Babel-17: Difference between revisions
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[[category:1966 Publications]] | [[category:1966 Publications]] | ||
PLOT: | |||
Centres around the heroine, Rydra Wong, and an intergalatic war between the Invaders and the Alliance. | |||
Wong is a celebrated poet, space captain, gifted linguist, telepath and de-coder asked to decode a language called Babel-17, which has been linked to attacks on Alliance forces. | |||
SPOILERS: | |||
Babel-17 is the ultimate logical language, a language which can express ideas with far more clarity than any other. Wong also meets a man called The Butcher, who has been 'programmed' by Babel-17 into a spy for the Invaders. | |||
RYDRA WONG: | |||
As a character, Wong is is some ways a Mary-Sue. She is, for example, extremely attractive, to the extent that at least one male in the book falls hopelessly in love with her. She is also intelligent, bold, tough and enchantingly charismatic. Her more fragile side, born of a traumatic childhood, undermines her outward confidence and thus can be read as either creating a more complex psychological view of Wong as an individual rather than as a stereotype; or as another layer of romance added to ensure she is endearing to the reader. | |||
Revision as of 15:51, 5 June 2006
PLOT:
Centres around the heroine, Rydra Wong, and an intergalatic war between the Invaders and the Alliance.
Wong is a celebrated poet, space captain, gifted linguist, telepath and de-coder asked to decode a language called Babel-17, which has been linked to attacks on Alliance forces.
SPOILERS:
Babel-17 is the ultimate logical language, a language which can express ideas with far more clarity than any other. Wong also meets a man called The Butcher, who has been 'programmed' by Babel-17 into a spy for the Invaders.
RYDRA WONG:
As a character, Wong is is some ways a Mary-Sue. She is, for example, extremely attractive, to the extent that at least one male in the book falls hopelessly in love with her. She is also intelligent, bold, tough and enchantingly charismatic. Her more fragile side, born of a traumatic childhood, undermines her outward confidence and thus can be read as either creating a more complex psychological view of Wong as an individual rather than as a stereotype; or as another layer of romance added to ensure she is endearing to the reader.