A. Ouroboros
In this film adapted from Ted Jiang's original work ("The Story of Your Life"), the characters of the alien ( heptapod barrel) are designed as Uroboros- like symbols.
On the surface, its visual presentation is indeed very alien, but tracing its roots, it is actually a very human mind design.
Because of such alien settings (time is non-linear for them), their language cannot be a two-dimensional plane in the first place. Their "written language" (if it exists) must be a multi-dimensional sculptural presentation... and they probably won't have spoken language either-spoken language is just the physics of sound wave changes caused by the density of the air medium we breathe The performance of limitations, or speaking and written language—because time does not cause memory impairment for them, so they have no need to record at all—probably combined into one piece, returning to something more primitive and simple. The pattern of, for example, electrical signals.
There is a greater possibility. For example, their language may be like a kind of universal energy code, and all external stimuli will be converted into executable instructions for their consciousness through the source code and react accordingly. Or, the so-called communication is nothing more than some form of energy exchange.
Therefore, the extraterrestrial language of the Uropoulos-like symbols in the movie is more for the need to express a specific meaning: the circular structure of time in the narrative. The intention is to suggest or enhance the impression of the established image.
"Ouroboros" comes from the name of ancient Greek philosophers, meaning "Tail-devourer".
The concept of "Ulopoulos", or "snakes head and tail", is one of the oldest mythological symbols in the world, and is involved in myths and legends all over the world.
This kind of mythological symbol is familiar with the distribution of the flood myth. Its appearance shows a certain mysterious synchronicity of civilization, spontaneously born in a distant civilization.
On the other hand, its evolution has also evolved due to the migration of civilizations. It is said that this imaginary creature once migrated eastward to the Eland area of the Persian plateau. The Elamites call it Tud'ieh, which means "reorganization".
Zhang Yimou’s "gluttonous" in "The Great Wall" is implied to be some kind of alien creature, and the "gluttonous" in mythology may actually be derived from this Elan vocabulary, although only the symbolic image of "gluttony" (self Swallowing one's own tail) is retained... It can also be seen that the visual symbols will be severely distorted in the transmission process, which is a backward communication method.
B. The language of Enna Mumuyi
Ursula Le Guen has a very interesting collection of anthology-style novels called "Changing Planes". First of all, this pun title is very interesting. Simply put, when a person transfers at an airport, he will change to a different plane (parallel universe/different world) when he gets on a different plane... It's almost like "Mirror Flower". story.
There is a story called "The Language of Enna Mumuyi".
We can imagine the conversation of a group of Enna Mumuyi people. Their conversation can be centered on one of them, and what this person says can answer everyone else’s words at the same time, and the others are also the same-that is, a group of kindness. There are countless centers in Na Mumuyi’s conversation. This is entirely because their language is a radiant thing, with endless interpretations. The language of the Enna Mumuyi people is like a circular wave of water that continues to spread out, and the conversation of a group of Enna Mumuyi people is like the ripples left on the water after a rain, those spreading at different centers The crests and troughs of the ripples always meet in different places. Although they are the same in nature, they have different meanings. In addition, the way in which each of them comprehend language must also exist for a long time. This is also one of the basis for the possible existence of the conversation between the group of Enna Mumuyi people I mentioned earlier.
How did the language of the Enna Mumuyi come about?
The scenery of all places is exactly the same-whether it is hills, fields, plateaus, forests and villages, they are all fertile and rich, beautiful, without seasonal changes, in short, they are the same.
...
They wiped out all useless creatures. They reduced an extremely complex sample to a perfect sample.
And in this story, they eliminate the complexity brought by time... Therefore, the language they use should be something similar to a formula with seemingly simple but unlimited possibilities, which is more convincing.
Although, I have to say that the movie "Arrival" still faithfully restores Ted Jiang’s language design intent, but I personally feel that such a design is still quite satisfactory... it is rippling in a circle with a certain central water wave. Wouldn't it be more interesting to present it in a three-dimensional form with a certain periodically changing "wave" symbol, or even in the form of a fractal of some kind of more complex geometric function? Think about it, Carl Sagan’s "Time-and-Time Contact" adapted by Robert Zemigis... Listening to radio waves may be the prerequisite for the possibility of the first type of contact and the operability of interracial communication in reality.
Of course, if the other party evolves telepathy... the language may become some kind of evolutionary tail spine for them. For example, let's imagine that if this is the case with the heptapod barrel in the movie, then when they communicate with humans, they may have "reduced dimensionality" on their own:
The written language they communicate with humans is likely to be fossil remains uncovered from their old paper piles.
C. The Myth of Cthulhu
In Ted Jiang’s novel, the alien is described like this:
Aliens have seven long limbs, converging in the center from four directions, and a barrel hung on the axis. The entire body is extremely symmetrical. Any one of the seven limbs can function as a leg, and any limb can also be used. As an arm. The one in front of me walks on four legs, and the other three limbs that are not connected are curled up on each side. Garrett called them "heptapod barrels".
I watched the video before, but now I am still dumbfounded. There are no obvious joints on its seven limbs, and anatomists speculate that they may be directly supported by the spine. Regardless of the supporting structure, the heptapods can move freely with their seven limbs, surprisingly smooth and fluent. On the seven crumpled limbs is the "torso", stable, like a hovercraft.
There is a circle of eyes around the body of the heptapod. There are seven eyes in total, without eyelids. It walked to the door where it had just entered, and made a short, splash-like sound, and then returned to the center of the room in the sight glass, followed by another heptapod. It didn't turn around at all in this series of actions. It's strange, but it's perfectly logical: it has eyes in all directions of its body, and any direction is "straight ahead" to it.
The barrel-like alien race with tentacles has a similar setting in HP Lovecraft’s "Crazy Mountains":
The sample is eight feet in length. The barrel-shaped torso with five ridges is six feet long, three and a half feet in diameter at the thickest part in the center, and one foot in diameter at both ends. Dark gray, soft but very tough. The wing membrane unfolds up to seven feet, the same color as the torso, and remains folded when found, able to stretch out through the grooves between the ridges. The wing skeleton is tubular or thick gland-like at one end, light gray, with small holes at the tip. The unfolded wing membrane has jagged edges. Around the central latitude of the torso, in the center of each right-angled ridge at the tip is a group of forked light gray soft limbs or tentacles. All limbs were tightly attached to the torso when found, but it could be up to three feet long when unfolded. Similar to the original sea lily tentacles. A single stalk is three inches in diameter. After six feet of extension, it diverges into five smaller stalks, then extends for another eight feet, and then splits into five small tentacles or tendrils with tapering tips—therefore, the original stalk totals Split into twenty-five tentacles.
And in the movie, the image of the giant octopus-like alien...It's totally Kazun's feeling to look at it. I was wondering whether Ted Jiang’s original intention was a tribute to the myth of Cthulhu? Although, from some impressions, it is actually more like a journey with Arthur Clark's "End of Childhood" (using the atmosphere of "A Space Odyssey 2001" to tell a story of "End of Childhood").
The film’s director Dennis Villeneuve gave me the feeling that I’ve always been a fan of genre films, and from the debut of the literary film to the genre film, the expansion of the road and the high-yield, high-quality features and the temperament of Ridley Scott Most like... His next work is the sequel to Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner".
More interestingly, the two movies released in theaters during this time, this "Arrival", and the previous "Space Traveler" (his screenwriter is also the screenwriter of "Prometheus"), their opening looks It's like a fanfare trailer for the new alien series of Ridley Scott, which is scheduled to be released in May in the future.
In Ridley Scott’s expanded alien universe’s "Prometheus," it is implied that Jesus may be an alien. The edited bible.
The same universe's "Alien" and John Carpenter's debut "Black Star" are two flowers. John Carpenter is an avid fan of H.P. Lovecraft, which is reflected in "Mouth of the Madman".
This cultural association phenomenon of the same destination by different routes is as fascinating as the heptapod language of the story:
Are all changes, like the tracks of the stars, predestined?
Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" has a subtitle called "The Story of Modern Prometheus." I like the concept of "science fiction" because it has a certain poetic flavor. In my opinion, science fiction is the poetry of the post-Frankenstein era.
Although Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was published in 1818, she actually finished it in the spring of 1817. So, in a sense, this year is the 200th anniversary of the history of science fiction .
Frankenstein's weird people are some kind of alien images, but they are man-made after all, while the aliens in Cthulhu mythology are completely indescribable and completely separate from the existence of human logic. The throbbing caused by the sense of unknown is another essence of science fiction in a sense... It is the 100th anniversary since HP Lovecraft began to publish works in 1917.
So in the next 100 years, what will our "science fiction" pursue ?
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