The Pioneer plaques, placed on board the 1972 Pioneer spacecraft, show the nude figures of humans along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by intelligent extraterrestrial life.
The plaques are intended to introduce the civilization of mankind, while we want to be more specific——introducing the concept of cooking to heptapods, an intelligent species from outer space in Ted Chiang’s Story of your life.
Since humans grasped the use of fire, cooking has become an essential part of our life. By cooking, we turn raw materials into tasty cuisine, and more importantly, we provide ourselves with wider and healthier food choices. As the food culture flourishes around the world, it is a witness of human history as well.
Therefore, as one of the most distinguished symbols of human civilization, cooking should be introduced so that other intelligent species would learn more about humans’ diet behaviors and cultures, thus boosting mutual communication. (By the way, knowing that humans are civilized eaters would make them less tentative about communicating with us).
As Chiang mentioned in the story, heptapods take out “some kind of giant nut or gourd and a gelatinous ellipsoid” (Chiang 11) when they are trying to show how to write “eating” in their language， which means they consume food just as we do, instead of keeping their energy in some other ways. Then it is more possible to make sense of cooking to them.
When discussing how to present the concept of cooking, what first occurred to Lindy and me was fire, the essence of cooking. Apart from that, we decided to make a comparison between eating raw food and cooked food and provide the readers with an intuitive feeling when seeing the picture. In the story, Louise discovered that heptapods’ script isn’t word-divided and a sentence is written by joining the logograms for the constituent words. （p11) Through learning the patterns of heptapods’ written language, we were able to figure out the mindset of heptapods. Since they are not linear thinkers, the cause-and-effect model then is not suitable for storytelling intended for heptapods.
Also, as the character Gary mentioned in the story, due to their bodies’ radial symmetry, heptapods have no ‘forward’ concept and directions (Chiang 11). This inspired us to change the arrows that led the pictures into background circles. As they see things all at once, we put circles behind each illustration to connect the solid objects. For instance, when they see the grill and fire, they would relate them to tasty food instantly. By involving a heptapod in the picture, I believed it might be easier for them to understand the process.
Hopefully through our sketch heptapods would get an insight into human civilization, travel back to earth one day in the future, and enjoy a feast with us. After all, Food is a medium of communication with no language barriers.