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.