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Samuel R. Delany: Babel 17 (Paperback, German language, 1975, Erich Pabel Verlag)

Paperback

German language

Published April 8, 1975 by Erich Pabel Verlag.

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(2 reviews)

18 editions

Dive into language

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.

Part pulp, part high-brow

No rating

A confusing mix when it comes to tone, this story reads mostly as a pulpy space opera, except for those moments where it launches into complicated discussions of linguistics and grammar.

Rydra Wong is a poet with such a great knack for learning languages that it borders on telepathy (body language is a language too, after all), and she uses her talent to decode the messages of the Invaders who, as the name suggests, are at war with her society.

I'm not a linguist, but I believe that the scientific theories on which the premise of this book is based have been debunked , which didn't help my suspension of disbelief. Personally, I was much more interested in another idea Delany introduced: discorporate people. Basically, in the future we prove that ghosts do exist, we just haven't yet developed the technology needed to perceive them. Without technological intervention we simply …