Babel-17

[sawyl]

While it has definitely dated in places, there's no doubt that Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 is a dazzling piece of writing. Published in 1966 when Delany was 24, it follows Rydra Wong, cryptographer and linguist and poet, as she tries to interpret the meaning of the language Babel-17 in time to stop a series of sabotage attempts that have been attributed to the Invaders, a group opposed to humanity and its allies.

The opening sections sketch out Rydra's strange universe. A place where Customs and Transport roles are strongly segregated; where an experienced eye can tell the quality of hyperstatic pilot by their zero-G wrestling skills; where starship navigators live in polyamorous groups of three; and where the ship's principal instruments are manned by the dead. As Rydra gets a crew together, in an attempt to get one step ahead of the Invader's terrorist attacks, she charms everyone she meets from the General, who falls in love with her at first sight, to the customs man, who has an encounter with a succubus and discovers an unexpected enthusiasm for watching wrestling.

After a brief stop-over at a major arms research station, Rydra and her crew find themselves the guests of a shady group of almost-pirates who have pledged to keep the dust clouds free of Invader warships. Here she meets the Butcher, an ex-con who seems to have no concept of self, and make the final connections necessary to crack open the secrets of Babel-17.

As a work of fiction and characterisation, Babel-17 still works extremely well. Rydra, although extremely brilliant, is a well rounded character, almost bursting with interesting ideas. She's also treated a an equal by those around her. In fact, her gender passes almost completely unmentioned: her crew take it for granted that she's be every bit as competent (and confident) as a male starship captain might be. The world-building is also excellent. With a handful of small details, Delany creates the impression of a complicated world where people can experience some form of technological life after death (even, in some cases, bodily resurrection), where humans are free to choose their own physical forms, and where more complicated forms of sexual expression are generally accepted — among Transport, at least.

When, however, the book's underlying ideas about the way language and thought relate to one another come to the surface, it feels sadly dated. Delany takes as his conceit a form of linguistic relativity that states that thoughts are defined and constrained by language (a strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). Thus the Babel-17 language, designed to optimise neural processing, provides its users with mental advantages and accelerated thought processes, whereas the Butcher's missing concept of I or You says something profound about his upbringing and the architecture of his mind.

In one scene, when Rydra tries to help the Butcher to develop concepts of self-hood, Delany explicitly compares Babel-17 to the computer languages of the 1960s — OnOff, algol, fortran — and states that computers cannot become aware because the languages lack the concept of an I. This probably worked well for the first twenty years of the book's life, when few people would have had contact with — or deep knowledge of — computers, but these days it sounds absurd (and not just because strong Sapir-Whorf is no longer considered to be a serious proposition).

For all it's occasional lapses, Babel-17 remains well worth reading: it's short, smart, serious, progressive, and frequently astonishing.