sdwoodchuck 's review for:

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

3.25

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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.