![]() Babel-17 is very deliberately about both the language in the text and the language of the text. The result is a narrative in which the dead pilot starships, epic space battles take place just off-screen, and Wong inaugurates a totally new kind of intimate relationship with a pirate who cannot say the word "I". Rydra Wong, famous poet, has turned starship-captain after being tasked by the Alliance with decoding a seemingly unbreakable enemy code, the titular Babel-17, which Wong recognizes, at least initially, as a new language. Bridging SF's Golden Age (think early Heinlein and Asimov) with the New Wave of the '60s and '70s (think Ballard and Moorcock), Babel-17 integrates rip-roaring deep space adventure and hard science with modernist prose and new social formations. This contrast between pulp terseness and a kind of neo-gothic ornateness provides the primary frisson in Samuel R. ![]() West, ascending and descending transports, shuttling cargoes to stellarcenters and satellites, lacerating the clouds." ![]() The economy of prose does not, however, continue into the second paragraph: "Industrial gases flushed the evening with oranges, salmons, purples with too much red. It's not an opening as famous as, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel," but it's an equally effective evocation. ![]()
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