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A review by accidentalspaceexplorer
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
2.5
This is based on the same concept as Ted Chiang's story Story of Your Life, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but while I find it really compelling in Arrival & his story, I did not find it very compelling here. Part of that I think is that I've taken a linguistic anthropology class since then, & one of the things we talked about is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis doesn't work! For very specific tasks that you practice a lot, yes, it works, like if your language uses N/E/S/W instead of left & right for relative positioning you will be much better at determining the cardinal directions, but otherwise no. So I know it's false, which undermines the plot.
But more than that, I didn't particularly find the characters compelling. I never felt like I wanted to DNF, but I also could have stopped at any time and not cared. There was some interesting worldbuilding but it was counterbalanced for me by the random fatphobia & disgust characters would have for each other.
But more than that, I didn't particularly find the characters compelling. I never felt like I wanted to DNF, but I also could have stopped at any time and not cared. There was some interesting worldbuilding but it was counterbalanced for me by the random fatphobia & disgust characters would have for each other.