We love to tinker with our environment, especially with other life forms. We try to change them to suit our needs, using every tool we can find or invent. Science fiction goes one step further, imagining tools we haven’t invented yet and doing things that don’t seem possible. Yet sometimes science fiction’s impossible dreams have echoed real-life tinkering—even when our imaginations birthed nightmares…
I’m a translator, and all translators are wannabe linguists (except for the exalted few of us who actually are linguists). I dream of diving deep into the study of language and mastering the tool I use in my profession. This means that “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang is about the adventure I want to have:
Aliens arrive at Earth. Someone has to learn to talk to them. Let me do it! Me! Me, me!
Human survival hinges on an bizarre alliance in Semiosis, a character driven science fiction novel of first contact by debut author Sue Burke—available February 6th from Tor Books.
Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they’ll have to survive on the one they found. They don’t realize another life form watches…and waits…
Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet’s sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools.
