3 Word Review: “Babel-17” by Samuel R. Delany -

Fascinating sf yarn from a master world-builder on how our language might be manipulated against us.

story of you life by ted chiang was very reminiscent of samuel delany's babel-17, both meditate on how language influences how we think, and how this extends into our perceptions of space and time, cause and effect. personally, i enjoyed delany's novel more because it explored how language can alter our perceptions of gender and politics. chiang left things far more ambiguous, which in this particular case wasn't quite as impactful.

June 11, 2023 - Day 357

I definitely need to read more by Samuel R. Delany after enjoying Babel 17 this much.

From Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17

Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17 (Ace, 1973 vs. Vintage Books, 2004)

Let this sound, this feeling be who I am,

let it also be what holds me the same way you would

<3

(Skip to 44:36)

I seek out queer books with the best of them of course (I know I’ve said I could read nothing but queer sci-fi for the rest of my life and it isn’t a joke) but nothing beats the purity of the joy and delight that comes from reading a book just because the sci-fi premise sounds neat and then discovering unexpectedly it is also queer

Jerome Podwil’s 1966 cover art for Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Review: "Babel-17" by Samuel R. Delany -

Delany's novel about a language designed to be a weapon is spot on, a fascinating and tightly-written experimental story on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that language conditions our realities. "Far out" and fun, Delany is not afraid to offer reader's a direct taste of the effect . . .

You'll find the other polls in my 'sf polls' tag / my pinned post.

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

Babel-17 (Samuel R. Delany) "Rydra Wong is a top linguist, acclaimed poet, and former military cryptologist. When the Alliance military come across a new code used by the enemy, which is beyond their ability to crack, they come to her for help. She informs them that it is not a mere code, but an actual language, and agrees to accept the challenge.

Quickly assembling a crew, Wong heads to the Alliance War Yards to study the raw data on this new language, which the military calls Babel-17. However, shortly after she arrives, an enemy attack forces her to flee in disarray, and she falls in with a privateer, who is, fortunately, on the Alliance side. Or mostly so.

On board the privateer's ship, she begins to learn more about Babel-17, and the surprising benefits and dangers it offers to someone who learns to speak it. The language literally twists the thought pattern of its speakers, making it easier to conceptualize certain ideas, but more difficult to translate your thoughts into anything others can understand."

Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) "Harrow the Ninth is, above all, really fucking confusing. Roughly every third chapter is actively gaslighting the reader about what happened in the last book. The main character is fucking struggling to maintain any sort of grip on reality all throughout the story, and more often than not, she fails miserably. This is due to several factors, including, but not limited to - sleep deprivation, latent schizophrenia, ruthless emotional manipulation from everyone around her, being full of a frankly alarming number of ghosts from several entirely unrelated sources, childhood parental and religious trauma, and a self-inflicted amateur lobotomy."

Vintage Paperback - Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany (1966/1980/1982)

Goddamn I love scifi.

alright later y’all, going to open my main save file on stardew and buy the community upgrades then keep grinding