WEEK TEN: Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany (5)

 Babel-17 was an interesting short novel and I would say revolutionary for its time. Samuel R. Delany choses a strong female protagonist which is rare for 1960s science fiction works. Rydra’s crew is unique as well, there is a huge ethnic and cultural variety which adds more interest to the story. However, they serve as a collective and only Rydra’s and Butcher’s characters stand out to be remembered from this novel. The character designs are very weird and did not make much sense to the point that it became too random for me and I was not interested in them. Rydra Wong is a famous poet and linguist that has to solve the language/code called Babel-17. I am amazed by the amount of dialogue the novel has. The goal of the characters is very clear  right from the beginning. In my opinion it helps to explain the situation, help the reader understand the underlying science and even aids worldbuilding even though there is not much.

The language Babel-17 is used as a weapon that may alter reality and develop collective thinking. Even Rydra starts getting lost in the language she is observing. This philosophical work made me think of our languages and I think it is a weapon in a way. There is an old saying “you are as many people as you are languages” that shows how language can open doors and give various personalities to a single person. While reading the book I kept thinking about the movie Arrival i watched a couple of years ago and I was almost sure that the main idea is taken from this novel but learnt that it is based on a novella called Story of Your Life. The concept of language is not new as it is discussed from ancient times like the story of Tower of Babel where the languages are used to separate one nation and stop the work they were doing. As Babel-17 has only the pronoun “we” it makes the communication harder and gives a feeling of a self taught language.  Samuel Delany stresses the idea of “I” and “You” but never mentions “he” or “she” while Rydra is teaching someone the language. At the end Rynda gets so involved that she creates a new language calling it Babel-18 which she considers the “best tool”. Although some aspects of the writing were not clear for me they did not draw too much attention to them and I enjoyed reading Babel-17.