The Arrival is a brilliant undertaking — but when you hear Ted Chiang’s “Story of your Life,” you more fully appreciate the depth of thought and feeling behind it. The film Lionbecomes even more moving when you consider that this is not a made-up story, but the real life of Saroo Brierley, who, at the age of 5, got lost on a train in India and didn’t find his way home until he was an adult; a tale told in his internationally best-selling memoir A Long Way Home. The noirish psychological thriller Nocturnal Animals is based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony & Susan, which director Tom Ford said he read in one day and couldn’t stop thinking about.
And now, without further ado, here are the books that can give you a deeper appreciation for this year’s nominated films…
Mathematician
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space, even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts.
A more-established writer, Ted Chiang has been publishing science fiction since 1990, winning a Nebula for his first short story, “Tower of Babylon.” Since then, his stories have consistently won awards, and several of his short stories were published as a collection, Stories of Your Life and Others, in 2002. The title piece in this collection, “Story of Your Life,” is an incredible piece of writing that fuses linguistics, physics, and first contact, but ultimately becomes an intimate portrait of love and loss. That story has since been adapted into the acclaimed Oscar-nominated film Arrival, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner.
Best Actor (Michael Shannon, in Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, based on this book)
