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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Set in a future world with space travel, body modification, ghost, and an intergalactic war with beings known only as “the Invaders”. The Invaders are a specter in the book; they never appear on page, only the effects of their actions. The story is about Rydra Wong, a renowned poet. Her government, the Alliance, asks her to decode messages they’ve intercepted from sites of Invader sabotage. The messages are a code they’ve never heard before, a code they’ve named Babel-17.
When we meet Rydra, she begins with correcting the Alliance’s misconception: Babel-17 isn’t a code. It’s a language. And it’s unlike any language Rydra has learned before. She’s a poet: words are her playground. Babel-17 is the most efficient language she’s ever encountered, and she’s barely begun to scratch the surface of what it can do. She puts together a crew and goes to investigate.
There were lots of interesting ideas explored in this book, especially about language and how it affects how we think. There was a lot of jargon thrown at you. I wouldn’t mind reading it again someday. I enjoyed the story and world Delany built.
If you liked Arrival, I think you’ll like this one. It is a little dated; it’s almost 60 years old. But overall I was pleasantly surprised by it!
Humanity of the far future is coming under attack by strange forces that are impossible to predict, and with each attack comes communication bursts in an unrecognizable language that has come to be known as Babel-17. It resists attempts to translate, and officials are not even sure if it is used to organize the attacks or as an attempted warning. Rydra Wong--whose resume includes starship captain, writer, telepath, and linguist--is tasked to assemble a crew of both the living and the dead and make way to the next predicted victim, to learn what she can of this mysterious language.
The plot here feels less like a driving force and more like a scaffold to hang cool ideas on until it gets conveniently wrapped up in the closing pages. And lest that sound like too damning a complaint, let's be clear that there are some really fuckin' cool ideas here. I love the dead crewmember spectres being reanimated to operate ship systems, and there's a few really fun scenes, as well as some interesting dissection of how pronouns (not of the gender sort, but there's a clear connection to be made there as well) affect language and thought. And hey, it's rare to have an asian woman as a protagonist without some degree of fetishizing them even now--seeing it in a novel from the sixties is welcome and impressive. But all of this can't quite dig it out of some late-book stumbles.
Overall Grade: B-. If it were judged entirely on plot and character, it would probably be a full letter lower, but there's enough interesting concept here to keep it moving.
Big time Sapir-Whorf energy on this one, which feels like such a strange decision
Bumped this up to 4 stars after re-reading it. For a book published in 1966, it's aged surprisingly well. There are tech anachronisms--they have warp drives but they're still using public pay phones and filing cabinets--but culturally it fits on the shelf next to modern sci-fi like The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. What was super-edgy back then is now mainstream progressive. There are space battles, but the story hinges more on empathy and communication. It's about poetry and linguistics, not gadgets.
The main themes of the novel are interesting; the idea of language affecting how you think is fascinating. The main character is a woman who has a personality, which is amazing given that the boom was published in 1966. But obvious 1960s technology in a story with interstellar ships is jarring when it shows up repeatedly. I kept being taken out of the story.
adventurous
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
lighthearted
medium-paced
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
fast-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
incredibly cool universe and characters! the use of poetic type prose and other linguistic thingymabobs was really engaging and cool to see in a scifi piece! i wish there was a sequel :^D