Enjoyable sixties sci-fi romp from one of my favorite writers of the era, Samuel R. Delany.
Captain Wong is a poet and spacefarer brought in to solve the mystery of Babel-17, the secret language of an invading force in an interstellar war. Wong puts herself in the middle of the war while trying to crack the code, eventually teaming up with some space-pirates and having a number of wild adventures.
Delany's stories are always full of interesting ideas, with intricate world-building and challenging views. Babel-17 involves a lot of wordplay and shows Delany's interest in languages. It was recognized as a Nebula Award-winning sci-fi novel, another of Delany's works to receive the award. Another interesting aspect is that one of the characters in the story supposedly wrote Empire Star, which at one time Delany intended to be coupled with this novel in one of those now-legendary Ace Doubles.
A lot of readers compare Delany favorably to another of my favorites of the era, Philip K. Dick. Both are highly creative, though I think Dick is a more meat-and-potatoes writer and Delany a bit more philisophical. Both are great representatives of a spate of unique sci-fi of this time period.
I bought Babel-17 in a big lot of Delany paperbacks off of ebay, which I am slowly chewing through.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Just checking in. Good to see you are chugging along. I knew you would be up for this challenge! When next we meet, you have to lecture me on why I should add Delaney to my repertoire of hippy-fi reads! ... Caveman
Post a Comment