimensionality of writing: the utterance is visible all at once. Speech limits them, as it has to be put in chronological order.
As Louise becomes fluent in the Heptapod's written language over the course of the story, it alters her perception of time.
- Human consciousness is
sequential- Enacting freedom of choice makes it impossible to know the future
- Heptapod consciousness is
simultaneous- Knowing the future makes you never act contrary to that future, including telling others.
- Knowing the future evokes sense of urgency and obligation to act precisely as you know you would, an instinct you feel right in following.
If the heptapods already know everything they say or hear, what is the point of their using language at all?
- Human spoken language is used as a transmission of information.
- Heptapod spoken language is a realization of a plan, to actualize.
Performative utterance: The speaker can perform the action only by uttering the words. Saying equals doing.- Louise describes the sensation of conversing when you know what will be said feels like performing in a play.
Heptapod motivations
To see, to observe. They act to create the future, to enact chronology. They never announce their motivations as to why they came or why they're leaving.
Gary describes it as a non-zero-sum game = a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses can be less than or more than zero.
Linguistic relativity
Is one of the major themes of the story. It asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. The theory has had many different versions across history.
INTERPRETATION
I think language/writing solely changing your perception is a limiting idea. Our thoughts are influenced by a lot of other things. Thinking about sensory experience/nervous system/neurotype idk
Linguistic relativism can also become racist, seeing other languages as intellectually "lesser" than others. The book doesn't do this, Louise states multiple times that both the human and heptapod experience of the world are both valid and equal, but it is something to be cautious about.
Links
- Rule and Constraint - Marcel Bénabou
- Writing under constraint (like Heptapod B) allows Louise to go beyond her assumed rules of linguistics, and lets her explore new virtualities both of language itself and her own perception of time. It alters her reality.
Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer (2014)
⟢ Read: Summer 2023 | 05/10/2025
⟢ Source: I lent my physical copy to Max, but I also have a PDF
SI28: Area X is a Writing Machine
Think of it as a thorn, perhaps, a long, thick thorn so large it is buried deep in the side of the world. Injecting itself into the world. Emanating from this giant thorn is an endless, perhaps automatic, need to assimilate and to mimic. Assimilator and assimilated interact through the catalyst of a script of words, which powers the engine of transformation. Perhaps it is a creature living in perfect symbiosis with a host of other creatures. Perhaps it is “merely” a machine.