Babel-17
Babel-17 is a 1966 novel by Samuel R. Delany.
Editions
- 1966: Ace
Awards
- Shortlisted for retrospective James Tiptree, Jr. Award
PLOT:
Centres around the heroine, Rydra Wong, and an intergalactic 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 in 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.
Further reading
- Book discussion group on feministSF mailing list (Nov. 2002)