Ace Books first published Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany in the United States in 1966, when the writer was 24 years old. By my count he had already published six previous novels. (Dare I bore readers of this review with the obvious declaration that is standard of any retrospective assessment of Delany’s work; that he was a true SF prodigy?) Babel-17 was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1967 and tied with Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes for the Nebula Award that same year. By reputation, the book is considered one of the highlights in an impressive oeuvre. Nevertheless, while many elements of this particular book worked well for me, I found Babel-17 didn’t quite live up fully to its reputation, largely due to some conceptual and stylistic excesses, as well as a disappointing final act.
Delany doesn’t provide much in the way of exposition in the book’s opening passages, but he does provide just enough detail to effectively evoke the future galactic society in which the book is set. The setup is relatively simple, but the plot hook is intriguing. An intergalactic realm known as the Alliance is under attack from another intergalactic realm called the Invaders. The Alliance has recently picked up a number of mysterious radio broadcasts in an apparently alien language concurrently with several sabotage attacks by the Invaders. Rydra Wong, a former code breaker and ship’s captain, turned famous poet, is enlisted by the Alliance to crack the alien language, which is known as Babel-17. In order to complete this mission she must gather a crew and travel to the site of Invader’s next attack in Alliance space.
For an sf book nearing fifty years of age, much of Babel-17 still retains a modern feel; certainly more so than many books of a similar vintage. I would argue that this is because Delany’s interest is extrapolating cultural elements into the realm of the wilfully weird, rather than any foolhardy attempt at a prediction about the future. Delany weaves various strange subcultures into his galactic future setting; for example, there are the spacefarers who work in Transport for the Alliance, for whom outlandish and surreal body modifications achieved through cosmetic surgery are common and akin to contemporary tattoos. Likewise, Delany posits a society in which the consciousness of dead people becomes technological ghosts known as discorporates, and are used to perform sensory roles on ships that no corporates can perform without going insane. Delany certainly has a knack for creating gritty societies fully inhabiting a used-future setting.
Whilst female representation is still too rare in contemporary sf novels (though arguably improved and hopefully still improving compared to the Sixties), I don’t think it’s debatable to say that in decades past worthy female characters were dismally under-represented in sf literature. This makes Wong a refreshing protagonist. What’s more, in a worthy display of diversity it’s clear she is Eastern in ethnicity (as depicted on the very first Ace Books cover, though successive editions have white-washed her), though Delany does use the term ‘Oriental’, which dates the book somewhat. The novel is also ahead of its time in the representation of polyamorous and pansexual relationships as a normal part of society.
The unique character of Wong is a central part of the book and she is a vehicle for Delany to explore his thematic concerns. Orphaned during an embargo related to an Invader attack, Wong was infected as a small child by a neuro-sciatic plague that left her in an autistic state; she emerged after a miraculous recovery with total verbal recall, learning seven Earth languages and five extra-terrestrial tongues by the time she was twelve. Using her incredible aptitude for languages and a hidden telepathic ability (a Sixties sf cliché I could have done without) to read the unexpressed thoughts of other people, Wong has become a famous poet and a cultural hero within the Alliance. I found the admiration for a poet in this future galactic society stretched credulity a tad, but certainly convenient for the major theme of the book.
You see, Babel-17 is an sf novel about the concept of linguistic relativity; a principle that holds the structure of a language affects the ways in which its respective speakers conceptualize their world. To me, this is a fascinating premise on which to build an sf novel, rife with possibilities to explore the way worldview is influenced by cognitive processes related to language. Delany alternates between playful thought experiments and goofy fun, sometimes pushing the concept into the preposterous. For example, it’s hard to swallow that an individual who does not know a word for ‘I’ would have no sense of self, as Delany posits. Likewise, I suffered from bad Matrix flashbacks when, by forcing her cognitive processes to operate in a super concise and economical language, Wong is able to enter what is effectively bullet time in a vibro-gun fight against a group of Invaders. These passages can be read as charming and ludicrous fun; though I got the sense Delany intended these ideas to be taken a little more seriously than I was able to.
With a preference for tighter plotting and efficient storytelling, I was grateful that this book is slicker and more streamlined than many of today’s sf clodhoppers. However, contemporary readers should be forewarned that the book, as a work concerned with language, is deliberately overwritten in places, with imagery and metaphors that seem to have been ripped straight from some trippy, drug-fuelled poetry of the Sixties. In fact, there is a scene halfway through the book that I found symbolic of Delany’s prose style throughout the book: during an Invader attack a machine that serves food at a banquet goes haywire, continuously serving opulent and nauseating food until it is piled high and overflowing from the table. In small morsels, Delany’s rich and energetic prose style throughout the novel can be agreeable, but, taken in large quantities, stylistically the novel leaves you with a distinct feeling of overindulgence.
Despite my reservations about some of the zany carry-ons and stylistic idiosyncrasies, the delicious mystery of the plot carried me through the novel, with its central question: what is Babel-17? Perhaps the most unsatisfactory aspect of the novel, however, is the resolution. The ending is marred with long tracts of clunky expository dialogue, and the solution to the mystery of the alien language relies on contrivance and coincidence. It was impossible for me to close the final page of the novel without a slight feeling of deflation.
Despite this, Babel-17 is a book that makes me interested in reading more Delany. Reading it in a contemporary context, the features that made the book so cutting-edge and groundbreaking in the Sixties are apparent, and the book has hardly dated at all in my appraisal. Some of the endearing goofiness is probably unintended and the style was occasionally a bit chewy for my liking, but if Delany had been able to stick the landing of his ingenious central conceit I would have been on the bandwagon with many others, proclaiming this a masterwork of sf. As it is, I can really only say this a good and fun book, marred by a flawed final act.
Review by Luke Brown
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
Paperback, 192 pages
Published 2010 by Orion Publishing Group (first published May 1966)
ISBN 0575094206
Right on Luke.