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

3.0

This was a playground of cool ideas, but I was frustrated by how little they mattered to the actual story. I love that the protagonist and spaceship captain of a 1966 novel was a bisexual Asian woman, but she was inhumanly perfect (famous poet, unparalleled linguist, genius strategist, Aikido blackbelt, telepathic, so beautiful everyone falls instantly in love with her, and so charismatic that she transforms the lives of everyone she meets) and experienced no character development, so it was hard to feel invested.