Babel-17 (original 1966; edition 1982)

You know how I know it's spring break? I finished a book. How do I know it's a great book? I want to just go back to page one and start all over again. ( )

Delany was married to poet Marilyn Hacker from 1961 to 1980. From 1970 to 1971 they coedited 4 "Quark" anthologies. "Babel-17" was originally published in 1979. To quote from the back blurb: "A brilliant poet and her colorful crew range the galaxy to solve the riddle of a language that has become a deadly weapon in the hands of the enemy." Delany has lived the life of a sexual explorer, of a person acutely thoughtful about language, a person experimenting w/ his life full-blown - & his novels reflect this. His heros are often people of a nature similar to himself. They aren't armor-clad Space Marines - transplanted macho military men in a rush to blow away the monsters - they're street performers, poets, people trying to be free & coping w/ the difficult problems of universes w/ imagination & liberation instead of brute force. Language as a weapon? Language as a trap? Language as a conceptual labyrinth full of power?

"She didn't "look at the room."

She "somethinged at the something." The first something was a tiny vocable that implied an immediate, but passive, perception that could be aural or olfactory as well as visual. The second something was three equally tiny phonemes that blended at different musical pitches: one, an indicator that fixed the size of the chamber at roughly twenty-five feet cubical, the second identifying the color and probable substance of the walls - some blue metal - while the third was at once a place holder for particles that should denote the room's function when she discovered it, and a sort of grammatical tag by which she could refer to the whole experience with only the one symbol for as long as she needed. All four sounds took less time on her tongue and in her mind than the one clumsy dipthong in 'room', Babel-17; she had felt it before with other languages, the opening, the widening, the mind forced to sudden growth. But this, this was like the sudden focusing of a lens blurry for years." ( )

Okay, this book really needed to be put in context for me to like it more, because I didn't grow up reading Delany and I knew nothing about him. Samuel R. Delany is a gay black man, and this book was published in 1966.

So that helps with how Rydra Wong is always described as the most beautiful desirable woman ever, because man oh man does it make me angry for a woman to be talking linguistics only to have the man fawning over how beautiful she is and not really taking in what she's saying. Which I guess might be accurate? I don't know, but the author is the one taking liberties to create this society so they don't have to put it in there.

It also helps with the description of Babel-17 at the end, because it's...kind of really dated.

But some of my issues with the book were my own personal discomfort with intimate settings. Rydra is exceptionally good at reading body language, so characters' movements and tics are described in more detail than normal. I've been struggling with how to describe it - more tell than show? Or it might actually be more show than tell because we see exactly what makes the body language indicate a certain mood. It automatically makes me kind of recoil when I read because it feels too visceral. But it's a deliberate choice of Delany's, which I have to respect. ( )

Delany, Samuel R. Babel-17. 1966. Orion, 2010.
I last read Delany’s Babel-17 sometime in the late 1960s, probably in its first Ace paperback edition. I was impressed at the time with its somewhat poetic style and its innovative use of linguistic themes in a space opera. The only things I had read to rival it were Dune (Frank Herbert 1965) with its power words and strange navigators and The World of Null-A (A. E. van Vogt, 1948) that delved into general semantics. Rereading Babel-17 now, I am less impressed by the linguistic theory, but I am still enchanted with its youthful ebullience and more appreciative of the audacious originality of its characters and its society. It is a world in which poetry and language in general shape minds and have power we never suspected. The novel provides hints of the gender bending themes and racial diversity that would mark Delany’s later novels. Stylistically, Delany gets away with things that in lesser writers would be insupportable. What, for example, are “hyperstasis currents” and “the spacelli Snap”? We aren’t told, but they just seem to fit. The ending of the novel seems rushed, but it leaves one with an intended mental whiplash. Much new science fiction today seems extremely pedestrian by comparison. Five stars, with flaws, but five stars for sure. ( )

Language shapes thought which shapes identity. That concept is the basis for this unique, beautifully-written, and entertaining science fiction adventure.

Rydra Wong is a renowned poet with an uncanny ability to perceive the thoughts of others and express them in powerful verse. Her ability also makes her an excellent translator and cryptographer, which is why a general comes to her for help translating "Babel-17" -- a complex code the enemy in a long interstellar war has been using to coordinate acts of sabotage. Rydra quickly realizes that Babel-17 is more than a code, and she sets off on a mission to find its source and the next sabotage targets.

Surprisingly, this poet has starship captain's papers, and her first act is to put together a crew, which introduces the reader to a strikingly original vision of interstellar travel. Pilots are surgically enhanced humans who 'wrestle' with the interstellar tides to guide the ship; a polyamorous trio with the designations Eye, Ear, and Nose act as sensors; and discorporates (ie: the dead) are part of crews.

Throughout the adventure, Delany uses Rydra's unique perceptions of language, especially of Babel-17, to shape the narrative. The reader needs to be nimble to follow along with the shifts of language and accompanying shifts of *being* which propel the plot.

"The Arrival" also uses the central importance of linguistic structure as the basis for a science fiction story. "Babel-17" does it better.

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