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

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The language also not only allows one to express ideas much quicker but seems to also change one's worldview.

My main complaint is that the novel is too short and that many of the critical scenes, especially late in the story, disappear into the blank spaces between chapters. This one was dated, riddled with anachronisms and some retro slightly offensive views on race and gender.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. So although the story itself doesn't add up to much in the end, I enjoyed the journey for it's oddball characters and stylistic writing. Most of those ideas relate to language and communication, but there is also weapon development, faster than light navigation, genetic enhancement, a bit of battle action and a memorable trip through a dystopian city peopled with oddball characters, both alive and incorporate. Rydra Wong is a poet and sometime code breaker who is asked by the military to translate communications that have come from “the invaders” around the time of attacks and sabotage. The Navigator is a set of three people acting in unison, one of whom has to be raised from the dead and only speaks Swahili.

Humanity, which has spread throughout the universe, is involved in a war with the Invaders, who have been covertly assassinating officials and sabotaging spaceships.

I needed to have my head and heart stirred and stimulated in precisely the way that this book did after reading a couple of stolid, predictable books recently.

I’m pretty sure that when a French person and an American person think about pizza, we’re thinking of the same thing apart from the toppings. E eu amei a força que dão para a linguagem nessa história, a poeta é uma das protagonistas, porque o protagonismo mesmo é dado para a linguagem.Delany hoped to have Babel-17 originally published as a single volume with the novella Empire Star, but this did not happen until a 2001 reprint. The ending is the only part that I have some qualms with - it felt a bit too rushed, too convenient, and lacking a bit compared to the wonder of the story leading up to the resolution. A late-comer to the worlds of science fiction, John Folk-Williams circled around it, first by blogging (primarily through Storied Mind) about inner struggles and the mind’s way of distorting reality. The pervasiveness of 20th century culture in a story purporting to be set in humanity's far future was also an annoyance.