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    Babel-17
    Babel-17
    Babel-17
    Ebook272 pages4 hours

    Babel-17

    By Samuel R. Delany

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Nebula Award Winner: “By looking at a typical space opera adventure from a different angle, Delany . . . give[s] us a weird, welcoming book” (Tor.com).

     At twenty-six, Rydra Wong is the most popular poet in the five settled galaxies. Almost telepathically perceptive, she has written poems that capture the mood of mankind after two decades of savage war. Since the invasion, Earth has endured famine, plague, and cannibalism—but its greatest catastrophe will be Babel-17.
     
    Sabotage threatens to undermine the war effort, and the military calls in Rydra. Random attacks lay waste to warships, weapons factories, and munitions dumps, and all are tied together by strings of sound, broadcast over the radio before and after each accident. In that gibberish Rydra recognizes a coherent message, with all of the beauty, persuasive power, and order that only language possesses. To save humanity, she will master this strange tongue. But the more she learns, the more she is tempted to join the other side . . .
     
    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781480461697
    Babel-17
    Author

    Samuel R. Delany

    Samuel R. Delany published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, at the age of twenty. Throughout his storied career, he has received four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, and in 2008 his novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002, named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2014, and in 2016 was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Delany’s works also extend into memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. After many years as a professor of English and creative writing and director of the graduate creative writing program at Temple University, he retired from teaching in 2015. He lives in Philadelphia with his partner, Dennis Rickett.  

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    Reviews for Babel-17

    3.5/5

    703 ratings39 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Samuel R. Delany was on a short list of famous sf authors I have never read, the list includes Cordwainer Smith, Henry Kuttner, C. J. Cherryh, Stephen Baxter and Neal Asher. I will try to get to all of them next year, any recommendations concerning these authors would be welcome.

      Babel-17 is a very short novel (too long to be a novella may be) about the power of language, a culture called The Invaders creates a language which can be used to control thoughts and actions through the structure and content of the language itself, more like brain washing than mind control or hypnosis. The concept is based on the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" which (if I understand it correctly) posits that ideas can not be thought of without words to facilitate them. The theory has since been disproved so I wouldn't give too much credence to it. Excellent basis for an sf novel certainly.

      The weaponized language is the eponymous Babel-17 which is being used to sabotage the war efforts of The Alliance, the side of the war the story is narrated from; whether this is the "right" side is not really dwelled upon in the book. The protagonist is genius poet turned starship captain Rydra Wong, she puts a crew of some very odd people together to find the secrets of Babel-17 in order to put an end to the seemingly unstoppable sabotages. Members of her crew are all genetically modified and some are actually dead but serving as a kind of high tech ghosts. The dialogue concerning a language without the concept of I and Me is one of the highlights of the book. The denouement at the in the last chapter is fascinating, though the actual ending is a little abrupt.

      While I found the ideas and concepts very interesting and thought provoking I also found the pacing to be a little uneven, a couple of chapters simply dragged, in a short novel like this I expected a tighter narrative. The character of Rydra Wong is well developed, she is complex and believable, though I don't find her particularly appealing. Given the short length of the book the other characters are at least adequately developed, but again I did not feel any emotional investment in them.

      I would recommend this book to sf readers looking for a short and thought provoking read. Don't expect edge of the seat entertainment, but plenty of food for thought.
    • 4/5
      The best Delany I read, and very tight and compelling. I really enjoyed the idea that the very language that you speak could put you on the wrong side in a war. Have reread.
    • 3/5
      Language as a virus in the brain.
    • 5/5
      After reading Dhalgren, this novel is just like summer beach reading. Not that it's easy, but for the most part the effort is worth it. One of the few SF books to deal with the relatively esoteric topic of language and how it defines us (which really seems to be a natural SF topic, being that they deal with aliens and stuff so much), something it sort of shares with Ian Watson's The Embedding. Delany however won a deserved Nebula for this book (actually he tied with Flowers for Algernon, also a fine book, but as different from this as can be), which probably wasn't at all what readers were expecting in 1966 when this was published. But who cares what the readers want, as long as it's good? And this is. As I mentioned before it's a mediation on how language defines us, both to ourselves and in relation to other people, all cloaked in a Space Opera type story. The Invaders (who are never really seen, weirdly enough, but I think they're human) are attacking the Alliance and are using a mysterious weapon called Babel-17. What is it? Nobody is really sure so the military recruits famous poet Rydra Wong to figure out what's going on. She has little idea either but has come closer than most people. What follows is layer upon layer of story as Ms Wong examines her own life as she tries to unravel the mystery of Babel-17, examining both the roots of language and doing her best not to get killed. Rydra is a rarity in SF, a three dimensional woman who stands on her own as a strong character who doesn't come across as an emotional maelstrom or an ice-cold witch. She's one of the most enjoyable and well-rounded characters to come down the pipeline in SF and there are very few characters since who can match up to her. Delany's story just a bit wacky toward the end and he makes up more than a few SF twists to explain the ending but the story holds together really well and it has brains and a soul underneath all the deep thinking. It's also very short, so all the people scared off by Dhalgren can come over here and see what the man can do in small doses. Then they can move on to the big stuff. - Michael Battaglia
    • 4/5
      Delany expresses himself in creative and poetic prose, but there is still a pulpy, somewhat old-fashioned tone to this book. The characters are interesting for what they do, and not what they are. The ending was a complete miss.

      Not quite in the class as Wolfe or Banks. However, I am willing to try more of his works, especially Dhalgren and Nova.
    • 3/5
      I think I liked the ideas a lot more than the prose or the plot. There is a lot of really great stuff in here, gene altered starship pilots who look like griffins or tigers or dragons, assassins and spies being built in a lab, a capable and interesting heroine building a starship crew and taking them out into adventures on the edge of known space. Lots of fun. The structure of the novel is off for me though, particularly the pacing which is kind of all over the place. Still, you can definitely see why Delany is a highly respected author.
    • 4/5
      Idea of language used as a weapon is very fascinating. Main character is a linguist and a poet, simply put a prodigy when it comes to communication on any level. Now she is sent to investigate a mysterious form of communication - universal language, codenamed Babel-17 by the military - used by mysterious invading forces that are slowly crawling into space controlled by humans.

      Author's style is, mildly put :), unique. First few chapters (when the main character is on a search for the ship crew) feel like something from drug-induced dreams :) chimera-like creatures (basically humans that underwent some sort of cosmetic surgery), environment, their roles on ship .... all of it feels very weird :)

      Also author likes to show the true power of language. Since English is not my mother tongue it took me some time to go through these parts of the story - I guess these are some magnificent language exercises but unfortunately they didn't have such an effect on me (again I guess because English is not my mother tongue). Instead, I had a feeling of story starting fast, then moving through some slow-motion parts (aforementioned language related philosophy) and then speeding up again before another "break".

      Interesting book, very imaginative and certainly has an interesting subject. But to truly enjoy it reader must know English language very very well.

      Recommended for SF fans.
    • 5/5
      In the distant future, the Alliance is at war with the Invaders. The Invaders are jamming Alliance signals with an indecipherable code called "Babel-17." The Alliance recruits Rydra Wong, a famous poet and a linguistics genius to tackle the code, and she discovers that "Babel-17" is not a code at all, but an alien language. Determined to meet the beings who speak this new language, Rydra recruits a team and gets a spaceship. But Babel-17 is such an intense language that it actually takes over and controls people who start to speak it. Rydra's voyage takes her to the opulent banquet of an interstellar arms dealer and the deck of a deep-space pirate vessel and she has to fight the Invaders and face the latent telepathic abilities that she has been denying.There is so, so much that I love about this novel:-even today, it is pretty rare to see a science fiction novel starring a woman, let alone a non-white woman. The fact that Delany wrote this in the 1960s is pretty damn awesome.-I love the "triplings" - the three-way polyamorous relationships that develop among ship's crews. The pairing in this story is among the ship's Navigators, Calli, Ron and Mollya. -I love the "discorporate" - the ghosts that are recruited to operate the ship's more complex sensory tools, because the data input is so wild that it would drive a living person insane. I love all the bizarre little touches Delany adds to these beings, such as, after a living person talks with them, they can only remember their side of the conversation and nothing the discorporate soul said. I love the clever way Rydra gets around this - by immediately translating the discorporate being's words into another language, and then remembering her translation of it.-I love the "cosmetisurgery" that allows for a pilot who appears to be part-man part-lion, a young man with a rose growing out of his shoulder, and a teenage chef with horns, albino hair and a tail, and all the other cool, vivid and memorable characters who form Rydra Wong's crew. -And a little thing, but I loved that Rydra's ship was named after the French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Very nice touch!Delany tells an amazingly cool story in a slim (under 200 pages!) book that is briskly paced and concise, but never rushed, and makes it one of the most original, vivid and entertaining science fiction stories I have ever read with some of the coolest, more memorable characters. One of my all-time favourite science-fiction novels.
    • 4/5
      Hard to believe it was written when author was 24. Groundbreaking ideas and well told to go with it.
    • 3/5
      He lost me a bunch of times, writing needs to be more clear. Focuses on things others don't. Very original, cool plot.
    • 4/5
      The most striking aspect of Babel-17 was not the stylistic fireworks - I came to the book expecting no less from Delany - nor the colourful and vibrant 'underground' life of the various pilots, drifters, pilots and poets that populate the peripheries of the society Delany creates, but quiet simply, just how 'modern' the feel of the novel of is, both in its ideas and execution. Most space opera from the 60s feels hopelessly antiquated, but not Babel-17. A fine read.
    • 3/5
      Greatly enjoyed it, loved the characters, and there are some very interesting thoughts on the relationship between thought and language.
    • 4/5
      An interesting book that made me think about how the words we use define the world we live in.
    • 5/5
      Just loved the story, well paced, thought provoking with fascinating characters!
    • 3/5
      Rydra Wong is a big Mary Sue and I love her.
    • 5/5
      There are two types of codes, ciphers, and true codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language, however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approximation.

      After a soft patch the weather turned greedy. The humidity laps at you, mocks your sweat. I was left pink and dripping form the ten minutes it requires to mow our lawn. Weeding and sweeping left me parched. I gulped down some tap water and turned my attentions to this jewel. Not your neighborly space opera nor is Babel-17 Ted Cruz's Starship Troopers. This is an evocation on language and identity, it purposes and provides. There is a rite to Delany's reign: he is impossibly prescient. He is prophetic without the store issue black fire, he is the Ark of Kristeva, the deft Derridean dance of Helene and JL(Nancy). he fathoms and fugues where we stumble and scratch.

      Some future space conflict has raged, punctuated with halts and sieges. A code is discovered which may be signalling sabotage. A poet is assigned to resolve such and that's where things both twist and are unfolded. Paradoxes are the accepted currency here.
    • 5/5
      You know how I know it's spring break? I finished a book. How do I know it's a great book? I want to just go back to page one and start all over again.
    • 2/5
      It's no Languages of Pao, that's for sure.
    • 3/5
      I feel like I need to re-read this. I listened to the audiobook, and it was just hard to follow. The more I think about it, the more I think "Babel" means something for how language is used in the book, and it may deserve another try. It may also be that the author was trying too hard to be clever, and it became messy and hard to follow--I don't like books that try to make a barrier to reading them, it seems pompous.
      Hopefully when I try again it won't be as befuddling.
    • 3/5
      Okay, this book really needed to be put in context for me to like it more, because I didn't grow up reading Delany and I knew nothing about him. Samuel R. Delany is a gay black man, and this book was published in 1966.

      So that helps with how Rydra Wong is always described as the most beautiful desirable woman ever, because man oh man does it make me angry for a woman to be talking linguistics only to have the man fawning over how beautiful she is and not really taking in what she's saying. Which I guess might be accurate? I don't know, but the author is the one taking liberties to create this society so they don't have to put it in there.

      It also helps with the description of Babel-17 at the end, because it's...kind of really dated.

      But some of my issues with the book were my own personal discomfort with intimate settings. Rydra is exceptionally good at reading body language, so characters' movements and tics are described in more detail than normal. I've been struggling with how to describe it - more tell than show? Or it might actually be more show than tell because we see exactly what makes the body language indicate a certain mood. It automatically makes me kind of recoil when I read because it feels too visceral. But it's a deliberate choice of Delany's, which I have to respect.
    • 3/5
      As a linguist, it's hard for me to buy into Babel-17 as a plot device, simply because the strong form of linguistic determinism (AKA Sapir–Whorf hypothesis) it depends on has been soundly debunked for decades. Still, it's an interesting concept for fiction, and Delany's world-building is vivid without being exhaustively described. Also, bonus points for actually using phonetic features and manners of articulation accurately, for the most part.
    • 4/5
      4,3 stars

      My feelings on short scifi books are usually ambivalent at best, but this book was something else. I listened to this on audio, and I feel like I'll have to reread this in physical format, and soon. The ideas in this book are amazing, and I also think the language used by the author is really clever. This is one of those books where the journey felt more important to me than the destination. I don't know why I haven't yet anything else from Delany, but I'll definitely bump up his work on my neverending TBR.
    • 3/5
      For a book written in 1966 it was quite innovative in how the author saw the future and unique in how space travel, with its complexities, was controlled by specialists using emotions, instinct and heightened senses to master the controls and navigation- with some of these specialists in the crew being deceased with their thought patterns and memories retained artificially.
      The main thrust of the plot is the use of language and how it shapes thinking in individuals and cultures. The effort to transmit this concept was often hard to follow and detracted from enjoying the story. The ending too was sudden and somewhat disappointing in my opinion.
    • 4/5
      A science fiction classic from 1966, and one that is, sadly, still somewhat ahead of the times. Not in terms of the technology (there are still phone booths!), nor the linguistic theory (Sapir-Whorf linguistic determinism having since fallen by the wayside), but in terms of its social and sexual diversity. Delany paints a world lush with strange and interesting details that aren’t directly required for the story—body modification, polyamory, ethnic diversity, many of which are still considered outlandish by some people today. Rydra Wong, poet and linguist extraordinaire, is the character who pulls all the disparate elements together, even as she builds bridges among people of different classes, ideologies, and languages.

      Communication is a key theme. An intergalactic war is going on between the Alliance and the Invaders. Key Alliance military targets are being sabotaged, and when they are, a strange transmissions are detected that the military believes to be a code but that Rydra recognizes as a language. How Rydra goes about translating that language is the core of the plot, but there are many fascinating side trips. Rydra’s recruiting her spaceship crew to take her to the scene of what she’s determined will be the next target of sabotage takes up a good part of the early chapters, and this is where Delany’s flaunts the sociocultural details that color his universe: from the stiff, bureacratic Customs officer who is introduced to the wrong side of town, to the bars and wrestling rings where potential pilots with exotic body modifications fight, to the Morgue where a dead navigator is brought back to be the third member of the required polyamorous triple of navigators; these chapters were my favorite part of the book.

      I haven’t read enough Delany, and I’m inspired to take on Dhalgren at long last.
    • 4/5
      Language shapes thought which shapes identity. That concept is the basis for this unique, beautifully-written, and entertaining science fiction adventure.

      Rydra Wong is a renowned poet with an uncanny ability to perceive the thoughts of others and express them in powerful verse. Her ability also makes her an excellent translator and cryptographer, which is why a general comes to her for help translating "Babel-17" -- a complex code the enemy in a long interstellar war has been using to coordinate acts of sabotage. Rydra quickly realizes that Babel-17 is more than a code, and she sets off on a mission to find its source and the next sabotage targets.

      Surprisingly, this poet has starship captain's papers, and her first act is to put together a crew, which introduces the reader to a strikingly original vision of interstellar travel. Pilots are surgically enhanced humans who 'wrestle' with the interstellar tides to guide the ship; a polyamorous trio with the designations Eye, Ear, and Nose act as sensors; and discorporates (ie: the dead) are part of crews.

      Throughout the adventure, Delany uses Rydra's unique perceptions of language, especially of Babel-17, to shape the narrative. The reader needs to be nimble to follow along with the shifts of language and accompanying shifts of *being* which propel the plot.

      "The Arrival" also uses the central importance of linguistic structure as the basis for a science fiction story. "Babel-17" does it better.

    • 3/5
      For me, I think this is a read and not a listen to book. This book was a co winner of the Nebula Award in 1966 for the best Sci-Fi book. It’s co winner was Flowers for Algernon. I can see what Babel-17 isn’t as talked about as Algbernon. It’s harder to follow and understand. At first Babel-17 is an unbreakable code that is a worry to the government. But then we find out it’s not a code but a language. One lady not only can decipher it, she lives it. She has to code switch between languages. This language is deadly. It also causes jumps in the story, and other strange things. The parts that I can remember were really interesting. Especially when they start talking about an alien race in part 3 that does not have the word or idea of “I”. Everything is “we” and “They” . This book is part space travel, war ships, and even a bit Hunger games. There are elements that will remind readers of Altered Carbon, (especially when they are looking for dead workers in the morgue, to help run the ship (they are given a type of second life since there are some jobs on a spaceship that can only be done by someone dead)). Confused yet? Yeah, so was I. There were many parts I listened to more than once. Overall I did enjoy this book, but I won't remember it next week. For me this is a book I need to read, because it is going to take a bit of studying to grasp the full picture.
    • 3/5
      The idea is really interesting, but I found the story just too abstract and hard to follow.
    • 4/5
      A book that both scares me and leaves me grinning hugely? No question about it, this can only mean I've been reading Samuel R Delaney's Babel-17 yet again. Rydra Wong, ex-refugee, 26 year old poet (famous across five galaxies), translator and code breaker is hired to crack Babel-17, an unknown language recorded in snatches during Invader sabotage episodes. When I first read this book in my early 20s, I was quietly terrified by the possibility that language could do that. It's still a scarily interesting concept. (Not telling! Just go read the book.) And the reason for the grin? Space opera: interstellar war, aliens, space battles, hugely advanced weapons, space pirates, extreme body modification. And if that scares you? As the Customs Officer puts it: “I saw a bunch of the weirdest, oddest people I had ever met in my life, who thought different, and acted different, and even made love different. And they made me laugh, and get angry, and be happy, and be sad, and excited, and even fall in love a little myself... And they didn’t seem to be so weird or strange anymore.”
    • 5/5
      The general commanding the forces of the Earth Alliance seeks out poet, linguist, and cryptographer Rydra Wong, to ask her to take on the decryption of the Invaders' code, which is being used to commit sabotage in the Alliance's military and transport forces. After some work with it, she tells him it's a language, not a code, and she needs everything the Alliance has on it to be able to translate it. She also asks him for a ship, and recruits a diverse and somewhat unlikely crew to go with her to what her analysis of the code/language, Babel-17, leads her to conclude will be the location of the next act of sabotage.

      They reach their destination, and it's not long before the sabotage strikes in several ways--one of them affecting her own ship, and boosting them into near-disaster.

      It's only near disaster because another, huge ship hooks them out of the disaster at the last moment, and she and her crew find themselves aboard a ship that isn't really a pirate ship, but isn't really not a pirate ship, either. Privateer might be the closest term, but the term the ship's captain and crew use is "shadow ship."

      It's here that she meets a man called the Butcher, second in command on the ship, a man who doesn't use or understand the words "I" and "you," and who seems to have a character very much at odds with his given name, and his past record.

      It's also here that, working together with the Butcher, she starts to understand what the Babel-17 language really is, and what the Invaders are really doing.

      This is a book published in 1966, when Delany was 23, or 24 years old, and features a rather young woman, who is primarily known as a poet, as its protagonist. I was afraid I would find the Suck Fairy had visited it; it hasn't. It's still fascinating, fun, exciting book. Rydra is a strong, intelligent, and utterly believable woman. Some of the other characters are thinner and less satisfying, but it's still a rich, rewarding read or listen.

      The linguistics here is central, and it's based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that says you can't think ideas and concepts that you don't have words for. That's largely discredited now, but that's not important in enjoying the book--unless, of course, you are yourself a linguist and that's as central to you as it is to the novel. In that case, I would imagine it would be maddening. For the rest of us, or at least for me, knowing the theory is wrong doesn't disturb me any more than knowing that faster than light travel is not likely to ever really happen.

      This is a classic of science fiction that really stands up almost sixty years later. Recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 4/5
      Good book. Nebula winner.

      I'm not a real Delany fan. I have read a couple his books before and decided I didn't care to much for his style of SF.

      This one is similar to, but much better then, his usual stories. I wanted to get back to it to see what happened next. I would have given it 5 stars but the ending was disappointing compared to the book as a whole.

      I will try more of his books.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Babel-17 - Samuel R. Delany

    part one

    rydra wong

    …Here is the hub of ambiguity.

    Electric spectra splash across the street.

    Equivocation knots the shadowed features

    of boys who are not boys;

    a quirk of darkness shrivels

    a full mouth to senility

    or pares it to a razor-edge, pours acid

    across an amber cheek, fingers a crotch,

    or smashes in the pelvic arch

    and wells a dark clot oozing on a chest

    dispelled with motion or a flare of light

    that swells the lips and dribbles them with blood.

    They say the hustlers paint their lips with blood.

    They say the same crowd surges up the street

    and surges down again, like driftwood borne

    tidewise ashore and sucked away with backwash,

    only to slap into the sand again,

    only to be jerked out and spun away.

    Driftwood; the narrow hips, the liquid eyes,

    the wideflung shoulders and the rough-cast hands,

    the gray-faced jackals kneeling to their prey.

    The colors disappear at break of day

    when stragglers toward the west riverdocks meet

    young sailors ambling shipward on the street…

    —from Prism and Lens

    1

    IT’S A PORT CITY.

    Here fumes rust the sky, the General thought. Industrial gases flushed the evening with oranges, salmons, purples with too much red. West, ascending and descending transports, shuttling cargoes to stellarcenters and satellites, lacerated the clouds. It’s a rotten poor city too, thought the General, turning the corner by the garbage-strewn curb.

    Since the Invasion six ruinous embargoes for months apiece had strangled this city whose lifeline must pulse with interstellar commerce to survive. Sequestered, how could this city exist? Six times in twenty years he’d asked himself that. Answer? It couldn’t.

    Panics, riots, burnings, twice cannibalism—

    The General looked from the silhouetted loading-towers that jutted behind the rickety monorail to the grimy buildings. The streets were smaller here, cluttered with Transport workers, loaders, a few stellarmen in green uniforms, and the horde of pale, proper men and women who managed the intricate sprawl of customs operations. They are quiet now, intent on home or work, the General thought. Yet all these people have lived for two decades under the Invasion. They’ve starved during the embargoes, broken windows, looted, run screaming before firehoses, torn flesh from a corpse’s arm with decalcified teeth.

    Who is this animal man? He asked himself the abstract question to blur the lines of memory. It was easier, being a general, to ask about the animal man than about the woman who had sat in the middle of the sidewalk during the last embargo holding her skeletal baby by one leg, or the three scrawny teenage girls who had attacked him on the street with razors (—she had hissed through brown teeth, the bar of metal glistening toward his chest, Come here, Beefsteak! Come get me, Lunch meat… He had used karate—) or the blind man who had walked up the avenue, screaming.

    Pale and proper men and women now, who spoke softly, who always hesitated before they let an expression fix their faces, with pale, proper, patriotic ideas: work for victory over the Invaders; Alona Star and Kip Rhyak were great in Stellar Holliday but Ronald Quar was the best serious actor around. They listened to Hi Lite’s music (or did they listen, wondered the General, during those slow dances where no one touched). A position in Customs was a good secure job.

    Working directly in Transport was probably more exciting and fun to watch in the movies; but really, such strange people—

    Those with more intelligence and sophistication discussed Rydra Wong’s poetry.

    They spoke of the Invasion often, with some hundred phrases consecrated by twenty years’ repetition on newscasts and in the papers. They referred to the embargoes seldom, and only by the one word.

    Take any of them, take any million. Who are they? What do they want? What would they say if given a chance to say anything?

    Rydra Wong has become this age’s voice. The General recalled the glib line from a hyperbolic review. Paradoxical: a military leader with a military goal, he was going to meet Rydra Wong now.

    The streetlights came on and his image glazed on the plate glass window of the bar. That’s right, I’m not wearing my uniform this evening. He saw a tall, muscular man with the authority of half a century in his craggy face. He was uncomfortable in the gray civilian suit. Till age thirty, the physical impression he had left with people was big and bumbling. Afterwards—the change had coincided with the Invasion—it was massive and authoritarian.

    Had Rydra Wong come to see him at Administrative Alliance Headquarters, he would have felt secure. But he was in civvies, not in stellarman-green. The bar was new to him. And she was the most famous poet in five explored galaxies. For the first time in a long while he felt bumbling again.

    He went inside.

    And whispered, My God, she’s beautiful, without even having to pick her from among the other women. I didn’t know she was so beautiful, not from the pictures…

    She turned to him (as the figure in the mirror behind the counter caught sight of him and turned away), stood up from the stool, smiled.

    He walked forward, took her hand, the words Good evening, Miss Wong, tumbling on his tongue till he swallowed them unspoken. And now she was about to speak.

    She wore copper lipstick, and the pupils of her eyes were beaten disks of copper—

    Babel-17, she said. I haven’t solved it yet, General Forester.

    A knitted indigo dress, and her hair like fast water at night spilling one shoulder; he said, That doesn’t really surprise us, Miss Wong.

    Surprise, he thought. She puts her hand on the bar, she leans back on the stool, hip moving in knitted blue, and with each movement, I am amazed, surprised, bewildered. Can I be this off guard, or can she really be that—

    But I’ve gotten further than you people at Military have been able to. The gentle line of her mouth bowed with gentler laughter.

    From what I’ve been led to expect of you, Miss Wong, that doesn’t surprise me either. Who is she? he thought. He had asked the question of the abstract population. He had asked it of his own reflected image. He asked it of her now, thinking, No one else matters, but I must know about her. That’s important. I have to know.

    First of all, General, she was saying, Babel-17 isn’t a code.

    His mind skidded back to the subject and arrived teetering. Not a code? But I thought Cryptography had at least established— He stopped, because he wasn’t sure what Cryptography had established, and because he needed another moment to haul himself down from the ledges of her high cheekbones, to retreat from the caves of her eyes. Tightening the muscles of his face, he marshaled his thoughts to Babel-17. The Invasion: Babel-17 might be one key to ending this twenty-year scourge. You mean we’ve just been trying to decipher a lot of nonsense?

    It’s not a code, she repeated. It’s a language.

    The General frowned. Well, whatever you call it, code or language, we still have to figure out what it says. As long as we don’t understand it, we’re a hell of a way from where we should be. The exhaustion and pressure of the last months homed in his belly, a secret beast to strike the back of his tongue, harshening his words.

    Her smile had left, and both hands were on the counter. He wanted to retract the harshness. She said, You’re not directly connected with the Cryptography Department. The voice was even, calming.

    He shook his head.

    Then let me tell you this. Basically, General Forester, there are two types of codes, ciphers, and true codes. In the first, letters, or symbols that stand for letters, are shuffled and juggled according to a pattern. In the second, letters, words, or groups of words are replaced by other letters, symbols, or words. A code can be one type or the other, or a combination. But both have this in common: once you find the key, you just plug it in and out come logical sentences. A language, however, has its own internal logic, its own grammar, its own way of putting thoughts together with words that span various spectra of meaning. There is no key you can plug in to unlock the exact meaning. At best you can get a close approximation.

    Do you mean that Babel-17 decodes into some other language?

    Not at all. That’s the first thing I checked. We can take a probability scan on various elements and see if they are congruent with other language patterns, even if these elements are in the wrong order. No. Babel-17 is a language itself which we do not understand.

    I think— General Forester tried to smile—what you’re trying to tell me is that because it isn’t a code, but rather an alien language, we might as well give up. If this were defeat, receiving it from her was almost relief.

    But she shook her head. I’m afraid that’s not what I’m saying at all. Unknown languages have been deciphered without translations, Linear B and Hittite for example. But if I’m to get further with Babel-17, I’ll have to know a great deal more.

    The General raised his eyebrows. What more do you need to know? We’ve given you all our samples. When we get more, we’ll certainly—

    General, I have to know everything you know about Babel-17; where you got it, when, under what circumstances, anything that might give me a clue to the subject matter.

    We’ve released all the information that we—

    You gave me ten pages of double-spaced typewritten garble with the code name Babel-17 and asked me what it meant. With just that I can’t tell you. With more, I might. It’s that simple.

    He thought: If it were that simple, if it were only that simple, we would never have called you in about it, Rydra Wong.

    She said: If it were that simple, if it were only that simple, you would never have called me in about it, General Forester.

    He started, for one absurd moment convinced she had read his mind. But of course, she would know that. Wouldn’t she?

    General Forester, has your Cryptography Department even discovered it’s a language?

    If they have, they haven’t told me.

    I’m fairly sure they don’t know. I’ve made a few structural inroads on the grammar. Have they done that?

    No.

    General, although they know a hell of a lot about codes, they know nothing of the nature of language. That sort of idiotic specialization is one of the reasons I haven’t worked with them for the past six years.

    Who is she? he thought again. A security dossier had been handed him that morning, but he had passed it to his aide and merely noted, later, that it had been marked approved. He heard himself say, Perhaps if you could tell me a little about yourself, Miss Wong, I could speak more freely with you. Illogical, yet he’d spoken it with measured calm and surety. Was her expression quizzical?

    What do you want to know?

    What I already know is only this: your name, and that some time ago you worked for Military Cryptography. I know that even though you left when very young, you had enough of a reputation so that, six years later, the people who remembered you said unanimously—after they had struggled with Babel-17 for a month— ‘Send it to Rydra Wong.’ He paused. And you tell me you have gotten someplace with it. So they were right."

    Let’s have drinks, she said.

    The bartender drifted forward, drifted back, leaving two small glasses of smoky green. She sipped, watching him. Her eyes, he thought, slant like astounded wings.

    I’m not from Earth, she said. My father was a Communications engineer at Stellarcenter X-11-B just beyond Uranus. My mother was a translator for the Court of Outer Worlds. Until I was seven I was the spoiled brat of the Stellarcenter. There weren’t many children. We moved rockside to Uranus-XXVII in ’52. By the time I was twelve, I knew seven Earth languages and could make myself understood in five extraterrestrial tongues. I pick up languages like most people pick up the lyrics to popular songs. I lost both parents during the second embargo.

    You were on Uranus during the embargo?

    You know what happened?

    I know the Outer Planets were hit a lot harder than the Inner.

    Then you don’t know. But, yes, they were. She drew a breath as memory surprised her. One drink isn’t enough to make me talk about it, though. When I came out of the hospital, there was a chance I may have had brain damage.

    Brain damage—?

    Malnutrition you know about. Add neurosciatic plague.

    I know about plague, too.

    Anyway, I came to Earth to stay with an aunt and uncle here and receive neurotherapy. Only I didn’t need it. And I don’t know whether it was psychological or physiological, but I came out of the whole business with total verbal recall. I’d been bordering on it all my life so it wasn’t too odd. But I also had perfect pitch.

    Doesn’t that usually go along with lightning calculation and eidetic memory? I can see how all of them would be of use to a cryptographer.

    I’m a good mathematician, but no lightning calculator. I test high on visual conception and special relations—dream in technicolor and all that—but the total recall is strictly verbal. I had already begun writing. During the summer I got a job translating with the government and began to bone up on codes. In a little while I discovered that I had a certain knack. I’m not a good cryptographer. I don’t have the patience to work that hard on anything written down that I didn’t write myself. Neurotic as hell; that’s another reason I gave it up for poetry. But the ‘knack’ was sort of frightening. Somehow, when I had too much work to do, and somewhere else I really wanted to be, and was scared my supervisor would start getting on my neck, suddenly everything I knew about communication would come together in my head, and it was easier to read the thing in front of me and say what it said than to be that scared and tired and miserable.

    She glanced at her drink.

    Eventually the knack almost got to where I could control it. By then I was nineteen and had a reputation as the little girl who could crack anything. I guess it was knowing something about language that did it, being more facile at recognizing patterns—like distinguishing grammatical order from random rearrangement by feel, which is what I did with Babel-17.

    Why did you leave?

    I’ve given you two reasons. A third is simply that when I mastered the knack, I wanted to use it for my own purposes. At nineteen, I quit the Military and, well, got…married, and started writing seriously. Three years later my first book came out. She shrugged, smiled. For anything after that, read the poems. It’s all there.

    And on the worlds of five galaxies, now, people delve your imagery and meaning for the answers to the riddles of language, love, and isolation. The three words jumped his sentence like vagabonds on a boxcar. She was before him, and was talking; here, divorced from the military, he felt desperately isolated; and he was desperately in…No!

    That was impossible and ridiculous and too simple to explain what coursed and pulsed behind his eyes, inside his hands. Another drink? Automatic defense. But she will take it for automatic politeness. Will she? The bartender came, left.

    The worlds of five galaxies, she repeated. That’s so strange. I’m only twenty-six. Her eyes fixed somewhere behind the mirror. She was only half-through her first drink.

    By the time Keats was your age, he was dead.

    She shrugged. This is an odd epoch. It takes heroes very suddenly, very young, then drops them just as quickly.

    He nodded, recalling half a dozen singers, actors, even writers in their late teens or early twenties who had been named genius for a year, two, three, only to disappear. Her reputation was only a phenomenon of three years’ duration.

    I’m part of my times, she said. I’d like to transcend my times, but the times themselves have a good deal to do with who I am. Her hand retreated across the mahogany from her glass. You in Military, it must be much the same. She raised her head. Have I given you what you want?

    He nodded. It was easier to lie with a gesture than a word.

    Good. Now, General Forester, what’s Babel-17?

    He looked around for the bartender, but a glow brought his eyes back to her face: the glow was simply her smile, but from the corner of his eye he had actually mistaken it for a light. Here, she said, pushing her second drink, untouched, to him. I won’t finish this.

    He took it, sipped. The Invasion, Miss Wong…it’s got to be involved with the Invasion.

    She leaned on one arm, listening with narrowing eyes.

    It started with a series of accidents—well, at first they seemed like accidents. Now we’re sure it’s sabotage. They’ve occurred all over the Alliance regularly since December ’68. Some on warships, some in Space Navy Yards, usually involving the failure of some important equipment. Twice, explosions have caused the death of important officials. Several times these ‘accidents’ have happened in industrial plants producing essential war products.

    What connects all these ‘accidents,’ other than that they touched on the war? With our economy working this way, it would be difficult for any major industrial accident not to affect the war.

    The thing that connects them all, Miss Wong, is Babel-17.

    He watched her finish her drink and set the glass precisely on the wet circle.

    "Just before, during, and immediately after each accident, the area is flooded with radio exchanges back and forth from indefinite sources; most of them only have a carrying power of a couple of hundred yards. But there are occasional bursts through hyperstatic channels that blanket a few light-years. We have transcribed the stuff during the last three ‘accidents’ and given it the working title

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