The Ballad of Beta 2

by Samuel R. Delany

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached their destinations. Two had failed-and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.
~ ~~ ~
Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around, and then writing up his findings.
~ ~~ ~
But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient wrecks. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception to a universal law), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive! And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be found. Only a fragment of a mysterious poem could possibly provide a clue.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Opera, Novella, Speculative Fiction, School

124 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

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 5 out of 5]

Then came one to the City,
Over sand with her bright hair wild,
With her eyes coal black and her feet sole sore,
And under her arms a green-eyed child.

Joneny, an anthropology student, sets out to decipher the “Ballad of Beta-2.” Beta-2 is one of twelve generation ships that launched for the stars hundreds of years prior. The ships reach their destination—but two of the ships arrive lifeless.

Few pieces of the generation ships’ history and culture exist. Joneny discovers that the “Ballad of Beta-2” is much more than what it appears on the surface. He initially resents being tasked with researching the “uncultured” inhabitants of the generation ships, but soon becomes enamored and invested because much more is hidden between the stars than void and vacuum.

Delany is a gift. In The Ballad of Beta-2 he explores the evolution of language, the ostracizing of the other, and a hope for a humane future where ignorance is not the norm.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Proto New Wave contenida en las formas, que no en el fondo.-

Género. Ciencia ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro La balada de Beta-2 (publicación original: The Ballad of Beta-2, 1965) nos presenta a Joneny, estudiante que debe hacer una monografía, en la asignatura de antropología galáctica y a su pesar, sobre la Balada de Beta-2, una recopilación de las poesías y cantos del Pueblo Estelar, una flota de naves que, antes del viaje hiperdimensional, emprendió un periplo por el espacio convencional que duraría muchas generaciones y que, según Joneny profundiza su investigación, vivió varias clases de incidentes poco comunes que marcaron su actual destino.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[César Bustíos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two months, two Delany books. I don't think they're even among his most renowned works and I'm already becoming a fan. This little one was nominated for a Nebula award for best novella in 1965. He was 23 at the time. What the hell were you doing at 23? 😂

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the mystery of the Star Folk, a group of twelve multi-generational spaceships on a mission of discovery and colonization that had left Earth centuries ago. By the time they arrived the star system we were already there thanks to the development of faster-than-light travel. Two of the ships were broken and passengers killed. His only clue was a ballad written by their descendants who continued living on the spaceships. But for the humans who crossed the depths of space between the stars, words can have new meanings.

I loved what Delany did here. A whole culture arisen by space travellers. Plot also includes supernatural powers, eugenics and religion.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this super short and fast novel from 1964 by Samuel Delany. It's seen as one of his minor works by the experts out there but I liked it. Briefly, a legion of colonists from Earth travel to the stars in what's expected to be a long multi-generation voyage over centuries. Shortly after their departure from Earth, a hyperspace drive is developed, rendering the colonists as relics of little interest outside of historical curiosity. Their ships arrive in the Leffer VI star system, their descendants remain isolated, orbiting in their giant city-starships. Three of the starships have been destroyed by something unknown in their long journey through space. Clues to what happened may be found in the myths and ballads of the remaining Star Children living within the orbiting starships. This being an early "new wave" science fiction novel from the 60's there is a lot of surreal, religious and mythic themes going on. Delany can be a difficult writer to get into, but always worth the effort. Much of the novel is told through historic records left by the Star Children.

"More than anything else, you want descendants who will be able to live among the stars, and you know as well that most of your people could not do so now. I will promise you that I will break apart no more of your ships, and that your progeny will be able to live among the stars, as well as communicate with me, throughout all time."

All in all, a cool read.

[Manny · Rating 2 out of 5]

The basic idea in this short novel is excellent. The guy visits an outpost of civilization, which has more or less reverted to barbarism. He wants to know what's happened, and his biggest clue is a traditional poem, whose meaning at first appears to be obvious. But the more he probes, the more the meaning shifts, and in the end he discovers that his initial interpretation is wrong in every detail. He also knows what's happened to the settlement.

Well, I can imagine A.S. Byatt turning this into a terrific piece of work. Samuel R. Delany, who, to be fair, was only 23 at the time, sets it on an multigeneration interstellar spaceship that's just been rediscovered and throws in a good helping of aliens and mutants. And then there's the poem. Why, oh why, am I a victim of this terrible curse that means my chance of remembering a piece of poetry is inversely proportional to its quality? I read this story once, some time in the mid 70s, and I can still recall the whole damn thing:

Then one came to the city
Over sand, with her bright hair wild
With her eyes coal black and her feet sole sore
And under her arms a green-eyed child

Honestly, if the place in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind existed then I'd consider visiting them. But I wouldn't be getting rid of old girlfriends.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this, but it kind of deserves a remake. Delany has constructed a fascinating premise around the ever-intriuging "mysterious spaceshift disaster" premise. Unlike most version of this, where the mystery is far more interesting than the eventual explanation, the whole actual plot is totally fascinating. Especially as he lets it play out via an anthropology student's search for the allegorical underpinnings of a seemingly classical primary text, which almost immediately gives way to a kind of horror story, as the weird scope of the disaster becomes clear.

But for all the ideas crammed in (the semi-failed mission is a microcosm of all humanity), the story itself is minuscule, limited to a couple characters and a lot of exposition via found materials. At some point, after gently playing out the plot details amid chilling atmospherics for a while, Delany appears to have run out of time, choosing to simply shovel out the rest of the could-have-been lengthy plot in one long diary transcription. At one point, one book ends, and the protagonist is simply handed the next and directed to exactly where to pick up the plot. Seems like there was probably a hard deadline to meet in lieu of proper development.

So the actual storytelling mechanics here are somewhat clumsy, but this fortunately doesn't stop the story from being excellent. I just wanted two hundred pages more of it.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very early novel by Delany is appropriately brief and fast-paced and full of lyrical imagery and engaging ideas. It doesn't have the challenging societal observations of his later, longer works, but is galaxy-spanning science fiction at the dawn of the New Wave at its best. It's a great summer quiet afternoon read.

[Jim Reddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joneny, a galactic anthropology student attempts to discover the meaning of a folk ballad about a generation starship that encountered disaster along with its sister ships. As he investigates the surviving ships and the people who still live there, he learns more and more.

I really enjoyed this. It was an interesting science fiction mystery that touched on the dangers of space, evolution of language, social changes, and religion, all in 124 pages.

We get the lines of the ballad at the start and have no idea what they mean, but by the end, all is revealed.

This was my first time reading Delany. I’m looking forward to reading more.

[Bbrown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delany is one of those rare high-quality genre writers that not only explores interesting ideas, but that also has a mastery of story structure, characterization, and prose such that he can make those ideas impactful. He makes many other genre authors seem amateurish by comparison, and even this early work (written when Delany was only 23 years old!) shows that he's head-and-shoulders above most of his contemporaries.

The Ballad of Beta-2 opens with a far-future anthropology student getting assigned to investigate a poem originating from a small fleet of ancient generation ships. Not only is this a different type of protagonist than what you usually see in sci-fi works, but his role as an anthropologist allows the book to smoothly set up the main setting and its backstory (I bet most people don't even realize that the story's opening pages are one big exposition dump). Additionally, the student's assignment not only gives our protagonist an understandable motivation to be poking around these generation ships, it also establishes the central mystery of explaining the initially indecipherable poem.

Once our main character starts poking around the generation ships, The Ballad of Beta-2 gets genuinely creepy at times, especially with the introduction of the green eyed boy. It reminded me of the opening pages of Solaris in this regard, and from me that’s no small complement. There was even more potential space horror in the form of the devolved descendants of the ship’s crew, but they weren’t explored in this short novella. Gradually, you piece together what happened in the generation ships long ago and come to understand the poem’s meaning, in a way that was laid out pretty clearly but that never felt like Delany was beating you over the head with “this explains this, do you get it?” He shows a respect for the intelligence of his audience, and that’s something I always appreciate.

There are a few flaws here, to be sure. The protagonist has a tendency to stumble upon relevant logbooks and to open up said logbooks right to a relevant passage that explains some aspect of the poem (this only happens in the beginning of the story, to be fair). The antagonist that has started a religious cult is very one note, and the evil religion pitted against the logical, scientific good guys is a boring cliché. Finally, the book ends in an anticlimactic fashion. None of these problems are too major, but they deserve mentioning.

I wish I’d written something this good at the age of 23. This novella isn’t quite as strong as Delany’s later works Nova and Dhalgren, but I’d actually place it above the book Babel-17 that really put Delany on the map. The Ballad of Beta-2’s novelty, genuine creepiness, and skillful construction outweigh its flaws, so I give this one a 3.5/5 and round up.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one shoots instantly into my top three sci-fi books ever read. So many elements beautifully integrated into an exciting and thoughtful story. And all done in 84 pages! I’ve read a few of Delany’s and this is my favorite thus far. Though the others are top tier, as well.

[Watt ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Está entretenido pero no deja poso. Toca temas como el racismo, el totalitarismo, la religión pero la resolución no me convence. Quizá en su momento (1965) fuera muy original en todo, pero en la actualidad me pareció un recurso facilón, sin mucho interés. (5/10)

[hmmm]

A riff on "pale fire" and a meditation on the relationship between history and language but also there are big spaceships and stuff. Very sick

[Colin MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a novella than a novel, this is a neat little linguistic/folklore puzzle box mystery. It's like being presented with an unlikely prophecy and then watching all the pieces fall into place to make it come true. Here there's a folk ballad by the degenerate survivors of a mysterious colony ship catastrophe, and the protagonist is gradually stitching together the cultural references and journal entries that explain what happened and how it's reflected in the ballad. Being Delany, it also touches on outsider communities and the authoritarian enforcement of social norms.

[Fabio Carta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non credevo che tante idee potessero venire espresse in un romanzo tanto corto. Il pretesto della narrazione è una missione scientifica (antropologica) per lo studio di una ballata prodotta dalla subcultura imbarbarita di una misteriosa flotta generazionale, giunta a destinazione centinaia d'anni dopo le astronavi terrestri dotate d'iperspazio partite secoli dopo. Ma non impressionatevi: di scientifico non ci sarà nulla, semmai solo una raccolta e lettura di qualche libro di bordo. Ed è in questi diari struggenti che si trova tutta la forza narrativa del libro. Il "fantavangelo" delle similitudini religiose che dalla espiazione del popolo vagante in un ostile "deserto" di mesoni negli spazi interstellari giunge al contatto con un'entità lì vivente, un'ipercreatura che travalica lo spazio e il tempo, che diviene cosciente e interagente solo nel momento stesso che entra in devastante contatto con gli uomini della flotta. "Non sapevo di essere solo finché tu non me lo hai detto" (cit.) semplicemente geniale! Un intero discorso sull'autocoscienza condensato poeticamente in UNA SOLA FRASE! Ma i colpi di genio proseguono in questo libello: dai mutanti custodi dell'ultima scienza così considerati perché devianti dai costumi involutivi della maggioranza, coi suoi rituali ridicoli e terribili (WOW!)fino al concepimento di un messia iperumano in grado di fare da ponte tra l'uomo e il "padre" che risiede nelle pieghe dello spazio-tempo dei mesoni. Tutto questo in un pugno di battute e di veloci descrizioni (ove trovano posto anche due o tre originali e pittoresche invenzioni fantascientifiche old-style) condensato in meno di 100 pagine. Ma al di là dei contenuti, che dire dello stile? Asciutto e mai banale, suggerisce ma non spiega, non stordisce con visioni inarrivabili, e permea ogni passo della storia con la tragedia della flotta fino al finale carico di speranza. Contro ogni presunzione o pregiudizio, verso la sublime comunione delle stelle. Bello, bello, bello!

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this short novel or novella which had an emotional effect on me. What emotion is hard to define, somewhere between weird and spine-chilling, but not scary.

Joneny is a grad student working on a degree in Galactic Anthropology on Earth in the distant future. He's given an assignment: "I want a complete historical analysis of that ballad—from primary sources."

That Ballad of Beta-2 is from a collection of similar material found on generational ships that had left Earth many centuries before. To examine primary sources Joneny must travel to the resting place of the giant generational ships to do his analysis and determine the meaning of the cryptic ballad. The truth he found was stranger than fiction, and would change humans forever.

The story is a quick paced adventure which got my adrenalin pumping. It is filled with Delany's play on language and its mutability over time. EG, on entering one of the ships he sees 2 signs pointing in different directions; "RECREATION HALL" and "NAVIGATION OFFICES". Having been trained in "latinate" roots, Joneny thought he could divine the meaning of the words:

After racking his mind he decided that the Navigation Offices would prove more interesting. He was a little curious to see what they re-created down the first corridor, as well as what sort of re-creation system they could have. But the idea of sacrifices to the sea left him completely bewildered, so he headed in that direction.

This was a LOL moment for me.

I had a lot of fun with this work and am looking forward to read Delaney's next novel , Empire Star

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to his autobiography The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village, 1957-1965, this is Delany's second completed novel. It's short, actually a novella, and reads very quickly. This is much better than his first work, where the crazily ramifying fantasy obscures its meaning. Here, Delany writes an intellectually satisfying tale of an encounter with ... well ... we're not quite sure.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Delany's earliest published works. This is an interesting blend of anthopological study and some early science fiction staples: seemingly abandoned and partially destroyed spaceship, intellectuals and artists targeted by an increasingly intolerant human regime, more or less unknowable aliens with amazing powers, etc. It's a fast read and I stayed engaged in the mystery element until the end. Also, yay, ballads as a valid cultural recording device! Worth tracking down.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would be a pretty good starting point for anyone interested in reading some Delany sci-fi. It's pretty quick and pretty accessible with some cool ideas wrapped in.

Some great stuff in here about how language changes over time and depending on social contexts, and then some fun space and sorta-time travel bits.

(Also a bit kind of mocking a pretentious social science graduate student that was well executed and enjoyable and such a great counter-example to my recent review complaining about how lazy and stupid Crichton's Micro was in how it used a pretentious social science grad student as a joke. Like, it's possible to mock grad students for being twits while still taking the social sciences seriously.)

[John Rennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Samuel Delaney is best know for his later books like The Einstein Intersection and Dhalgren, and those are terrific books that are thoroughly deserving of the esteem in which they are held. However this novella is an earlier work and it isn't in the same class.

The name of the book refers to a cryptic song called "The Ballad of Beta-2", and we discover its meaning as we read the story. However the reveal is not stunning and the ending is a bit formulaic. The book explores some interesting ideas, for example how language would change on a generation ship, but the way these are described is a little clumsy.

This is a short book and doesn't demand a lot of your time to read, but even so I think this is a book only for the dedicated SF fanatic (that's me!).

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delany, Samuel R. The Ballad of Beta-2. Orion, 1965. Gateway, 2012.
Even in his earliest novels, Samuel R. Delany was always stretching the boundaries of science fiction. The Ballad of Beta-2 (1965) is more comfortably in the genre than Nova or Babel-17, but it, too, would really rather be something else—an invented myth or a future bardic epic. Here is the science fiction premise: in the far future, an anthropology student researching the meaning of an ancient ballad, originated on an early interstellar colony ship, visits its wreck, still traveling through space. To his surprise, he finds the wreck still inhabited by the much-changed descendants of its original crew. In the end, the reader may learn more from the ballad and its story than the graduate student does. It has always struck me as ironic that in his middle age Delany became a professor. I wonder if he would now look at the limitations of his protagonist more sympathetically than he did in his early 20s.

[Daniel Stainback · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderfully enjoyable read, it was both imaginative and full of mystery. I did find the quirky naming of things a little off-putting at first, but as the story progressed the reasoning behind it all became clear.

[Ben Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this one on a plane. haven’t read too much delany but i’ve heard very good things about him. this one toes the line between pulp and serious sf so really the perfect thing to rip through in a day

[N. M. D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twelve massive ships headed to the stars for a journey that would last ten generations, but only ten of them made it. A young anthropology student in the far future is sent to the remains of the ships, on which some people still live, to discover what happened and how it connects to a song that the descendents sing. What he finds there is some hella weird stuff.

This is only my second time reading Delany, the first being a short story, and the writing style here is more straightforward. There are lots of strange ideas, colorful imagery, heavy themes, and interesting bits of tech packed into this little novella. As the second book of a double release with "Alpha Yes, Terra No," I hadn't expected any connection between them, though there ended up being one: both stories deal with music in some way. Beta-2 does it better.

Gender equality is a refreshingly non-issue. The men and women seem to have no social distinction. Eugenics, cultural shifts, rapid social changes, and ignornace/anti-intellectualism are all handled with the kind of non-preachy subtlety that I weep for the death of. It's also a loose futuristic interstellar retelling of certain Christian themes, like the immaculate conception and the crucifixion.

The story pulls you along through a strange and ominous mystery. It's compelling all the way until the end, which is where my major complaint lies. With the mystery fully unraveled, the story just sort of ends, and with what feels like too much of a dull positive note for a story with a number of dark themes and creepy images. So the tone was a bit off. My second complaint is that the lead is bland and lacks anything that makes him a well-rounded character. He exists solely to uncover the story. That being said, this is still a worthwhile read that I enjoyed a lot more than I expected.

[Jack Beltane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the perfect summer reading book: Throw it in your bag, head to the beach, and read when you aren't swimming. You'll be done with it in under four hours, and the story is alert, engaging, and well written enough to keep your interest.

Of course, that's also the downside: It's too short. Way too short. It reads more like a treatment for a novel than a complete novel. (Aside: Whatever happened to the days when a writer could turn in 20,000 words and have it published as a novel?) The immediate puzzle set up by the "Ballad of Beta-2" (after which the book is named, and which is reproduced in full in chapter 2) is well handled and resolved satisfactorily, but the back story hinted at while the puzzle is being solved is what really interested me, once I was done. It's a good "throw away" read -- but the back story Delany threw away would make a better book!

That being: Imagine a fleet of ships that sets off to colonize a distant star that will take them hundreds (thousands?) of years to reach. And imagine if that fleet arrives only to discover that a few hundred years after they left Earth, we invented a hyperdrive that allowed us to get to their destination long before them. And imagine how those multi-generational people -- born and bred in space on spaceships -- would have evolved, physically and culturally. And what they would have seen, out in the supposed vacuum of space...

Now see, that's an idea for a book! Unfortunately, it's also the part Delany never truly covers. Sure, there are glimpses where it was necessary to solve the puzzle of the ballad, but there was no novel-worthy investigation of those concepts, as I would like to have seen.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is the story of mankind's first, and unsuccessful, attempt to colonize another planet.

A dozen slow, multi-generation ships were sent to a distant star system called the Leffer System. Soon afterwards, mankind developed a star drive, so that by the time the ships reached their destination, mankind had been traveling around the galaxy for a hundred years. Of the dozen ships, two arrived empty, and two others never arrived at all. The ships were simply parked in orbit, and abandoned. Beta-2, one of the ships, even has its own ballad. Years later, as a college assignment, Joneny, a young researcher, is sent to find out just what happened.

Several of the supposedly indestructible ships show evidence of huge internal explosions. Some old audio recordings talk of being attacked by some sort of green humanoid that communicates by telepathy. Joneny meets the humanoid's half-human son, who is able to exist slightly outside of time, and live in hard vaccuum with no problem at all. He watches video from the other ships where the inhabitants have physically, and mentally, de-evolved to the level of an early human. "The Norm" is taken very seriously on the ships. If a person was found to be outside physical norms in any way, whether it's being too tall, or left-handed, or having the "wrong" eye color, they were immediately executed. By the end, Joneny understands just what The Ballad of Beta-2 is all about.

This is a short novel, but a very good one. It's an interesting story about how things on a multi-generation ship can go very wrong, and it's worth reading.

[Richard Diehm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, well paced interesting little novella that is definitely worth what little time it takes to read. Some readers are displeased by the "bad" poem that functions as the center of the book but I kind of thought the whole point was that he takes this seemingly bland and boring poem the protagonist dismisses as a worthless product of a culture with nothing to offer and manages to attach some substantial meaning to it, revealing it represents something terrible in the past of said culture, wonderful for the future of humanity as a whole, and above all something unique and amazing.

Beyond this the book presents an allegory critical of the red scare that so shortly preceded its writing (and the way of thinking that led to it) and the racist ideology that has been ever present in US society though I should mention the book doesn't get deeply into any of this but it's there and that's cool. While nothing here is mind blowingly innovative it does keep a reader interested and its length is what it should be (unlike some other readers I don't think the specific ideas/settings in this work needed stretching out and think the sparsity of prose is a good quality).

If your book has an introduction save it til the end (always do that!) it spoils more about the story than my review has.

[Michael Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have started to develop a fondness for some of the science fiction novels/novellas of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I find that many of the ideas are clever and the writing is very tight. I had read two of Delany’s novellas, Empire Star (highly recommended) and Babel-17 which you can find together in an omnibus edition. I ran across The Ballad of Beta-2 at a local used bookstore recently.

The conceit of this story is an anthropological study of a ballad composed by the people of a multi-generational colony ship. A student is assigned the task to decipher the history and meaning of the song. The words of the song are intelligible, but have either highly stylized meanings or the original terms have evolved over time, making the real message obscure.

The protagonist travels to the site of the surviving ships in a small research vessel which has the technology to create temporal bubbles. Once there, he attempts to locate records, both written and sound recording, to explain what happened to the ships and their inhabitants.

I found the novella very original in its themes of language shifts, idioms, and imagery, which rendered the original song mysterious to other civilizations. Like Empire Star, it’s a story that almost has to be read again immediately after finishing to fully enjoy the book.

[Katya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is really more of a short story than a novel. An anthropology student makes a reluctant trip to uninteresting (from his point of view) part of the Universe to research the epos of the Star Folk - a degraded civilization of former earthlings. The Ballad of Beta 2 describing endless sands and seas among the stars at first seems weird and obscure, but it begins to make sense as Johnny learns more about what really happened to people during their interstellar travels. And the mysterious entity whom he meets on one of the ships finally casts light on the fantastic reality...

I guess, I really liked how the author reveals in this book the mechanism of how a myth works for people and how it could work in the future...

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, yet short, novel that tells a very intriguing and sweeping story in an interesting and compressed fashion: through the use of the primary research of a young man investigating the origin of a song (the title of the book) that he finds rather primitive and silly. What he finds is very intriguing: the book is very tightly wrought and an easy read. To say any more would ruin the surprise.

[Olivia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much too bare a book. Especially in the end, it rushes towards the ending at a breakneck speed that just feels so unnatural. Nothing had time to breathe and basically everything could have used another pass or two to refine the interesting concepts the book is built on. I would say something like, I guess this is why most sci-fi books I read are hundreds of pages, but unfortunately, I've seen this amount of pages used much better before.