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

3.0

I wanted to like Babel-17 more than I did. I listened to it on audiobook, which propelled me forward in reading, but it wasn't a book I couldn't wait to listen to again. Sometimes I felt very dumb reading it, but the ending does explain everything that happened.

The entire part about Babel-17 being a programming language and how Delany played with programming languages' lack of "I" made me think a lot about this current hype wave of AI and how inhuman the output of GenAI (text, images, and videos) are.

I found it hilarious that the male audio narrator went full Nathan Lane in The Birdcage when doing the Baroness' voice but just had a normal voice for Rydra.