bluegraybox 's review for:

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

4.0

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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.