Dec 29, 2009

Babel-17 | Babel-17

At a glance:

Author: Samuel R. Delany
First Published: 1966
Type of Work: Novel
Type of Plot: Science fiction—extrasensory powers
Time of Work: The distant future
Setting: Earth, the Alliance War Yards, and aboard the starship
Genres: Long fiction
Subjects: Language or languages
Locales: Alliance, planets of the (fictive)

The Plot

Rydra Wong, a poet and linguistics expert, is asked to decipher mysterious transmissions in a code called Babel-17. The transmissions are picked up in conjunction with sabotage attacks by the Invaders, who have been at war with the Alliance for twenty years. Rydra determines that Babel-17 is not a code but a language of unusual analytic properties.

She recruits a starship crew to seek the location of the next attack. In Earth orbit, her ship is sabotaged, knocking out all external navigational sensors. Via Babel-17, she solves the problem of fixing the ship’s...

[The entire page is 1720 words long]

Babel-17 | Babel-17

At a glance:

The Plot

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