Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany (1966)
Babel-17 is about a new language created to be used interstellar warfare, and as I read the book of the same name, I indeed felt I was reading something written in another language. This terse Nebula winner is more a novella than a novel, and only offers tantalizing glimpses of the world Delany has built and the interesting characters that populate it.
I don’t have much to offer on this book. I found it difficult to get through, even knowing the conceit, having read the Wikipedia article simply to orient myself. Written in 1966. science fiction was opening up to new horizons, even more existential yet hallucinogenic horizons. Rydra Wong is a telepath, much like many of the characters we’ve seen in novels coming from the 1950s and early 60s. But Babel-17 seems to fall more along the lines of the sexual revolution and drug culture that the late 1960s fully embraced, as it is a language that offers wonderful glimpses of a new world, much like a hallucinogen might. The only downside if the drug cum language turns its speakers into saboteurs. Also, the dichotomy between Rydra’s allies and the enemy Invaders mimics the bipolar system of conflict set up by the Cold War during this period.
It’s surprising that the center of Delany’s novel is a young woman who is presented as competent, intelligent, strong, and capable. She’s not asexual but she’s also not oversexualized. This is a triumph for a science fiction novel of any period, not to mention one written in 1966.
I can’t really recommend or not recommend this book, as I found it slipping through my mind like water. I’ve read some of Delany’s short stories and enjoyed them, and he has another Nebula winner from the year immediately proceeding this one, so I’ll get to try again with him at a later date. Until then, I’ll let you all judge Babel-17.
