[tiffanyh]

Would you mind explaining, since I didn’t read the book but saw the movie.

IIRC, the main character knew her future daughter would get sick and pass - and the conundrum was, does she tell her husband before the daughter is born (to potentially prevent pregnancy but doesn’t) … which after the daughter was born, the dad/husband learned she knew the future fate - led to their divorce. Was the book different?

[edanm]

In the book, the death happens to do an accident, not cancer, as the sibling comment says.

So just to spell it out more than the sibling comment - the story doesn't ask "do I decide to have a child, even knowing that they die".

Instead, the focus is on her literally knowing, that morning, that her daughter was heading out to a place where she would die. One word of warning could've prevented the death. Of course, that "isn't possible" from their point of view, but from "our" point of view it seems like it is possible, so she effectively let her daughter die.

Very different emphasis. Both the movie and the Chiang story are great.

[stavros]

Not only is it possible, but there's a narrator part in the book where she chooses to do this. It's been a while, and tell me if I'm misremembering this, but what I remember is her choosing to live this way, to know the future but to "act it out" so that it will happen, rather than trying to change it.

[edanm]

Well this is kind of a philosophical question, I think from her point of view there's no choice involved - if you throw a ball, it doesn't have a choice but to fall to the ground, and she likewise "acts out the scripts" that she knows happens.

I think that's kind of the challenge the story poses. From our point of view, she knows what will happen and "chooses" not to change it, from her/their point of view, it's all already happened, she can't change it.

[stavros]

I can't really speak to it as it's been years, but I remember her likening this to a play, where the actors can change the words, but they don't, for the sake of the play. IIRC she was very clear that this was a choice that the aliens were making, and not something that was enforced on them, but, as I said, it's been years.

[edanm]

Years for me too :)

You're right that she compares it to that, but my reading of it is that that is the whole disconnect/point - she does it view that way, but also doesn't change it in a way that is incomprehensible to the way we view it but that is the only way it could go from their perspective.

I don't think we're disagreeing, just viewing the same actions from a different lens.

[stavros]

You may be right, I read the story again and she does say that it's a completely different viewpoint, where free will doesn't apply. Not that it doesn't exist, but it's not applicable.

[abound]

I just re-read the short story after reading the GGP comment. In the written story, the daughter dies at 25 in a rock climbing accident. The written story makes no mention of Louise talking about her perception of consciousness with anyone, except to note that she assumes a colleague who has learned the alien language (Heptapod B) also experiences that mode of consciousness.

Really beautiful and entertaining story, definitely worth the ~hour of reading.

(Also, this isn't much of a spoiler, the daughter's death is mentioned very early in the story's non-linear narrative)

[chucksmash]

If perceiving the future laid out beforehand is just the same as reading the Book of Ages, then I take the italicized part below to mean not only that she wouldn't reveal what she'd seen in the future but she wouldn't even reveal she'd seen the future at all:

> Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don’t talk about it. Those who’ve read the Book of Ages never admit to it.