Babel-17/Empire Star

by Samuel R. Delany

Alternate cover edition can be found here.

Author of the bestselling Dhalgren and winner of four Nebulas and one Hugo, Samuel R. Delany is one of the most acclaimed writers of speculative fiction.

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. 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. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany’s vast and singular talent.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Book Club, Space Opera, Fantasy

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Samuel Ray Delany, also known as "Chip," is an award-winning American science fiction author. He was born to a prominent black family on April 1, 1942, and raised in Harlem. His mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany, was a library clerk in the New York Public Library system. His father, Samuel Ray Delany, Senior, ran a successful Harlem undertaking establishment, Levy & Delany Funeral Home, on 7th Avenue, between 1938 and his death in 1960. The family lived in the top two floors of the three-story private house between five- and six-story Harlem apartment buildings. Delany's aunts were Sadie and Bessie Delany; Delany used some of their adventures as the basis for the adventures of his characters Elsie and Corry in the opening novella Atlantis: Model 1924 in his book of largely autobiographical stories Atlantis: Three Tales.

Delany attended the Dalton School and the Bronx High School of Science, during which he was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the Louis August Jonas Foundation's international summer scholarship program. Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker met in high school, and were married in 1961. Their marriage lasted nineteen years. They had a daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany (b. 1974), who spent a decade working in theater in New York City.

Delany was a published science fiction author by the age of 20. He published nine well-regarded science fiction novels between 1962 and 1968, as well as several prize-winning short stories (collected in Driftglass [1971] and more recently in Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories [2002]). His eleventh and most popular novel, Dhalgren, was published in 1975. His main literary project through the late 1970s and 1980s was the Return to Nevèrÿon series, the overall title of the four volumes and also the title of the fourth and final book.

Delany has published several autobiographical/semi-autobiographical accounts of his life as a black, gay, and highly dyslexic writer, including his Hugo award winning autobiography, The Motion of Light in Water.

Since 1988, Delany has been a professor at several universities. This includes eleven years as a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a year and a half as an English professor at the University at Buffalo. He then moved to the English Department of Temple University in 2001, where he has been teaching since. He has had several visiting guest professorships before and during these same years. He has also published several books of criticism, interviews, and essays. In one of his non-fiction books, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999), he draws on personal experience to examine the relationship between the effort to redevelop Times Square and the public sex lives of working-class men, gay and straight, in New York City.

In 2007, Delany was the subject of a documentary film, The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman. The film debuted on April 25 at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

Reviews

[TAP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until something is named, it doesn't exist.

Does thought create language? Or does language create thought?
Mind-opening science fiction about language and its power.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Problems of linguistics, translation, communication, cast into sharp relief by a future expanded beyond only earth's human languages and a protagonist whose pattern recognition skills, particularly in human interactions, border on telepathy. This is always at its best when riffing off of the major thematic concerns of language and meaning, which are fortunately well-worked into the fabric of the novel, as the very speech patterns and off-handed body-language descriptions of have key plot-points to convey. The purity of the philosophic conceptions is arguably a little bogged down in places by absurd and marginally necessary sci-fi adventure conceits, but even these are a good playground/structure for the ideas (except in a few places where purely plot-driven concerns actually seem to dilute the ideas a bit). Otherwise, they're often justifiably entertaining in their own right, and link up into a deft compact mystery story.

Written, amazingly, when Delany was only 23, already his 6th published novel. Not quite up to Dhalgren, of course, but much better than Nova, which looks almost ordinary when viewed between these two others.

The b-side is a novella referenced within the main narative, which Delaney apparently wrote in 10 days to fund a trip to Europe, a fast, witty fable about a boy chosen to deliver a message he does not know. Despite this, it's only a deceptively simplex tale with decidedly multiplex designs, neat post-modern flourishes, contorted plotting that leaves quite a lot of space for the reader to poke about and form connections. However, there're parts I'll never understand: namely how such a thing could be composed in under two weeks, the same month that Delany finished writing a work as different as Babel-17.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empire Star is the "short side" of Babel-17, flip Babel-17 upside-down and over and there's Empire Star, ready to be read. It's apparently the way Delany originally wanted it published but it never happened.

With Empire Star I can see more clearly the rollicking, adventurous, humorous sides of Delany's writing. It's a coming of age type of novella starring Comet Jo on his journey to deliver an important (though as yet unknown to him) message to Empire Star (which ends up being the sort of mystical heart of the universe). He's a simplex person from a simplex world and the journey charts his progress into a multiplex character. A simplex person is a one-sided person, a simple person who accepts everything at face value, rarely asks questions or questions anything, and sits pat on firm conclusions; but a simplex can also be very intelligent, just not multifaceted (Dubya and others come to my mind). A multiplex person takes nothing at face value, questions everything, accepts no final answer or conclusion, and basically sees the world through a variety of lenses that never settle into a single picture; but a multiplex is not necessarily an intellectual, just a person with an expanded mind.

This journey from simplex to multiplex appeared to be the main point of the novella, but there were other themes as well, like a final flourish in the form of a riff on Eternal Return or circular time. Delany obviously had a great time writing this, which according to a note he did in 10 days in 1965 to finance a trip to Europe.


* * * * * * * * *


There was an odd static quality to Babel-17, even despite all the space travel and fighting. This static quality stemmed from the fact that while reading this book I felt like a space traveller inside Delany’s head (space travel probably does have an odd static quality – confined in a pod, few if any reference points whizzing by). This readerly space-travelling pod-confinement inside Delany’s head was a result of the novel itself being a big mental puzzle, or rather the embodiment of an intellectual problem (on deep issues of language and its relation to reality and identity) posed by then solved by Delany. In this way Babel-17 is like a high-brow thesis in the language of science fiction. This novel, more than most, benefits greatly from the reader being able to hold the whole novel in its entirety in one’s head as an object to be contemplated once completed. Then one can see more clearly the knotted up thorny quality of the problem (which is the bulk of the book after all) as opposed to just the unloosening freedom of the solution at the end.

I’m sorry I can’t say more, but Delany is one of those authors who obsessively deals with the same brainy themes in book after book, so it helps to read a few to really grasp what he’s up to, and as this is only my first (completed), please tune in for more once I read more.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think some of my favorite SF/Fantasy stories are the ones that give language a special place in the universe. Bene Gesserit witches commanding people with "the Voice." Wizards in the world of Earthsea practicing magic by knowing something's "true name." Add to that list "Babel-17," a language so analytically precise it can give you telepathic-like abilities. At the heart of this fictional language is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which (in my crude layman's simplification) is the idea that your language shapes who you are and how you see not only the world, but yourself. This intriguing idea immediately brought to mind the movie "Arrival" from last year, which was based on a SF story with similar themes. Others have noted the same, and view "Babel-17" as a kind of literary seed for such material.

The usual hallmarks of a great Delany story are all here: an idea/theme that draws you in, eerie poetic interludes, and trangressive sexual relationships. Someone even has sex with a ghost. I know that sounds like something invented just to give conservatives a conniption fit, but the overall effect is an odd beauty, a celebration of the strange and weird that reminds you of how much of what we think is strange and weird is rooted in mere familiarity. At one point Delany has a prudish customers officer accompany the main characters into the wild and raucous "transport" section of a city, where they must recruit their remaining crew members. In-story, his presence is explained by the need for him to process what is essentially their paperwork, but he also acts as a stand-in for us, the reader. Because he is unfamiliar with the ways of "transport" life, everything he sees shocks and appalls him, and at one point he calls some of the characters perverts. But over time he realizes that his reaction is nothing more than prejudice:

"I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I had ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little myself....And they didn't seem so weird or strange anymore."

It's a story-telling technique Delany employed in "Nova" as well, and it's very effective. Explanatory dialogue can be given in a natural way, and a larger emotional idea is conveyed as well.

"Empire Star" is short story, less than a hundred pages, which apparently Delany originally wanted packaged with "Babel-17," but ended up getting published separately. It is briefly mentioned in "Babel-17" as a series of books the characters are familiar with, making it part of that interesting genre of fictional works within fictional works. Delany seems to like doing this; I once wrote down all the "fake books" mentioned in "Dahlgren." It adds just the right amount of meta-flavor to his worlds, and I love it.

Anyway, for such a brief story, "Empire Star" manages to be surprisingly good. The ending resolves itself rather abruptly through the magic of timey-wimey science, but it works with the almost fairy-tale hectic pace. It whirs by so fast you might miss some of the heavier themes involving slavery and the nature of intelligence, as well as this little exchange which I particularly liked, and which I think captures some of the tone of it all:

"I remember," Jo said, putting down the ocarina, "when Charona was trying to explain it to me, she asked me what was the most important thing there was. If I asked them that, I know what they would have said: their blasted dictionary, or encyclopedia, or whatever it is."

"Very good. Anyone who can give a nonrelative answer to that question is simplex."

"I said jhup," Jo recalled wistfully.

"They're in the process of cataloguing all the knowledge in the universe."

"That's more important than jhup, I suppose," Jo said.

"From a complex point of view, perhaps. But from a multiplex point of view, they're about the same. First of all, it's a rather difficult task. When last I heard, they were already up to the B's, but I'm sure they don't have a thing on Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavdqx."

"What's...well, what you said?"

"It's the name for a rather involved set of deterministic moral evaluations taken through a relativistic view of the dynamic moment. I was studying it some years back."

"I wasn't familiar with the term."

"I just made it up. But what it stands for is quite real, and well worth an article. I don't think they could even comprehend it. But from now on, I shall refer to it as Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavdqx, and there are two of us who know the word now--so it's valid."

"I guess I get the point."

"Besides, cataloguing all knowledge, even all available knowledge, while admirable, is...well, the only word is simplex."

"Why?"

"One can learn all one needs to know; or one can learn what one wants to know. But to learn all one wants to know, which is what the Geodesic Survey Station is doing, even falls apart semantically."

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Snow Crash and The Languages of Pao among others have taken the central conceit further and to greater plot extent, but here there is the pure revelry in language and thought.

With all the posthuman influences and their subversive ideas for 1966--the group marriages that suggest a homosexual component, the body modification--the thing that jarred me was a brief warfare discussion with disturbing relevance today: a secondary explosion delayed some hours after the first. Just enough time for rescue workers to descend upon the site.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This book was formative for me. I read it in elementary school, and the powerful message it conveyed about how the language you know shapes the way you are able to think affects me to this day. It's science fiction, won a Nebula Award, reads more like poetry than prose at various points, and isn't for everyone - but if it's for you, it's powerful."

[Dario Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um pequeno alerta: Li Babel-17. Não li Estrela Imperial.
Escrito em poucas semanas e publicado em 1966, quando o autor tinha vinte e três anos, Babel-17 é um jorro imparável de ideias. Mesmo com mais de 50 anos, ainda é um livro com grande frescor. O mundo ficcional criado por ele é tremendamente vivo, repleto de coisas que têm um jeito cyberpunk que estava muito adiante do ambiente em que ele vivia. Com tanta misturada ao mesmo tempo, não é exatamente um livro fácil e tem algumas coisas que até podem ser incômodas.
Dito isso, em um livro de 274 páginas há tanta coisa que é até mesmo difícil escolher por onde começar.
Dentre tantas escolhas possíveis, fico com a premissa básica do livro: a nossa mente, o nosso modo de pensar e ver o mundo são moldados de acordo com a língua que falamos?
Existe uma hipótese chamada Sapir-Whorf que propõe exatamente isso.
Do ponto de vista científico, seria bastante complexo examiná-la com detalhes. Existem muitas variáveis e o debate acadêmico é bastante acirrado. As implicações políticas, diga-se, são enormes.
De qualquer modo, se pode dizer que existe uma versão mais forte da hipótese, ou seja, a língua determina como se pensa, e uma mais fraca, a língua influencia como se pensa. A segunda é aceita em alguma medida.
As implicações na nossa vida prática, mesmo da versão mais fraca, são imensas. É claro, porém, que é o uso da versão mais forte que tem mais apelo ficcional, como é o caso aqui em Babel-17
Na Ficção Científica, a hipótese (também conhecida como relativismo linguístico) tem sido utilizada com alguma frequência. Lembro de dois casos.
O primeiro – em que ela é explicitamente apresentada – é “A história da sua vida”, de Ted Chiang. Esse conto se transformou no bom “A Chegada”, filme de Denis Villeneuve.
O segundo é o 1984, de George Orwell. É verdade que o Orwell em nenhum momento trata da hipótese, mas é evidente que a novilíngua, o idioma que está sendo elaborado, tem o propósito de moldar o jeito com que as pessoas pensam: o Partido deseja um mundo com uma língua mais restrita, em que não existem palavras. Isso impediria que sequer se pudesse pensar em certos conceitos. Se não existe uma palavra para, digamos, ‘livro’, se poderia chegar ao ponto em que o conceito ‘livro’ desaparecesse.
A personagem principal do Delany questiona em certo momento: “Se não há nenhuma palavra para algo, como se pensa nesse algo?”
Resumindo. a partir do momento em que existe uma palavra para algo, pensar naquele algo se torna possível. A partir do momento em que se pensa em algo, a percepção do mundo e o modo como se pensa passam a ser outros. É como se só se pudesse sentir prazer com a desgraça alheia a partir do momento em que se aprendesse alemão e a palavra ‘schadenfreude’ se tornasse parte do nosso vocabulário.
O Delany escolhe a versão forte da teoria porque exatamente a mais interessante do ponto de vista ficcional.
Aprender Babel-17 tem esse poder transformacional. Quem a conhece se torna outra pessoa. É a arma perfeita que está sendo utilizada pelos invasores (quem são eles?) para destruir alvos militares vitais da Aliança.
“Pensar em Babel-17 era como ver de repente todo o trajeto dentro da água até o fundo de um poço que, um momento atrás, você acreditava ter apenas alguns metros de profundidade. Ela cambaleou, tonta”.
E como enfrentar uma arma como essas? Rydra Wong, que aos 26 anos é a poeta mais popular das 5 galáxias é a convocada para a missão de encontrar uma solução. Conhecedora de línguas terráqueas e alienígenas e possuidora de uma capacidade quase telepática, junta uma tripulação e parte em uma busca pela resposta.
Enfim, um livro bem interessante, que exige um tanto do leitor. Não é para qualquer leitor de FC, mas a quantidade vertiginosa de ideias nos faz também abrir um pouco a cabeça a respeito das potencialidades do gênero.
Por fim, uma última reflexão interessante: “A maioria dos livros didáticos diz que a língua é um mecanismo para expressar o pensamento. Mas língua é pensamento. O pensamento é informação com forma. A forma é a língua. A forma desta língua é... incrível. Quando você aprende outra língua, você aprende a maneira como outras pessoas veem o mundo, o universo. E quando vejo essa língua, começo a ver... demais”.

[Rita Zerbinatti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eu fiquei boiando em alguns momentos, mas ao mesmo tempo eu estava encantada! Foi uma leitura deliciosa, um prato cheio para quem gosta de linguística, essas paradas.

A protagonista é uma poeta, telepata, com uma habilidade incrível para aprender novos idiomas. 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.

Um livro com uma vibe "A chegada", mas com muito mais ação! Amei!

[Ronan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Babel-17 - 4 ⭐

Fiquei bem surpreso sobre como o livro explora a linguagem não apenas como uma ferramenta de comunicação, mas como uma força poderosa capaz de moldar a realidade, a identidade e até mesmo a natureza do pensamento.

A história nos apresenta Rydra que é uma poetisa célebre cuja sensibilidade única à linguagem a torna a candidata ideal para decifrar um código enigmático conhecido como Babel-17. Ambientada em um cenário de guerra interestelar, onde a humanidade enfrenta ameaças de invasores alienígenas, a narrativa usa o mistério dessa linguagem para sondar questões mais profundas sobre poder e percepção.

É um livro que desafia a narrativa convencional e nos leva a refletir sobre como a linguagem molda nossa compreensão do mundo e de nós mesmos. A exploração da linguagem como arte e ferramenta de poder é extremamente interessante, me fez refletir bastante, realmente um livro sensacional.

Estrela Imperial - 4.5 ⭐

Temos aqui uma ópera espacial em sua melhor forma, repleta de mistério e drama intelectual.

Esta novela nos transporta para um universo onde a jornada envolve tanto a decodificação de mensagens enigmáticas quanto a decifração da própria linguagem da existência. A narrativa acompanha o jovem Cometa Jo em uma jornada para entregar uma mensagem urgente, uma missão que começa com encontros sobrenaturais em uma lua habitável perto de Tau Ceti. Ao longo do caminho, a história nos apresenta uma série de personagens fascinantes, incluindo um gatinho diabólico e a enigmática e cristalina narradora conhecida como Jewel, cujas observações conferem à história uma voz peculiar, porém envolvente.

O texto tem um ritmo acelerado e narrativa extremamente concisa. Estrela Imperial é muito mais do que apenas uma aventura. É uma meditação sobre forma, conexão e o próprio ato de contar histórias trazendo uma profundidade filosófica à ficção científica. Queria que fosse mais longo, mas acredito que mesmo nessas poucas páginas há um desenvolvimento satisfatório, realmente uma novela excelente.

[Zoë Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the first 2 pages of Empire Star (the bonus novella) and I made the executive decision to DNF it because Babel-17 was so good & I was not getting the same ~vibes~ from Empire Star. If you aren't a huge fan of sci-fi you'll probably still enjoy Babel-17 because it's kind of genius and also feels wayyy ahead of its time.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love.

“The thing was multicolored, multifaceted, multiplexed, and me.⁣
I’m Jewel.” - Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany⁣
⁣
I picked up this volume collecting Samuel Delany’s novels Babel-17 and Empire Star after the former was nominated for SFF Book Club. Babel-17 was my first Delany a few years ago, and it’s one I’ve since recommended consistently as a great starting place for his work, so I was thrilled to revisit it.
⁣
Upon rereading, my Babel-17 love has only grown stronger. This novel follows a poet named Rydra Wong investigating an alien language believed to be a key weapon in an ongoing war. It was especially exciting to revisit after reading Delany’s memoir, The Motion of Light in Water, which covers the time period in which he wrote these two stories. At the time, Delany was in a three person relationship with his wife and another man who lived with them. Depictions of that bleed onto the page in the descriptions of the tripled Navigators and Rydra’s former tripled relationship. Book club also yielded new insights, after it was mentioned that one of Rydra’s partners’ names, Muels Aranlyde, is an anagram for Samuel R. Delany, I also noticed the name of the third member of the triple, Fobo Lombs, is likewise an anagram of Delany and Hacker’s then partner, Bob Folsom! ⁣⁣
With the plot already sketched in my mind, I took more note in this read of the structural choices Delany makes. He immerses the reader in the story in surprising visceral ways, like a scene where a single pages-long sentence is intercut with quick sentence asides. As I stumbled on where to pause and read these inset sentences it emphasized the frenzy of Rydra’s mind as the pace of her thoughts outstripped the pace of her actions when she begins to think in Babel-17. I love the ideas that Delany plays with in this novel, how language forms and constricts our thoughts and concept of ourselves and our world, and I even more wholeheartedly recommend it than before.⁣

Reading Empire Star right after Babel-17 was such a delight, providing the full effect of the ‘novel within a novel’ situation going on here, since Empire Star and “the ‘Comet Jo’ books” appear in Babel-17 as the writings of Rydra’s partner, Muels Aranlyde of the Delany anagram. This warmly convoluted novella tells the story of a simplex boy named Comet Jo from a backwater planet who’s conscripted by a dying stranger to deliver an unspecified message to a distant star. The message comes along with the crystalized form of a multiplex consciousness that also serves as the book’s narrator, Jewel. I was so charmed by the book’s third person omniscient narration that’s peppered with Jewel’s sudden first person intrusions. Much of the book feels like a wacky adventure, but it deals also with heavy themes, notably the high cost of slavery. I loved Delany’s exploration of the complex cycle of time, and how parts of our stories belong to ourselves but others belong to history. This book is brain-bending and brilliant, and very much stands alone, but I think reading it right after Babel-17 provides the finest experience.

[Rambling Raconteur · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://youtu.be/fVZcUlTt7_o?si=qch_o...

[Macartney · Rating 4 out of 5]

October 2022:
Rating: 4 stars
These were a slog to get through the second time. Still objectively well written and Delany’s lifelong themes are present, but what a slog. Empire Star twist still tugs the heart even if the strings are blatant, cliched, and underdeveloped.

Aug 6, 2015:
Rating: 5 stars
Review: In 50 or 100 or 200 years, The Complete Works of Samuel R Delany will be as important a tome as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare is today.

[MFCOMMAND · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delany seems to have a positive reputation among sci-fi writer pioneers & this is my first introduction to his work. I liked both stories.
At times, I had some difficulty following the narrative in Babel-17.
Interesting to read some older sci-fi & I'm intrigued to read some more earlier sci-fi by Black writers.

[John Pistelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a coruscating epistolary critique of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, innocuously titled "Letter to Q——" in the 2005 collection About Writing, Samuel R. Delany tabulates what he sees as the many flaws of Morrison's classic first novel. The gravamen of his indictment is that Morrison so indulges miscegenation-anxiety and sex-panic that her book becomes ideologically akin to Birth of a Nation and George Lincoln Rockwell. In passing, though, he notes more mildly that the novel is also informed by "feminist clichés." As this champion of the cultural left does not want to be thought of as anti-feminist, he clarifies:

I do not mean feminist concepts; I mean clichés—phrases and images from which the ideas that once made them rich and quick have been drained by repetition, easy emotions—negative or positive—and critical exhaustion.

Delany was writing in 1997. In his own early work, the spectacularly inventive science-fiction novels that made his name in the 1960s, when he was only in his 20s, we can detect a number of fresh and vital concepts that have perhaps become merely popular or middlebrow clichés in our own day. (He also claims in the Morrison piece: "Popularity is always a conservative phenomenon.")

Perhaps the most famous of these novels, the one most clearly united around a central idea, is 1966's Babel-17. The novel is set in a future marked by interstellar war between the Alliance and the Invaders. Its heroine is the brilliant young celebrity poet, linguist, and starship captain Rydra Wong, herself traumatized and orphaned by the war. Asked by an Alliance general to translate intercepted Invader transmissions in a strange code called Babel-17, Rydra assembles a team and sets off for space.

Because starships need to be staffed by polyamorous trios and by the consciousnesses of the deceased (or, in the book's lingo, "discorporate"), Rydra must recruit her crew from the demimonde inhabited by those in "Transport," i.e., space travelers, a kind of science-fictional bohemia looked down on in the novel's world by the squares and normies who work in "Customs." In the novel's first quarter, Delany is clearly more interested in exploring this futuristic East Village—and dramatizing a Customs Officer, a stodgy straight white male, lose his resistance to its polymorphous blandishments—than he is in the plot's supposedly central star wars.

But eventually Rydra's ship, the aptly-named Rimbaud, is captured due to a mysterious traitor onboard. Our heroes end up on another spacecraft at an aristocratic dinner party eventually broken up—in a passage of delicious decadence—by terrorist sabotage. Better than quoting the text alone, I will quote Ted Gioia's amusing commentary on it:

Over the course of this novel, Delany presents the full range of action scenarios, from hand-to-hand combat to full-scale spaceship battles. But even in the midst of combat, he finds a way to employ his experimental techniques. Delany's description  of a terrorist attack at an official dinner is one of the strangest fight scenes in sci-fi history, with more attention lavished on the food than fighting. "The fruit platters were pushed aside by the emerging peacocks, cooked, dressed and reassembled with sugared heads, tail feathers swaying....Tureens of caldo verde crowded the wine basins….Fruit rolled over the edge." It's as if the NY Times had fired its war correspondents and replaced them with restaurant reviewers.

Rydra, meanwhile, realizes that Babel-17 is a language, a language of extraordinarily dense precision, of words as vast idea complexes. Thinking in it and speaking it allow her to perceive reality as a concatenation of such fine-grained patterns that her cognitive abilities become nearly superhuman. She also falls in love with the Butcher, an amnesiac violent convict whose own speech is bereft of the words "I" or "you." At the novel's moral center, they stroll amid the discorporate while the compassionate poet teaches the Butcher that these shifters, which express both personhood and relation, are the indispensable key to morality:

"Are they the same word for the same thing, that they are interchangeable?"

"No, just...yes! They both mean the same sort of thing. In a way, they're the same."

"Then you and I are the same."

Risking confusion, she nodded.

"I suspect it. But you—" he pointed to her—"have taught me." He touched himself.

"And that's why you can't go around killing people. At least you better do a hell of a lot of thinking before you do."

In the course of things, we learn that Babel-17 is a weaponized Invader language that made Rydra herself turn traitor because, for all its preternatural precision, it too lacks the first and second person. (This is a clue to the Butcher's real identity: an Alliance spy turned by the Invaders using Babel-17.) The novel ends with the promise that Rydra and the Butcher can bring cosmic peace by endowing Babel-17's cognitive power with their own moral energy, their insistence that "I" and "you" matter.

The overall narrative is, I suspect, a meta-text about literature itself, which is why the novel's protagonist is a poet (an excellent one: Delany supplies poetry by Marilyn Hacker, his then-wife, as Rydra's work). Literature combines visionary precision in the transmission of sensations and ideas with a moral commitment to the inner lives of individuals, of "you" and "me." We already have the pacifying Babel-17 portended by the novel's conclusion, the words that join ethics to knowledge: it is Babel-17. If this novel, written during wartime, did not bring peace, it at least implies that a change in how we speak or write is all that can lastingly end war.

With that thesis in mind, we can return to Delany's later distinction between concepts and clichés: in this brief novel, we get at least three concepts that were rare in popular fiction at midcentury, but which have since become commonplace.

First is the replacement of the white man as ingenious, omni-competent space-captain with a woman of color. Second is the future as bohemia, a place of erupting micro-individualisms where stellar citizens find their fulfillment in biological transformations and sexual configurations that were still relegated, in the middle 20th century, to the vast "closet" of certain urban quarters. Finally, Delany represents language as absolutely determining thought and experience; the language you speak and write constrains what you can know, believe, and even perceive—like so much 20th-century thought, Babel-17 presents language as first philosophy.

As such concepts grow familiar in popular culture, as they pass from the hands of inventors to those of imitators, their flaws and unanticipated consequences become more and more obvious.

The race and gender diversification of heroism is of course unobjectionable and welcome, but is such heroism as Rydra's, with its seemingly limitless physical and mental and moral perfection, sans any tragic flaw, really proper to serious narrative, irrespective of race and gender? Maybe it works for "young adults," though even for them it's probably misleading and infantilizing; profound fiction, even when it has white male heroes, requires more complex characters as protagonists.

Similarly, the future spread of bohemia further supports the novel's ethic. If the mutual recognition of "you" and "I" is the basis of morality, then we should want each other to flourish to the best of our potential and desire. Delany portrays his novel's demimonde of polyamory and bio-engineering as a society that alone allows this flourishing. When the square Customs Officer, whom Rydra had introduced to bohemia, trepidatiously but excitedly returns to get a dragon implanted in his shoulder, he is counseled by Rydra's own therapist:

"Actually," Dr. T'mwarba went on, "it's psychologically important to feel in control of your body, that you can change it, shape it."

The mundane corollary here would be getting a tattoo, a practice still confined in the '60s to the disreputable or déclassé; but we can easily read an even more forward-looking subtext about gender and sexual identity into these words.

Surely only a troglodyte could object to today's broad social spread of self-transformation at every level from epidermis to pronoun, but the move of these once-fringe practices into the mainstream may suggest their inseparability (which need not be a problem) from other cultural discourses that value the individual over the social. Something like "the culture of neoliberalism," on the eve of whose triumph Delany was then writing, may be one and indivisible, a thought that only libertarians seem willing to entertain, because it disrupts everyone else's narratives, which tend to sunder economic from sexual laissez-faire. In Delany's imagination, "I" and "you" are interpenetrated and perfectly balanced, but most societies seem, outside of beautifully experimental science fictions, to elevate one over the other.

Far more pernicious in political practice is this novel's thesis on language. The idea that language is absolutely constitutive of consciousness, after being vulgarized and garbled, becomes today's argument that language is literally a vector of violence, that words have power to obliterate identity, to deal irrecoverable psychic wounds. But if this is true, then the basis of democratic, liberal society falls away, because the point of such a society is to sublimate literal violence into discourse and dispute, to use language as a field wherein extra-linguistic reality may be recognized, interpreted, and only then imaginatively transformed. If words are weapons, then all we have are weapons. The social becomes a scramble of all against all, a zero-sum contest to control reality, which language has the putatively absolute power to do. Far from bringing peace, the claim that language speaks us rather than the reverse promises only war.

In "Letter to Q——," criticizing Toni Morrison for what he regards as her racism and homophobia and all-around crypto-fascist essentialism, Delany argues that she has betrayed the mission of the novel as a literary form, because the novel exists to tell us

that evil (like good) is a manifestation of social systems, not individuals, and thus individuals, both the good ones and the bad ones, if they move into new social systems they are unused to, can be changed by them if they stay there.

A materialist, Delany rejects evil and good and the soul as metaphysical entities, whereas the Catholic gnostic Morrison certainly does not, nor do many great novelists who fall afoul of Delany's basically Marxist commitments, from Dostoevsky to Coetzee. (By the way: 1997, the year Delany wrote his criticism of The Bluest Eye, was also the year Morrison published her late, underrated masterpiece, Paradise : in this novel, she seems to take Delany's side against her own younger self and to recant the implicit ethno-nationalism and inverted colorism of her early fiction.)

For Delany, there is no soul, only society, and since language is the social system underpinning all others, transforming it transforms us. It's so flattering a worldview for writers and intellectuals that they can hardly resist it. Some days, I can't resist it myself. Yet Delany writes like someone who knows that language exists in dynamic tension with what is outside it. If it didn't, the work of converting "sensations and ideas" (the phrase is from Pater, a writer Delany and I both admire) into words would not be so difficult and newness could never even find articulation. Foreshadowing cyberpunk, Rydra compares language to code and language-speakers to computers, but can a computer reprogram itself? Can a machine running a program be an "I" or a "you"?

As an often pulpy product of a very young writer, Babel-17 is not a great novel, nor even exactly a good one: its characters, including Rydra, are very sketchy, and the narrative feels unbalanced because Delany is so taken with almost every aspect of its world except the war on which the plot is ostensibly centered.

Delany's style, though, is as elegantly involute, as pregnant with implication, as modernist poetry or the best science fiction that preceded him. This gives this novel its odd tone, combining urban decadence with futurist didacticism, as if Robert A. Heinlein had re-written Nightwood (Delany often claims both Barnes and Heinlein as influences, despite his awareness that their rather different but decisive conservative convictions clash with his own leftism—though both certainly advocate in their fiction for sexual openness).

Babel-17 is better than a merely good novel; it is a profligately imagined one, a book that gives you more ideas per line than many more mature performances would dare. If Delany, like his compeers Dick and Le Guin, are read today not alongside other science fiction writers but among the postmodern experimentalists of their time, such as Borges, Pynchon, and Nabokov, this stylistic extravaganza and generation of concepts (that were not yet clichés) is the reason why.

Consider this extraordinary passage, with which I'll conclude, combining the philosophy of language with the most poignantly personal recollections, a passage worthy of the writer it names in turning ideas into dialogue and drama:

Words are names for things. In Plato’s time things were names for ideas—what better description of the Platonic ideal? But were words names for things, or was that just a bit of semantic confusion? Words were symbols for whole categories of things, where a name was put to a single object: a name on something that requires a symbol jars, making humor. A symbol on something that takes a name jars, too: a memory that contained a torn window shade, his liquored breath, her outrage, and crumpled clothing wedged behind a chipped, cheap night table, “All right, woman, come here!” and she had whispered, with her hands achingly tight on the brass bar, “My name is Rydra!” An individual, a thing apart from its environment, and apart from the things in that environment; an individual was a type of thing for which symbols were inadequate, and so names were invented.

[X]

Empire Star is prototypical Delany and prototypical sci fi. Great in the ways you expect from Delany (philosophical, political, symbolic) but also pretty simplistic.

Next up, Babel-17.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This rating/review is for Empire Star only, since it doesn't seem to exist separately on goodreads.

I...loved it, I think? It was a really, really weird book and only a really weird guy could've written it. But it was short enough to make the weirdness okay, and as I was reading it I kept going back and forth between 3 stars and 5. I honestly can't decide if it was okay or if it was fantastic. So I'm going with 4.

[Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've become convinced that winning a major award like the Oscars or the Hugo or Nebula means the book or movie was actually the WORST of the nominees rather than the best...cynical I know, but Oppenheimer did beat Killers of the Flower Moon, and Everything Everywhere All at Once did beat TÁR. Maybe awards have always worked that way, even for science fiction books in the 1960s.

I was excited for this book because it did win the Nebula and was nominated for the Hugo, and also because Samuel Delany seems like a genuinely kickass artist with a really cool vision. But Babel-17 is boring. There's no plot or character--ok, not that uncommon in science fiction. There's no world building--ok, weird...but ok. There's nothing really going on at all. I would finish entire chapters and think to myself "I don't know what I was just reading." Does the book even have words?

People seem to like Babel-17 purely for its discussion of language and semiotics. You could argue that that isn't enough to write a novel. I would argue that you're wrong; I would love to read a novel about semiotics. But Babel-17 doesn't say enough about them. It spends pages and pages talking about other irrelevant and boring things. I am genuinely shocked that people like the book for its linguistic discussion, because what discussion are they talking about? Discussed where? I can't agree more with the review on Goodreads that says "Babel-17 is a mysterious language that does...something...somehow."

DNF after 120 pages

[Gregory Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

Babel-17: 3

Fun discussion of language with a bit too much going on without investing in character. Love the linguistics, the protagonist, and the style. Interesting discussion of linguistic relativism, cultural relativism, and the odder parts of our social realm.

Empire Star: 4

This. Is. Fun. Started as a bit of a paint-by-numbers sci-fi narrative with some style, and it becomes wilder and wilder until it breaks into high concept nonlinearity. So entertaining, but it also is unafraid to handle slavery. The Lll are depressing, quite literally as their protection makes anyone nearby sad, and the discussion of their liberation is major. The novella discusses the fallibility of empathy (Natalie Diaz's quote continues to be relevant), the ways in which white people have to see white pain caused by black pain to incite action, the dehumanization and utilization of slaves, etc. It's highly political, and yet there is also a larger scale discussion of intelligence versus "simplex, complex, and multiplex" thinking, which leads to a dialogue about class, race, etc.

It was fun seeing how these two stories interact. Certain characters (Ron, Lump, Brass, etc.) overlap and the Empire Star is referenced in both. I don't feel like there's much of a narrative/thematic effect to this, but I enjoyed these being clear connections due to this purposeful bundling.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

*** 3.2 STARS ***

Babel 17 started off great. Upon reading Babel 17 and Rydra Wong speaking about perception changing based on what language you speak, I was all in. Unfortunately, Delany forgot to write a plot. Delany wrote some good world-building, but in the end, the world-building felt like a MacGuffin. The story just didn't go anywhere.

Probably my favourite part of Babel 17 was the main character, Rydra Wong. She felt believable and interesting. I really enjoyed the book whenever Rydra was speaking about language and the perception of reality a language can have on a person.

Babel 17 reminded me of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun, but without the richness of detail; and nowhere-near-as-good plot.

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this 0 stars, I would have. And to think I suggested this to our book club. I was embarrassed. I never was into sci-fi and thought this would be a great first entry because it was about language. Oh, it was so bad!

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely creative book that has stuck with me despite the fact that I was not smart enough to understand most of it.

[Paulo Vinicius Figueiredo dos Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Resenha de Babel - 17:

Comunicação é uma palavra que envolve ser capaz de interagir com pessoas. Isso pode ser feito através da fala, de gestos, de expressões. A comunicação só é concluída quando os dois lados conseguem se entender mutuamente. Esse é um dos temas de Babel-17, um clássico da ficção científica que finalmente chega ao Brasil pelas mãos da Editora Morro Branco. Ficamos muito tempo órfãos de Samuel R. Delany, um dos grandes mestres da ficção científica e alguém que consegue falar de temas contemporâneos, mesmo o livro tendo sido escrito há algumas décadas atrás. Aviso logo que Babel-17 é uma leitura difícil, uma ficção científica dura onde as informações não estão sempre claras para o leitor. Exige pensar fora da narrativa e relacionar com outros assuntos; exige reflexão e ligar os pontos por nós mesmos. Por essa razão, não é um livro para qualquer leitor. Contudo, se você for capaz de ultrapassar essa barreira inicial, vai perceber toda a genialidade do autor. Muito antes de A Chegada, filme baseado no conto de Ted Chiang, onde um grupo de cientistas tenta decifrar uma linguagem alienígena estranha, Rydra Wong procurava entender o que era Babel-17.

A narrativa do livro é em terceira pessoa, visto do ponto de vista de Rydra. Acompanhamos sua jornada onde ela vai empregar uma tripulação bem diferente de seres. Ficamos sabendo que os terráqueos estão em guerra com os Invasores, alienígenas que parecem estar atacando a Terra e outros planetas. A Terra faria parte de uma Aliança de planetas. Bem, nesse ponto eu senti que as coisas não ficaram muito claras. Delany não explica bem o que acontece no contexto geral, deixando para o leitor juntar as peças do quebra-cabeças. Só que informações essenciais não são ditas, o que pode confundir bastante. A protagonista é uma especialista em diferentes idiomas e códigos, além de ser uma poetisa. Ela é chamada para entender uma mensagem que está sendo captada pelos sensores da Terra em uma linguagem que recebe o nome de Babel-17. Ao mesmo tempo estranhos incidentes e sabotagens acontecem em vários pontos da Aliança, precedidos de uma mensagem em Babel-17. Uma missão secundária de Rydra é investigar a relação entre esses dois pontos.

Delany tem uma forma de escrita muito precisa aqui. É até curioso examinar a diferença entre o que ele escreve aqui e Estrela Imperial onde a prosa é mais poética. Em alguns momentos, o autor assume até um tom professoral, explicando as nuances do estudo de línguas e códigos. Assumimos sempre que a comunicação precisa acontecer através da fala; isso é o senso comum. Mas, a verdade é que esta pode acontecer mesmo quando as pessoas não falam o mesmo idiomas, bastando que a mensagem enunciada seja compreendida pelo outro. Abaixo eu retomo melhor essa ideia. A narrativa segue uma linha bem simples de início, meio e fim. No começo somos apresentados ao contexto e ao problema a ser resolvido. O desenvolvimento coloca um obstáculo para Rydra até o momento em que ela conhece Jebel Tariq e o Carniceiro. E o fim é o fechamento mesmo da narrativa, deixando poucos ganchos. Nesse sentido a história é bem fechadinha, com apenas algumas coisas podendo ser exploradas (mais no relativo ao mundo onde a história se passa). Tem um momento climático quase no final que é incrível e vai agradar aos fãs de scifi.

Diferentes aspectos da comunicação são exploradas aqui: a diferença de idiomas, a capacidade para interagir com o diferente e a ausência de si. Vou começar pelo óbvio que é o tema central da história: Babel-17. Sempre acreditamos que idiomas falados precisam ter alguma relação com qualquer um dos que são falados no mundo. E temos centenas de idiomas espalhados por todo mundo, desde idiomas fonéticos até movimentos com a boca como os empregados por uma tribo que vive na Namíbia e usa estalos para se comunicar. Mas, isso não significa o mesmo para alienígenas. Eles podem empregar métodos incompreensíveis para nós, seres humanos. Infelizmente, terei que usar essa comparação, mas no conto que originou A Chegada, Chiang faz com que a protagonista, ao compreender o idioma dos alienígenas, consiga enxergar o futuro (de certa forma). Aqui, a noção é semelhante. À medida em que Rydra vai compreendendo Babel-17, ela vai se dando conta de que o universo é mais complexo do que ela imaginava. O simples entendimento dessa linguagem amplia a mente dela para a compreensão do todo.

Ao mesmo tempo temos a própria Rydra que lida com suas inseguranças e sua dificuldade de falar com outras pessoas. Vemos quando ela interage com Mocky o quanto ela luta para reforçar uma ideia de controle e comando. Mesmo ela não estando certa de suas intenções, ela vai crescendo ao longo da narrativa e lidando com uma tripulação que ela mesma escolheu. O que começa como um grupo de pessoas estranhas umas para as outras vai criando laços e passando a confiar na habilidade de Rydra. No final, a eficiência da equipe é ímpar, mesmo eles estando em outra nave que não a Rimbaud, sua espaçonave inicial.

Tenho também que destacar a ideia dos três navegadores. A necessidade de serem três e não apenas um. Nem vou comentar muito a respeito porque o motivo para isto é tão legal que eu prefiro deixar para vocês lerem na narrativa. Mas, fato é que os três precisam ter um contato muito próximo e normalmente isso acaba redundando em uma relação de teor sexual. Na narrativa, Rydra encontra dois dos três (um deles havia morrido há algum tempo atrás e Rydra precisa buscar um substituto para a função de número 1). Dos três temos um número 2 mais experiente e um número 3 inseguro. E eles querem que o número 1 seja uma mulher e que seja capaz de se relacionar com os 2. Mas, como encontrar alguém que consiga lidar com personalidades tão diferentes? Rydra acaba inovando e obrigando os dois a se esforçar para conhecer melhor Mollya. Ela vai oferecer o que eles querem, mas com uma espécie de bola curva para eles. Achei a opção sensacional e realmente os obrigou a conhecer melhor a pessoa que entrou para o grupo.

Mas, claro, um dos pontos altos de Babel-17 é o Carniceiro e a relação que ele estabelece com Rydra. Aqui, a habilidade de Delany brilha. Vou dar leves, mas muito leves spoilers aqui. O Carniceiro é um personagem que não consegue usar os pronomes eu e você. Sim, podem ler com atenção. Ele não usa mesmo. Toda vez que ele vai se referir a si mesmo, o personagem apenas bate no peito. Acaba se referindo a outras pessoas na terceira pessoa. Percebendo a situação dele, Rydra tenta ensiná-lo a diferença entre eu e você e o personagem tem uma enorme dificuldade para isso. Frequentemente ele vai se confundir a quem está se referindo. O curioso é que isso acaba criando algumas situações estranhas em que o leitor precisa desconfiar daquilo que está sendo dito. Não porque o narrador não é confiável, mas porque este não sabe dizer com precisão aquilo que está dizendo. Isso nos obriga a confiar mais na cena e no contexto do que nos diálogos. Quando eu li a primeira vez achei o trecho truncado, mas quando deu o estalo e eu voltei as páginas para reler as passagens, parece que o mar se abriu.

A forma como o Carniceiro cresce na narrativa com o passar do tempo é incrível. E eu achei que ele seria só as mãos de Tariq, aquele cara que faz o serviço sujo. Mas, as camadas dele vão se revelando pouco a pouco e ele vai ganhando uma riqueza de detalhes. O que se torna uma relação de ensinamento para Rydra vai se transformando em sua missão à medida em que detalhes sobre Babel-17 vão se cruzando com o subplot do Carniceiro. Sua relação com ele vai se tornando um crescimento e amadurecimento para Rydra.

Babel-17 é genial. Como obra de ficção científica, toca em pontos sensíveis como a dificuldade dos seres humanos em se comunicar uns com os outros, a facilidade que temos de julgar outras pessoas e o fato de ainda sermos muito jovens na medida de tempo universal. Não é uma leitura simples, mas é recompensadora no sentido de que vai nos fazer refletir sobre determinados assuntos e abrir nossas mentes para outras possibilidades. Só tenho a aplaudir a Morro Branco pela coragem em trazer Babel-17 para o Brasil, um hard scifi de extrema qualidade e por apresentar a muitos leitores a riqueza da escrita de Samuel R. Delany, um monstro do gênero. Agora, é esperar para que a editora traga outros dois clássicos do autor: Nova e Dhalgren.

Resenha de Estrela Imperial:

Deixa eu respirar antes de fazer esta resenha. Porque ela é difícil de se colocar em palavras. Estrela Imperial é um belo exemplo de como compor uma história que se autorreferencia. Escrever histórias cíclicas não é algo fácil. Desde a era dos grandes livros sagrados, muitos autores tentaram compor este tipo de narrativa. Mas, sempre ficam furos ou problemas de coerência narrativa. Isso faz com que a história tenha contradições ou situações internas fazendo o leitor entender a existência de algo não batendo. Delany consegue criar uma narrativa estruturalmente perfeita. A gente pode reclamar que a narrativa não é tão boa ou os personagens não são tão interessantes, mas a escrita é PER-FEI-TA.

Antes de mais nada, vamos tirar o elefante da sala. A narrativa é em primeira pessoa. E não é contada por Cometa Jo, mas por Joia, uma espécie de dispositivo inteligente que fica no bolso de Jo. Mas, como tudo nessa narrativa, nada é tão simples quanto parece. Isso porque Delany usa uma série de metáforas e prosopopeias ao longo da história. Coisas podem ter vida, objetos podem ser narradores. Assim como Babel-17, é uma leitura que vai exigir maturidade do leitor. Mas, no caso de Estrela Imperial o problema é mais grave porque estamos diante de uma escrita mais poética. Existe um cuidado do autor com o que ele está apresentando nas páginas. Cada parágrafo tem mais de uma interpretação possível. Os temas não estão claramente delineados. O tempo funciona até de forma diferente nessa narrativa. Lendo um artigo de Jo Walton sobre o tema (matéria em inglês, link aqui) ela chama essa dobra no espaço de tempo helicoidal. Basta eu dizer que assim que você terminar de ler, você vai querer reler para entender melhor determinados acontecimentos de um ponto de vista de eles já terem acontecido.

O narrador é totalmente não confiável. Isso porque Joia não vai te dar todas as informações naquele instante. E muita coisa vai ficar realmente incompreensível simplesmente porque o leitor não dispõe de todas as informações. E, tudo bem! Confie em Delany. Ele vai te dar as respostas assim que elas forem necessárias. Assim como Joia vai fornecer as informações para Jo quando achar que precisa. Esse tempo helicoidal provoca uma espécie de leitura de trás para frente. Por esse motivo, a primeira leitura vai parecer truncada e estranha. Esse é um livro que te obriga a relê-lo para esclarecer os pontos. E Delany faz isso de uma forma sensacional.

Cometa Jo vai passar por uma jornada de amadurecimento por toda a narrativa. Vamos ver que o personagem tem dificuldades para aceitar a si mesmo e qual é o seu papel no universo. Quando ele recebe a missão de levar uma mensagem até Estrela Imperial, ele sente que se tornou uma pessoa especial. Mas, com o passar do tempo, os acontecimentos vão colocando o personagem em perspectiva e fazendo com que ele ponha os pés no chão. Ou seja, esta não é uma jornada do herói, não temos um escolhido pelo destino. Delany quebra esse clichê ao nos colocar diante de um personagem que é comum. Sua mensagem vai ser importante a partir das lições que ele vai aprendendo. São as pessoas com quem ele interage é que vão lhe fornecendo pistas daquilo que ele deve realizar. Jo vai deixar uma marca indelével na vida dessas pessoas, não porque ele é sensacional, mas porque ele aprende algo com cada um. Se pararmos para refletir é quase como nossas vidas. Nenhum de nós é um escolhido; somos pessoas que vivem existências comuns. Mas, quando nos empenhamos em uma tarefa podemos deixar marcas na vida dos outros.

Temos que falar sobre os LLL. São alienígenas responsáveis por terraformar planetas. Representam um recurso imprescindível para os seres que habitam a galáxia. Mas, para isso, se torna necessário escravizar os LLL. É curioso pensar que em nenhum momento Delany usa de violência ou tortura para representar a situação destes seres. Apenas que eles se tornam objetos e que os donos ficam tristes ao empregá-los. O autor está demonstrando que a escravidão vai além do fato de alguém ser violado e violentado. Afinal, escravidão é a perda da capacidade de ir e vir. E é isso o que estes seres deixam de ter: liberdade. Jo vai se ver envolvido na tarefa de libertá-los. Se ele vai conseguir ou não, aí já se trata de um outro assunto.

Senti que faltou um momento climático na narrativa. Não temos um grande acontecimento marcando o final, apenas as revelações sendo feitas. De um ponto de vista prático é como se a narrativa seguisse um ritmo suave e constante por todo o livro, o que é algo ruim. Normalmente, histórias costumam ter picos estruturais, com momentos de ápice e outros de declínio. Aqui não temos isso. A estrutura segue uma série de idas e vindas em que Jo chega até os lugares, conhece pessoas, descobre algumas coisas e depois segue em frente. Os personagens também não são cativantes. Eles são um meio para nos entregar a mensagem, como é a missão de Jo.

Estrela Distante é uma narrativa mais madura de Samuel R. Delany. Ele dá uma aula de escrita para autores que buscam entender determinadas ferramentas mais avançadas. Temos um personagem desejando descobrir a si mesmo e o quanto ele pode fazer para mudar o mundo. Ele vai se ver envolvido em uma trama para libertar uma raça alienígena com a capacidade de terraformar planetas. Mas, no final da jornada, ele vai descobrir o quanto de si mesmo restou e o quanto ele evoluiu como pessoa.

[Lucca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The textures that Delany conjures out of his prose always makes me smile. These two shorter works are testaments to his imaginative mind. Discorporate navigators, multiplex computer blobs, a genetically enhanced space pilot made to resemble a lion; it's all here. He's still honing in his plotting at this point, but the text shines brightly on the page with rich, strange and brilliant concepts, characters and worlds to explore. These two stories revolve around the concepts of communication, and I guess you could argue that they're mirrors to each other? But I just see them as two exemplary conceptual explorations that Delany would carry with him to Nova, my favorite of his.

[Ricardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

babel-17 has everything that has always endeared me to the genre. Every single sentence alludes to a broader universe. A bewildering society that you have to piece together line by line. Whose customs, fears, and dreams are made known to you by characters that very much speak their own language.

If you enjoyed Dune or Hyperion and the way in which they just thrust you upon a brand new world without a map, then you'll find a lot to love here.

NB: Empire Star (the short story alluded to in babel-17) is a bit weaker, and less composed than the above. Still, very much worthwhile especially if you enjoyed the narrative style of babel-17

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I don’t have a ton of thoughts about this one. I enjoyed the first half of Babel-17 far more than the second half but I never really felt anything other than “well, this is fine”.

I really liked Empire Star though! I really liked the evolution of the main character and I thought the story was just more interesting than Babel-17.

[Peter Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, that was unique!
And quite progressive for its time. Even today.

Plenty of reviews detailing what makes this book (and author) stand out, so I won’t go too much into it.

But I will mention one thing that I didn’t see mentioned elsewhere; the writing assumes intelligence. The author expects you to be able to read in between the lines, across the lines, under the lines and above the lines.

He expects you to be able to connect the dots, and I found that very refreshing.


Definitely reading more from this strange author!

[sarah !! · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyably confusing

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe easy to be harsher in hindsight and I can appreciate this as the OG of this type of story, but I just felt there are more interesting and more elegant uses of these same themes in later sci-fi work. Still very interesting though.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both stories in this volume were excellent. Intellectual sci-fi for sure, but after having read (and struggled) with Dhalgren several years back, reading this book was a walk in the park! I kept waiting for the narrative to completely de-rail, but at age 24 Delany must not have fully acquired the mind-shredding tendencies he would display in his later works.