halschrieve's review against another edition
5.0
Babel 17 is about the limits of language and communication — it seems like Delany takes the form of a pulp sci fi in order to play with ideas about linguistics, understanding, and contact between people.
The plot: Rydra Wong is an expert linguist who used to work for the space army (or something like that) as a code breaker; now she is the most famous poet in nine galaxies. She might be sort of telepathic, but she is in denial about it. When a grizzled military guy shows up and asks her to come back for one last job, she assembles a crew to fly into space (for some reason) and decode an alien language that nobody has ever heard before. But there’s a spy on her ship, and between militaristic jingoists and scruple-free spacepirates , her life is one the line.....et cetera. A concept I love in this book is the idea that to fly a ship you need highly specific team members, some of whom have specific relationships to each other or who have certain qualities—you need a crew of teenagers, for instance, and a jacked body-modded wrestler, and then a ghost, and then a throuple... multiple necromancies somehow fit seamlessly into the assembling-a-crew phase, and it’s lots of fun. The book really zeroes in on intimacy and speech’s power or lack thereof for communication. After a crash landing leaves Rydra the prisoner of space mercenary pirates (kind of), she develops an odd intimacy with a pirate whose language and knowledge of himself has no word for “you” or “i” (he is a puzzle....can his secrets solve her mystery?) There’s a marvelous scene at a space arms dealers’ house where everyone is at a party he has forced them to come to, and two of the shipmates are having poly issues, when a sudden assassination attempt results in chaos, death, and fondue spraying everywhere. I don’t know what my conclusions are exactly, but I really like the experimental nature of the book’s plot and resolution.
Empire Star, on the flip side of the book, is a coming of age novella about an eighteen year old named Comet Jo who is presented with a crystallized sentient being and sent from his mining world to deliver an important message concerning a race of enslaved beings—the last slaves of the Empire, super powerful, without whom construction of the empire must cease. As the story proceeds, people call Jo simplex, and introduce him to more complicated ideas; there are things, it emerges, that can not be straightforward or linear. It turns out time is cyclical and the center of the empire is also the center of time—emancipation has not yet happened , but it’s happened before, too, and there are still slaves; a mysterious woman named San Severina believes it is her duty to use slaves to rebuild her destroyed worlds, but the sadness of owning slaves drives her insane, and once she wanted to emancipate them....a robot-consciousness who was once one of the enslaved race and a famous novelist had an affair with a poet who now drives himself into the sun, convinced everything has happened before... The book spins around the idea of empire and freedom , but it’s also extremely funny—there’s a devil kitten named Di’k, a lot of literary allusions (including to Oscar Wilde? oh Chip) and playful banter, and funny, sweet scenes about Comet Jo learning to see multiplexity. It made me think a lot about time and what it actually means to move forward; I like it as a meditation on emancipation, and what it means to love people who don’t understand you.
The plot: Rydra Wong is an expert linguist who used to work for the space army (or something like that) as a code breaker; now she is the most famous poet in nine galaxies. She might be sort of telepathic, but she is in denial about it. When a grizzled military guy shows up and asks her to come back for one last job, she assembles a crew to fly into space (for some reason) and decode an alien language that nobody has ever heard before. But there’s a spy on her ship, and between militaristic jingoists and scruple-free spacepirates , her life is one the line.....et cetera. A concept I love in this book is the idea that to fly a ship you need highly specific team members, some of whom have specific relationships to each other or who have certain qualities—you need a crew of teenagers, for instance, and a jacked body-modded wrestler, and then a ghost, and then a throuple... multiple necromancies somehow fit seamlessly into the assembling-a-crew phase, and it’s lots of fun. The book really zeroes in on intimacy and speech’s power or lack thereof for communication. After a crash landing leaves Rydra the prisoner of space mercenary pirates (kind of), she develops an odd intimacy with a pirate whose language and knowledge of himself has no word for “you” or “i” (he is a puzzle....can his secrets solve her mystery?) There’s a marvelous scene at a space arms dealers’ house where everyone is at a party he has forced them to come to, and two of the shipmates are having poly issues, when a sudden assassination attempt results in chaos, death, and fondue spraying everywhere. I don’t know what my conclusions are exactly, but I really like the experimental nature of the book’s plot and resolution.
Empire Star, on the flip side of the book, is a coming of age novella about an eighteen year old named Comet Jo who is presented with a crystallized sentient being and sent from his mining world to deliver an important message concerning a race of enslaved beings—the last slaves of the Empire, super powerful, without whom construction of the empire must cease. As the story proceeds, people call Jo simplex, and introduce him to more complicated ideas; there are things, it emerges, that can not be straightforward or linear. It turns out time is cyclical and the center of the empire is also the center of time—emancipation has not yet happened , but it’s happened before, too, and there are still slaves; a mysterious woman named San Severina believes it is her duty to use slaves to rebuild her destroyed worlds, but the sadness of owning slaves drives her insane, and once she wanted to emancipate them....a robot-consciousness who was once one of the enslaved race and a famous novelist had an affair with a poet who now drives himself into the sun, convinced everything has happened before... The book spins around the idea of empire and freedom , but it’s also extremely funny—there’s a devil kitten named Di’k, a lot of literary allusions (including to Oscar Wilde? oh Chip) and playful banter, and funny, sweet scenes about Comet Jo learning to see multiplexity. It made me think a lot about time and what it actually means to move forward; I like it as a meditation on emancipation, and what it means to love people who don’t understand you.
drabobrinha's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
600bars's review against another edition
4.0
I have decided to have integrity and count these together because this is the edition i read
EMPIRE STAR: This is actually the other side of Babel17 packaged as one book, and normally according to my rules I would not count this separately but it's december 29th so we are getting down to the wire. I don't feel guilty considering I did not count the berserk deluxe editions separately which if I had would put me at 4 books ahead.
I already finished a book today and was going to leave it at that, but again kai was pestering me to read this as she had read it yesterday. I said i had to do other tasks, but she wanted this enough that she followed me around while i did laundry and whatnot and she read the whole thing out loud. She did an excellent performance with different voices and accents. My favorite character by far was Lump.
As always with interstellar inception time loop type of stories I probably need to read this again to make proper sense of it. Though because this was kai's second time reading in two days she was catching stuff herself this go-around and told them to me at the end, so maybe I don't need that. I thought this was a comic in Babel 17 but I sitll appreciated the tie ins. How does the time loop stuff work with rydra wong's relationship with the fictional author? I have also not really had something this confusing presented in audio format, whether read aloud or on audiobook. I wonder how I would have fared if Kai had not just read it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iePPYF2-dI&t=10s you could read this book or watch this clip
BABEL 17 : I kept getting distracted thinking about the fact that Sam Delany wrote this at age 23 while being a MEGAHOTTIE! In my mind all Sam Delany books and Cowboy Bebop take place in the same universe. I really liked how Rydra was the opposite of every empath. readers of my reviews (lol at me acting like ppl 1) read these and 2) have my reviewcanon on file in their brain) know my feelings on empaths. She was like no i dont have powers i am just very observant and good at pattern recognition.
I bought this for kai for her bday and she read it yesterday and has been PESTERING ME SO MUCH that it was difficult to enjoy reading and is difficult to write a review
Random thoughts I had throughout
-kept thinking of various conversations i've had recently. my last roommate and kai and i would have the "color conversation" about that one video that explains how colors are determined by language. We had this same conversation so many times (not in a boring way) that it got to the point where when someone would veer close to bringing up anything about colors we had to shut it down right away or we would stay up too late
-My sister was talking about sommeliers two days ago and asking if they taste more and I was telling her that based off the wine classes I've been forced to take at work I am pretty postive the whole thing is not that they have more taste buds or taste "more" but that they have a shared vocabulary to describe tastes and therefore can identify more tastes
-lonely man going to a part of the city where people still know how to communicate comment on p. 194 remind me of debates about stan twitter and appropriation of aave .
-convo kai and i had while watching meek mill footage;yearning
-the other day i found one of the bleakest subreddits i've seen. it's girls who use incel terminology in their desparate and unironic quest to become a Stacy...(they literally say that). These girls are obsessed with things about their appearance that I have literally never heard of. Their big thing for determining beauty is "philtrum length". I have never in my life thought about my or anyone elses philtrum, I did not even know what that was, and it got me thinking about how if I spent more time on that sub and learned what the "pretty" philtrum length would that change how i look at other people's and my own face? It probably would and I am happier not knowing!
-I am trying to get back into Ballet after a long hiatus and so I took two zoom classes to determine what would be best for easing back in: beginner and gentle adult. Though both have about the same level of complexity for combinations and difficulty in movement, the class flow was like night and day because of the difference in language. The beginner class necessarily had to spend what felt to me like endless time explaining stuff, while for the gentle adult class the teacher can just say the combo and the class can do the exercise immediately because we have a shared terminology. getting into any hobby always feels like learning to read and then it is so magical when you do learn it all and can be so much more efficient
-language that forms between close friends or couples or families
-i think my friends @radia and @soph would like this book. in another life i would have studied linguistics
-interesitng how subject-object was such a big deal and also cases (can barely comprehend what case means) verb tense which is what i am always fascinated by with other languages bc of conception of time was not brought up as much
-sorry this is totally incoherent this is for my own memory purposes
-also hot that the poems are all by Marilyn Hacker. In my mind she and Sam Delany have a Kehlani-Jayvughn-Adeya arrangement
-among us
-The part where she figures out how to unravel the netting and then applies that to the battle formations... the ways patterns in our regular life that are due to our language/way of thinking show up in other contexts. could go on all day but this applies to weaving and binaries
-why do we have such boring body mods when it could be limitless
-was a bit bored at the space battles but otherwise loved reading it and as always love the city and dinner scenes
-loved stuff like the discorporate entitites and the makeup of the ships crew
kai will not stop tlaking to me so i cant even finish this shes singing nonsesne right now ok i liked this a lot i am looking forward to reading empire star
EMPIRE STAR: This is actually the other side of Babel17 packaged as one book, and normally according to my rules I would not count this separately but it's december 29th so we are getting down to the wire. I don't feel guilty considering I did not count the berserk deluxe editions separately which if I had would put me at 4 books ahead.
I already finished a book today and was going to leave it at that, but again kai was pestering me to read this as she had read it yesterday. I said i had to do other tasks, but she wanted this enough that she followed me around while i did laundry and whatnot and she read the whole thing out loud. She did an excellent performance with different voices and accents. My favorite character by far was Lump.
As always with interstellar inception time loop type of stories I probably need to read this again to make proper sense of it. Though because this was kai's second time reading in two days she was catching stuff herself this go-around and told them to me at the end, so maybe I don't need that. I thought this was a comic in Babel 17 but I sitll appreciated the tie ins. How does the time loop stuff work with rydra wong's relationship with the fictional author? I have also not really had something this confusing presented in audio format, whether read aloud or on audiobook. I wonder how I would have fared if Kai had not just read it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iePPYF2-dI&t=10s you could read this book or watch this clip
BABEL 17 : I kept getting distracted thinking about the fact that Sam Delany wrote this at age 23 while being a MEGAHOTTIE! In my mind all Sam Delany books and Cowboy Bebop take place in the same universe. I really liked how Rydra was the opposite of every empath. readers of my reviews (lol at me acting like ppl 1) read these and 2) have my reviewcanon on file in their brain) know my feelings on empaths. She was like no i dont have powers i am just very observant and good at pattern recognition.
I bought this for kai for her bday and she read it yesterday and has been PESTERING ME SO MUCH that it was difficult to enjoy reading and is difficult to write a review
Random thoughts I had throughout
-kept thinking of various conversations i've had recently. my last roommate and kai and i would have the "color conversation" about that one video that explains how colors are determined by language. We had this same conversation so many times (not in a boring way) that it got to the point where when someone would veer close to bringing up anything about colors we had to shut it down right away or we would stay up too late
-My sister was talking about sommeliers two days ago and asking if they taste more and I was telling her that based off the wine classes I've been forced to take at work I am pretty postive the whole thing is not that they have more taste buds or taste "more" but that they have a shared vocabulary to describe tastes and therefore can identify more tastes
-lonely man going to a part of the city where people still know how to communicate comment on p. 194 remind me of debates about stan twitter and appropriation of aave .
-convo kai and i had while watching meek mill footage;yearning
-the other day i found one of the bleakest subreddits i've seen. it's girls who use incel terminology in their desparate and unironic quest to become a Stacy...(they literally say that). These girls are obsessed with things about their appearance that I have literally never heard of. Their big thing for determining beauty is "philtrum length". I have never in my life thought about my or anyone elses philtrum, I did not even know what that was, and it got me thinking about how if I spent more time on that sub and learned what the "pretty" philtrum length would that change how i look at other people's and my own face? It probably would and I am happier not knowing!
-I am trying to get back into Ballet after a long hiatus and so I took two zoom classes to determine what would be best for easing back in: beginner and gentle adult. Though both have about the same level of complexity for combinations and difficulty in movement, the class flow was like night and day because of the difference in language. The beginner class necessarily had to spend what felt to me like endless time explaining stuff, while for the gentle adult class the teacher can just say the combo and the class can do the exercise immediately because we have a shared terminology. getting into any hobby always feels like learning to read and then it is so magical when you do learn it all and can be so much more efficient
-language that forms between close friends or couples or families
-i think my friends @radia and @soph would like this book. in another life i would have studied linguistics
-interesitng how subject-object was such a big deal and also cases (can barely comprehend what case means) verb tense which is what i am always fascinated by with other languages bc of conception of time was not brought up as much
-sorry this is totally incoherent this is for my own memory purposes
-also hot that the poems are all by Marilyn Hacker. In my mind she and Sam Delany have a Kehlani-Jayvughn-Adeya arrangement
-among us
-The part where she figures out how to unravel the netting and then applies that to the battle formations... the ways patterns in our regular life that are due to our language/way of thinking show up in other contexts. could go on all day but this applies to weaving and binaries
-why do we have such boring body mods when it could be limitless
-was a bit bored at the space battles but otherwise loved reading it and as always love the city and dinner scenes
-loved stuff like the discorporate entitites and the makeup of the ships crew
kai will not stop tlaking to me so i cant even finish this shes singing nonsesne right now ok i liked this a lot i am looking forward to reading empire star
monikapuff's review against another edition
4.0
Pretty good novel to get into the science fiction genre. Maybe it was more interesting to me because of its linguistic aspect as it revolves around how language affects thinking and that topic is quite interesting to me. The entire science fiction part was not that much the center of attention as I expected. All in all, quite a good novel, even though some parts took some serious thinking on my part to get through the bottom of the meanings and topics.
As somebody who studies literature, I had to focus on some things that casual reader probably would not pay attention to, but some parts were not that well connected, at least I felt like that.
As somebody who studies literature, I had to focus on some things that casual reader probably would not pay attention to, but some parts were not that well connected, at least I felt like that.
wanderinghill's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It's a bit tough to review this, as it is really two separate works in one. In the end I did enjoy Empire Star more than Babel-17, as I thought the ideas and world it built were more interesting and took more advantage of the short story form than Babel-17.
With Babel-17, the world building was excellent but the plot was quite thin and relied heavily on coincidence and happenstance. I also found the attempts by the author to explain Babel-17 undermined the story, as he was only able to explain the concept a couple of levels down in complexity before you had to just accept it for what it was. I would have rather it just be something that did what it needed to do, and leave it at that, as was done with many other elements of the book. There were a lot of examples of body positivity and acceptance of different lifestyles here, but that made the fat shaming seem incredibly out of place. Overall I thought it was a fine read that seems a bit ahead of its time, but still falls into a lot of the traps that sci-fi books from this era do.
With Babel-17, the world building was excellent but the plot was quite thin and relied heavily on coincidence and happenstance. I also found the attempts by the author to explain Babel-17 undermined the story, as he was only able to explain the concept a couple of levels down in complexity before you had to just accept it for what it was. I would have rather it just be something that did what it needed to do, and leave it at that, as was done with many other elements of the book. There were a lot of examples of body positivity and acceptance of different lifestyles here, but that made the fat shaming seem incredibly out of place. Overall I thought it was a fine read that seems a bit ahead of its time, but still falls into a lot of the traps that sci-fi books from this era do.
whatulysses's review against another edition
5.0
I AM SO LATE TO THIS VERY EXCELLENT PARTY. Loved Empire Star as a stealth parable, loved Babel-17 while also wanting to look at the research on how language actually affects psychology (it's controversial/not as concrete as Delany posits, as far as I remember).
eccles's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
What a difference from my last Delany excursion! Clearly the Future is where this author feels most comfortable. A wildly imaginative space operetta, in which the inconceivable is realised in full Technicolor, with a fun storyline, interesting characters and relationships - all the things that seemed to be lacking in Neveryon. The narrative here, presumably as with much of his writing, is a vehicle for some exploration of Concepts he’s interested in, but the narrative and characters in this instance definitely bear the weight of the ideas. The fuel for the plot is Language, territory he marks out nicely early on, “It’s not a code… it’s a language”, and then threads much of the rest of the story with various ideas about communication, semantics and symbols, all of which build to a plausible and somewhat comprehensible vision of this alien language, Babel-17. I say somewhat comprehensible, because it seems right somehow that it’s not fully comprehensible: even mundane modern languages are never fully “congruent” as he says. There’s a lot here, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. And a lot of fun and fascinating bits around the edges of the futuristic setting. The end felt a little neat, but I suppose the end of something like this inevitably disappoints, but the voyage was definitely worth it.
scinfaxi's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
cooperck's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0