Babel 17

Un grand classique de la linguistique-fiction (cf. l'ouvrage "Comment parler à un alien"), qui s'appuie sur la fameuse hypothèse sapir-whorf selon laquelle le language façonne la pensée et la perception du monde. Cette idée est un peu galvaudée, on la retrouve notamment dans "L'histoire de ta vie" de Ted Chiang, ou dans "L'enchâssement" de Ian Watson, mais il faut rappeler que le roman date de 1966. Delany pointe d'ailleurs lui-même les limites de sapir-whorf : notamment le fait que, quelque soit la langue, il est possible d'exprimer toute idée en utilisant une périphrase plus ou moins longue. Selon notre langue, l'accès à certains concepts nous est donc facilité, mais aucun ne nous est interdit. Fait notable : on doit la traduction française à Mimi Perrin la célèbre chanteuse des Double Six, qui eut ensuite une seconde carrière en tant que traductrice, notamment de SF.

amazing style for scifi from 66, the babel / sapir-whorf thing is less interesting than the insane amount of biomoded space-sailor furry fighting and fucking he manages to shoehorn in.

he's running laps around stuff from the same time period, most shit then was like 'we got shrunk down to the size of atoms and theres little racist depictions of tribal people trying to kill us with spears' while delany is like 'i can't pilot this hyperdimensional spaceship anymore becuase im sad about the cyberghost of my girlfriend's girlfriend (who had surgery to get giant muscles to win contests in zero-g wrestling matches)'

Ihmiskunta on sodassa Valloittajien kanssa. Eri paikkoihin tehdään sabotaaseja ja hyökkäyksiä. Vieraalla kielellä, jota kutsutaan Babel-17:ksi, lähetetyt viestit liittyvät jotenkin hyökkäyksiin. Runoilija ja kapteeni Rydra Wong on opiskellut kieltä ja ymmärtää sen antavan puhujalleen erityisiä ajattelun voimia. Hän saa selville missä seuraavat hyökkäykset tulevat tapahtumaan ja lähtee pelastamaan mitä pelastettavissa on.

Taisin kuulla tästä kirjasta Embassytownin liittyen: ehkä, tai selvästikin, sen innoittajana. Kieli muovaa ajattelua, molemmat kirjat kuvaavat sitä (samoin kuin Arrival).

Kirjassa on hauskoja ideoita kuten että avaruusaluksen miehistöön täytyy kuulua aistijoita, jotka ovat ruumiittomia kuolleita. Normaalisti niiden kanssa täytyy puhua eräänlaisella puhelimella, koska ihminen ei pysty muistamaan mitä ruumiittomat sanovat. Rydra on opetellut toistamaan niiden sanat itselleen baskiksi ja muistaa ne lauseet.

Suomikin mainittu.

There are some writers whose style prevents me from immersion in the story, Samuel R. Delany is just such an author. Clearly he's a man with a great imagination, but his prose style is confounding to me. Just his dialogue scenes are enough to shut down my imagination. Three characters will be chatting, and none of their lines will have any attribution. That's great every once in a while, but that is this author's M.O. See also The Einstein Intersection.

This book is about language: there is a war going on and there seem to be radio messages that seem to attack certain humans and technology installations. Rydra Wong gets to investigate, and we follow her on a wild ride. Rydra is a poet and a starship captain and she needs to be good at both to untangle this problem.

I liked the alliterations throughout the book. I liked what I learned about language and plots and storytelling.

Very easy to see why this won the Nebula. Really good look at linguistics (not TOO hampered by Sapir-Whorf or limited understanding of computer languages), with inventive ideas and plot—only really hampered by the pat ending.

Although I’ve read it before, my appreciation has been amplified after reading Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman: perfect communication REQUIRES telepathy, and telepathy enables communication to be perfected. Interesting that so much in the 60s-70s really focuses on telepathy, but the novum gets dropped so abruptly in the 80s.

Babel-17 is an interesting novel that knows how connect the seemingly distant worlds of linguistics, logic and programming languages - with an appreciated dose of space invaders, spies and fights.

This piece of fiction won the Nebula prize in the 1967, in a tie with Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon"

I could deeply appreciate its concepts as I'm currently also learning about these same topics, and the book also made me think of "Arrival" and others Ted Chieng's stories - yet the universe created by Delany is sometimes hard to picture, probably because of the extent use of peculiar words which globally hindered my experience as a non native reader.

Some fiction centers around plot, and while Babel-17's plot is truly captivating, the thoughts and ideas intermingled with it are what kept me reading the book and affected my thought process. Which is precisely one of the important themes of the book: how much does the language affect who we are? Could we imagine a language that when spoken or thought would change the way one perceives the world? As if this alone wouldn't be exciting, Delany bases off his work on Plato's Dialogues - making firm connection to philosophy.

Two stars because... It's difficult to read older sci-fi. But I really did love this story. I just thought the delivery and style made for a kind of painful reading. The sci-fi concepts and the overall plot were really still awesome, even today.

Hadn't read any Delany in a while, because I found Dhalgren overwhelming. This was intelligent and creative and challenging without being too much- a good fun read. Suspect I'll go back and hit more of the Delany catalog soon.

Fun unexpectedly clever story from the 60s sci fi age. Read this for a queer feminist sci fi book club.

i am underwhelmed. i think 'snow crash' did it better. or 'the dispossessed.'

Outstanding classic.