A review by tricapra
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

3.0

3.5 stars. This was my first Delany experience, and I was very pleasantly surprised. In some ways, this book didn't feel dated at all, despite its 1966 release date. I'm never particularly bothered by old or outdated tech in sci-fi concepts, because hey, that's gonna happen. There were a few humorous moments relating to this -- hamburgers and fries being considered High Cuisine that far in the future. Outrageously progressive for its time, the only eyebrow-raising terminology was Delany's use of "Oriental" to describe Asian folks, but at the same time it only came up a few times because he included so many Asian characters. In 1966. I love his vision of outrageous cosmetic surgery and animal features being commonplace and simple to do, and the social expectation of triad and quad-LGBT pairings instead of monogamous heterosexual pairings. The concept was lovely as well, a language that literally changes your perception of the world and even time, a poet assembling a crew to solve the mystery of it, and an amnesiac criminal who ties the two things together. Unfortunately, I found myself zoning out at times. The worldbuilding and character development felt incidental and more there to show the "neat" ideas Delany had come up with for this book, however it was only his second novel and was written when he was like... 20? So I'm sure he improves those aspects in his later works. I'll be checking out Dhalgren next.