Not enough superlatives for this collection from Ted Chiang - feast for a hungry brain that didn't know it was even hungry. Chiang applies the precise reasoning of the best hard sci fit and the melancholy reflections of the best humanist sci fi to the angst of religion and evolutionary intelligence with rigorous prismatic perspective. While the thought experiment has fallen by the wayside in recent years as a backlash to the speculative literary or the opportunistically filmic, Chiang's resuscitation of private obsessiveness in science fiction is a welcome return to the notion that natural inquiry should by necessity inform our approach to the mysteries in life.

The film, Arrival, is a wonderful adaptation of Story of Your Life - a titular tale of first contact but also a reflection on the ways which communication and knowledge have the power to transform. Overly atmospheric but meditatively beautiful, Arrival leans hard into the personal and elides the science behind the premise. Such slippery dramatic editing tunes the sympathies of a broad audience to the inherent triumph of the heart or the mystical deus ex machina of the plot. However, the central strength of Chiang's story is a rationalist's emotional transcendence - the idea that the details of scientific resolution matter, that the hard work of gaining knowledge in order to truly comprehend and break through, is something that no greater power can gift us.