Babel-17 (S.F. MASTERWORKS): Samuel R. Delany

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As she cracks open the mystery of Babel-17, she discovers more about her inner world as well as some other deep secrets - revealed through the sheer power of language. They manifest strongly in Babel-17, where Delany suggests that language might in fact be enough to shape or split someone’s personality, to effectively disembody oneself within one’s body. In the end I am guessing that I will give this 4 stars and say it was a really enjoyable SF book, nothing more, nothing pretentious, nothing deep, just a good book. I have no idea where I am supposed to place them, and puzzling out how to read a book is not my idea of a good time.

That sort of idiotic specialization is one of the reasons I haven't worked with them for the past six years. Babel-17 is probably Delany's most read novel (most -known- would be Dhalgren, quite a different thing), and is certainly one his very best. Far from my favourite Delany novel, Babel-17 does confirm, I think, that I prefer his science fiction to his fantasy outings.so much so that I wondered if there was some kind of allegory to the sixties I was too thick to get. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he's entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world.

General, I have to know everything you know about Babel-17; where you got it, when, under what circumstances, anything that might give me a clue to the subject matter. This intriguing idea immediately brought to mind the movie "Arrival" from last year, which was based on a SF story with similar themes.Having read Nova only two months ago, I thought I had a handle on Delany’s more esoteric tendencies. At the beginning of the book, Rydra has already determined that Babel-17 isn’t a code, it’s a language. Delany was the subject of a 2007 documentary, The Polymath, by Fred Barney Taylor, and he has written a popular creative writing textbook, About Writing. In terms of both ideas and prose style, it’s hard for me to name any other author, living or dead, who has similar work, though I can think of a fair few who cite Delany as one of their primary influences. She's been recruited to investigate how the enemy is able to infiltrate and commit acts of sabotage.

In a far future when man alongside a few other races is spread all over the universe, a universe where a number of these races, include the humans have been at war for decades.Rydra has to learn this the hard way when her own ship experiences malfunctions on take-off, leaving them adrift until they manage to get back on course for their destination: the center of weapons production for the Alliance. It's believed that Babel-17 is the code which the enemy agents use to communicate, but as she comes to understand more about it she realizes that she herself is being changed by it as she learns more and delves deeper. What I already know is only this: your name, and that some time ago you worked for Military Cryptography. They've starved during the embargoes, broken windows, looted, run screaming before firehoses, torn flesh from a corpse's arm with decalcified teeth.

And whispered, "My God, she's beautiful," without even having to pick her from among the other women. This book has more than just linguistic appeal, however, - it details the futuristic society with genetic engineering, changed concepts of love, star ships, stellar battles, futuristic technology (of course, now riddled with unavoidable anachronisms, but fascinating nevertheless), discorporate members of the society - all this told through Delany's vivid haunting imagery, told in the language that shifts between crisp and poetic, fluidly transitioning between scenes and concepts, illustrated by modernistic and surreal poems at the beginning of each section.

Babel-17 , winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. From here, he further invokes tropes common to 1960s SF, including psychic and telepathic abilities. But this book was still very good, and despite being incredibly dated in terms of future gadgets, succeeds well in producing a literate, intelligent, and memorable SF novel that mirrored the dramatic social changes happening at the time.