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Babel-17 cover art

Babel-17

By: Samuel R. Delany
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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Summary

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.

©2015 Samuel R. Delaney (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc.

What listeners say about Babel-17

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

interesting ideas, beautifully written.

Yes, it's the novel that brought the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis into the awareness of science fiction fans, paving way for thousands of stories about language altering our perceptions. As such it is a direct ancestor of such modern classics as Arrival.

Yes, it won loads of awards, and is widely seen as a genre classic. Yes, it has a wonderfully exotic (if sparsely described) setting.

But it hasn't aged all that well, and the linguistics in it are not that accurate or based on now largely discredited theories. And there are many things that date it badly. Punch cards program computers, recordings are made on tape reels. It feels very 1960s.

And it's a bit clumsy at times. A minor character with a role that should have put him regularly across the path of space travellers knows nothing about them, merely acting as an audience proxy for several exposition dumps and some wild world building.

But it's fun, crazy and it's central premise is engaging.

Enjoyable, but not brilliant.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Aged badly

The sci-fi part is terrible, with a mix of punch cards used on a spaceship, succubi and ghosts (!), the falsified and fallacious Sapir Whorf hypothesis (Arrival is a much better take on that but the movie not the novelette), a spaceship whose sensor array contains eyes, ears, and nose (thank duck it doesn't have a tongue to lick the outer space with), and all kinds of incoherent worldbuilding. The character work is terrible as well, demonstrating a theory of mind ability approximately equal to that of a moderate sized turkey. For instance, due to work bandwidth, pilots come in triples (it's claimed but this doesn't make sense as the triple seems to be a crew rather than just the pilot) and for some reason absolutely all pilot triples get into polygamous marriages. In parallel, the bodies of all people who die get stored cryogenically in case they're needed for later, in what seems to be an egregious breach of human rights as this apparently happens instead of just treating whatever kills them. Back to the theory of mind thing, a pilot woman gets thusly resurrected after having killed herself because both her husbands died. When she gets resurrected, she agrees to come pilot the main character's mission within 2 mins since resurrection, which includes becoming part of another pilot triple that had been widowed of its woman. "Oh so my husbands died and for me this was 5 mins ago, right before I decided I can't live without them anymore and decided to kill myself, but now despite having no time to get over the grief or change my desire to die because I've been dead for years so time didn't actually pass for me, I will join this mission and remarry (?) these two new guys, because people are completely interchangeable and actually I'm a robot without feelings." I think this must summarize the internal monologue attributed by the writer to this woman pilot. Culturally, the book aged absolutely disgustingly, with men commenting on women's appearances in the most inappropriate ways and circumstances. For instance the dead woman gets resurrected and some tertiary d8ck with barely a line in the book tells her not to be afraid because she's pretty. But this isn't isolated but pervasive, for instance there's a duel between two pilots where (narration is super muddled but I think) they're piloting dragon mechs, and another tertiary d98k, possibly the same verbally incontinent one, comments that the dragon piloted by the woman "is nagging to death" the one piloted by the man pilot. And the main character is a woman who is of course despite her genius "neurotic as hell", which isn't even a scientific diagnosis anymore because it was a pseudo scientific term used instead of the previous "feminine hysteria" of the 19th century. Now excuse me as I must go vomit.
I am sorry for the author, I understand that his mentality was a product of his time but seriously this book is not a classic but a zombie and as such should stay buried.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Space opera where language becomes the space

I couldn't stop listening to it. The attention to characters with uniqueness creating new perspectives that were impossible to imagine before.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A Science Fiction masterpiece

One of my favourite SF novels. Listening at 0.8 speed was best. The audible app is great too.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Story could have used another 5 hours, but happy!

Love the premise of this story! That language can have such a profound affect on the world around us!

Interesting characters that I cared about and wanted to know better, and well developed ideas that were novel.

Felt a bit rushed at the end, but still a great book!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Very entertaining with a great concept

I loved the exploration of language, and hope language shapes the thoughts of its speakers

I loved every single character (even the ones I hated)

I loved the world building, which was neat and evocative

vg narrator

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Babel-17

At least it was short. Although, short as it was and at nearly double speed, it was still way, way, way too long!
I mean it might not have been so awful if the Sapir Whorf hypothesis wasn't widely known to be completely unfounded?
Overall a very boring story with illogical and utterly ridiculous things happening everywhere you turn.
I couldn't get a handle on most of the characters - I couldn't even remember who they were or tell them apart for the most part.
Some small kudos to Delaney for having a female captain though I guess? Even if there are still snippets of chauvinism peppered throughout. I mean it's not great, but it's better than many of the other sci fis of that era.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

It's okay, for a "classic"

A little confusing at points but that might just be me. The characters aren't deep enough. You don't get to know them too well. Stefan Rudnicki's performance made it easier, so many characters and you could tell each one by his voice.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good but missing context in some parts

Reads like French ,in that it's a bit like having to understand masculine and feminine before getting the gist as the author is vague on context at times it's a clever and interesting take on sci-fi but has way to much dialogue that adds nothing to the plot and I found myself repeatedly having to listen to certain chapters as they miss out on context that dialog fails to correct

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

It's hard going

I picked this up because it was free, but sadly I just could not get into it. I listened all the way to the end and still could not really tell you what happened in the story.

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