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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
In terms of plot, it felt underdeveloped and somewhat unresolved. Part of me wonders if this is intentional. We're dropped in the middle of this much larger world and conflict, and given just enough to understand what's going on without getting bogged down into the details that aren't immediately relevant to our main cast. Even the characters aren't that developed outside of what we need to know to understand the story at hand. In that sense it maybe is intentionally subverting the space opera genre where you have these huge worlds and sprawling plots. You get the sense that this book is instead just one random installment among maybe 5 or 6 others.
What we're left with instead is really this idea of how language works, as exemplified through Babel-17. Insofar as that goes, this novel actually deserves a lot more credit because it predates Ted Chiang's "Story of Our Life," which I have to say is much less impressive now that I see just how thoroughly it rips off of Delany's work here. Chiang does some stuff differently, and both texts are worth reading, but Chiang's is an homage to this one at best and plagiarism at worst.
The one thing that is worth noting about the book is how much it spends the racism and sexism of white male sci-fi authors of the era. Whereas Bradbury in Martian Chronicles goes out of his way to baseless claim that the whole continent of Africa will never get a space program (no past, says Hegel, no future says Bradbury) Delany includes a diverse cast of characters with international origins who bring some of their old ancestral knowledge of kiswahili and American indigenous linguistic skills to bear in this new futuristic setting. And all led by a woman of east Asian origin. It's refreshing to see how easy it is to simply not be racist at a time when white men were (and still are) tripping over themselves to unleash their (sub?)concious racial hatred.
What we're left with instead is really this idea of how language works, as exemplified through Babel-17. Insofar as that goes, this novel actually deserves a lot more credit because it predates Ted Chiang's "Story of Our Life," which I have to say is much less impressive now that I see just how thoroughly it rips off of Delany's work here. Chiang does some stuff differently, and both texts are worth reading, but Chiang's is an homage to this one at best and plagiarism at worst.
The one thing that is worth noting about the book is how much it spends the racism and sexism of white male sci-fi authors of the era. Whereas Bradbury in Martian Chronicles goes out of his way to baseless claim that the whole continent of Africa will never get a space program (no past, says Hegel, no future says Bradbury) Delany includes a diverse cast of characters with international origins who bring some of their old ancestral knowledge of kiswahili and American indigenous linguistic skills to bear in this new futuristic setting. And all led by a woman of east Asian origin. It's refreshing to see how easy it is to simply not be racist at a time when white men were (and still are) tripping over themselves to unleash their (sub?)concious racial hatred.
Just not for me, plot seems interesting but writing style is a little dated for what I’ve been reading recently so I’d like to come back to it
I've a bad habit of going big or going home when it comes to various authors, one that is bad if only for how the history comes back to bite me when I go after their less monumental works. [b:The Golden Notebook|24100|The Golden Notebook|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367457541i/24100._SY75_.jpg|99441] made for a less striking [b:The Good Terrorist|707060|The Good Terrorist|Doris Lessing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358325562i/707060._SY75_.jpg|2769827], [b:The Second Sex|457264|The Second Sex|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327978178i/457264._SY75_.jpg|879666] resulted in a piss poor [b:The Mandarins|19528|The Mandarins|Simone de Beauvoir|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1484025834i/19528._SY75_.jpg|20761], and I haven't even tried the smaller respective compatriots of [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446876799i/6759._SY75_.jpg|3271542] or [b:Almanac of the Dead|52385|Almanac of the Dead|Leslie Marmon Silko|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386924233i/52385._SY75_.jpg|316915] for fear of being less than blown away (yes, I technically read DFW nonfiction post-IJ, but that's not the same and you know it). Now, we have this barely a breadth of a piece in the wake of [b:Dhalgren|85867|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320531180i/85867._SY75_.jpg|873021], and I gotta say: I don't know what changed in the eight years between when Delany wrote that and this, or if this all hinges on the years between when I read that and this (that'd suck some serious balls), but I have no time and even less patience for sci-fi that does nothing to break the concept that is 'normality' and everything to reinforce it.
So. Language. Nifty, right? The ways in which we control and are controlled by it. Delany's efforts at exploring both through poetry and prose would have been laudable if it weren't for the rampant fetishization of neuroatypicals. Autism? Check. Major depressive disorder? Check. Schizophrenia? That's practically a spoiler if I were the type to talk about plots in my reviews. Lucky for you, I care far more about what kinds of anarchy authors breed along the lines they write than the conventions of arc and climax they follow, which is why I loved [b:Dhalgren|85867|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320531180i/85867._SY75_.jpg|873021] so and expected far greater things from this. Alas, between the previews of the language to be found in a to be written 800+ page behemoth and some engagingly novel sci-fi tidbits, I got a rhapsodizing thumbing through the mental illness photo album that began as a metaphor and ended as a plot device, as all good inmates of insane asylums do. I can say 'insane' because I am. Are you?
In the end, this is the type of sci-fi I avoided for years by refusing to read the genre wholesale: too in love with its seeming originality to take the originality's sordid underbelly head on. It's disappointing because this is Delany we're talking about, of the read [b:Dhalgren|85867|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320531180i/85867._SY75_.jpg|873021] and the yet to be read [b:The Motion Of Light In Water|353325|The Motion Of Light In Water Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388551356i/353325._SY75_.jpg|343536] and [b:Tales of Nevèrÿon|85866|Tales of Nevèrÿon (Return to Nevèrÿon, #1)|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1376845643i/85866._SY75_.jpg|82862]. I'll simply have to hope that those later two are less obsessed with inaccurately portraying brains which are already capable of so much that comic books and sci fi call them by the name of super powers and treat with carelessness of a bull in a china shop. If the next one I try out is not, I don't see any point in venturing further.
So. Language. Nifty, right? The ways in which we control and are controlled by it. Delany's efforts at exploring both through poetry and prose would have been laudable if it weren't for the rampant fetishization of neuroatypicals. Autism? Check. Major depressive disorder? Check. Schizophrenia? That's practically a spoiler if I were the type to talk about plots in my reviews. Lucky for you, I care far more about what kinds of anarchy authors breed along the lines they write than the conventions of arc and climax they follow, which is why I loved [b:Dhalgren|85867|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320531180i/85867._SY75_.jpg|873021] so and expected far greater things from this. Alas, between the previews of the language to be found in a to be written 800+ page behemoth and some engagingly novel sci-fi tidbits, I got a rhapsodizing thumbing through the mental illness photo album that began as a metaphor and ended as a plot device, as all good inmates of insane asylums do. I can say 'insane' because I am. Are you?
In the end, this is the type of sci-fi I avoided for years by refusing to read the genre wholesale: too in love with its seeming originality to take the originality's sordid underbelly head on. It's disappointing because this is Delany we're talking about, of the read [b:Dhalgren|85867|Dhalgren|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320531180i/85867._SY75_.jpg|873021] and the yet to be read [b:The Motion Of Light In Water|353325|The Motion Of Light In Water Sex And Science Fiction Writing In The East Village|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388551356i/353325._SY75_.jpg|343536] and [b:Tales of Nevèrÿon|85866|Tales of Nevèrÿon (Return to Nevèrÿon, #1)|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1376845643i/85866._SY75_.jpg|82862]. I'll simply have to hope that those later two are less obsessed with inaccurately portraying brains which are already capable of so much that comic books and sci fi call them by the name of super powers and treat with carelessness of a bull in a china shop. If the next one I try out is not, I don't see any point in venturing further.
Interesting, although a little dated. Not as much as some sci-fi from the 60s, that’s for sure! It certainly didn’t feel as cringe-worthy in places as some of Heinlein’s stuff. I thought there was a lot of interesting thoughts about language, and how language shapes our thoughts.