Babel-17

Paperback, 158 pages

English language

Published May 1, 1969 by Sphere Books.

ISBN:
9780722129142

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (6 reviews)

During an interstellar war one side develops a language, Babel-17, that can be used as a weapon. Learning it turns one into an unwilling traitor as it alters perception and thought. This is discovered by the starship captain Rydra Wong. She is recruited to discover how the enemy are infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites.

16 editions

delany is a human thesaurus for the word 'horny'

5 stars

amazing style for scifi from 66, the babel / sapir-whorf thing is less interesting than the insane amount of biomoded space-sailor furry fighting and fucking he manages to shoehorn in.

he's running laps around stuff from the same time period, most shit then was like 'we got shrunk down to the size of atoms and theres little racist depictions of tribal people trying to kill us with spears' while delany is like 'i can't pilot this hyperdimensional spaceship anymore becuase im sad about the cyberghost of my girlfriend's girlfriend (who had surgery to get giant muscles to win contests in zero-g wrestling matches)'

Ruumiittomia kuolleita ja kielen voimaa

3 stars

Ihmiskunta on sodassa Valloittajien kanssa. Eri paikkoihin tehdään sabotaaseja ja hyökkäyksiä. Vieraalla kielellä, jota kutsutaan Babel-17:ksi, lähetetyt viestit liittyvät jotenkin hyökkäyksiin. Runoilija ja kapteeni Rydra Wong on opiskellut kieltä ja ymmärtää sen antavan puhujalleen erityisiä ajattelun voimia. Hän saa selville missä seuraavat hyökkäykset tulevat tapahtumaan ja lähtee pelastamaan mitä pelastettavissa on.

Taisin kuulla tästä kirjasta Embassytownin liittyen: ehkä, tai selvästikin, sen innoittajana. Kieli muovaa ajattelua, molemmat kirjat kuvaavat sitä (samoin kuin Arrival).

Kirjassa on hauskoja ideoita kuten että avaruusaluksen miehistöön täytyy kuulua aistijoita, jotka ovat ruumiittomia kuolleita. Normaalisti niiden kanssa täytyy puhua eräänlaisella puhelimella, koska ihminen ei pysty muistamaan mitä ruumiittomat sanovat. Rydra on opetellut toistamaan niiden sanat itselleen baskiksi ja muistaa ne lauseet.

Suomikin mainittu.

reviewed Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Part pulp, part high-brow

No rating

A confusing mix when it comes to tone, this story reads mostly as a pulpy space opera, except for those moments where it launches into complicated discussions of linguistics and grammar.

Rydra Wong is a poet with such a great knack for learning languages that it borders on telepathy (body language is a language too, after all), and she uses her talent to decode the messages of the Invaders who, as the name suggests, are at war with her society.

I'm not a linguist, but I believe that the scientific theories on which the premise of this book is based have been debunked , which didn't help my suspension of disbelief. Personally, I was much more interested in another idea Delany introduced: discorporate people. Basically, in the future we prove that ghosts do exist, we just haven't yet developed the technology needed to perceive them. Without technological intervention we simply …

None

4 stars

Babel-17 is an interesting novel that knows how connect the seemingly distant worlds of linguistics, logic and programming languages - with an appreciated dose of space invaders, spies and fights.

This piece of fiction won the Nebula prize in the 1967, in a tie with Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon"

I could deeply appreciate its concepts as I'm currently also learning about these same topics, and the book also made me think of "Arrival" and others Ted Chieng's stories - yet the universe created by Delany is sometimes hard to picture, probably because of the extent use of peculiar words which globally hindered my experience as a non native reader.

Review of 'Babel-17' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This turned out to be a double-book with Empire Star printed upside down. I happened to pick it up that way up when starting, so I read that first. I found the novella annoyingly pat, which was part of the point, I guess. The mechanism was clever, though.

Babel-17 was better. An interesting premise about language shaping thought, and some neat ideas in the world. It had that 60s SF flavor, but I enjoyed it.

avatar for dantereadline@wyrmsign.org

rated it

5 stars