Babel-17 by Samuel R Delany

It's easy to repeat;
it's hard to speak.

I’m struck by how easily my intertextual flow is diverted by the industrial run-off of the Amazonian algorithmic behemoth. If my memory, that fickle and unreliable narrator living rent-free in my sclerosed cerebrum, serves truth, then I was shopping for another China Miéville novel when I was waylaid by suggestions to consider purchasing Babel-17. I may not have been, but I’ve trodden this neural pathway so it’s now the path of least resistance through the amyloid growth. It turns out that Miéville’s superb novel Embassytown owes a great debt to Delany and his exploration of linguistic determinism.

Delany, I have subsequently learned*, is a fascinating man. Above and beyond his unusual formative years and remarkable life, he was, unbeknownst to him at the time of writing, championing a kind of linguistic relativity, an example of which the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes closest to being (although this particular type of linguistic relativity has been argued against by Pinker and Chomsky, and indeed Delany says that he disagreed with aspects of this hypothesis as it failed to take into account the “more complex linguistic mechanisms of discourse”). In essence, language has an influence on the way we experience the physical world as we are mostly limited to expressions from within our specific lexicon and comparative points of reference may not exist in other languages. Therefore, language works to determine one’s perceptions.

As a jump-off, Babel-17 is first thought to be a code used by an aggressive but mysterious invasion force, but thanks to the work of poet-telepath Rydra Wong, who quickly comes to realise it is a language in its own right, the government is able to pinpoint their attacks. Wong is recruited to lead a force against the next attack, but her mission is sabotaged and she and her team are captured by interstellar privateers.

And this is where it all gets very weird.

It turns out that Babel-17 changes the perceptions of those who are able to speak it, slowing down time, relatively speaking, and Wong (and her pirate captain) are changed by their understanding of the language, so much so that not only are they capable of understanding their enemy, they become the enemy themselves.

I will freely admit that I was left feeling confused on occasions and I lack the grounding in linguistic anthropology to fully appreciate, perhaps, the core conceit of the book (at the time – I’ve had the time to read a few articles and synopses since). But it reminded me very much of the Darmok episode of ST-TNG where Picard and a Tamarian captain are stranded on a planet together to fight a beast, but the Tamarian captain speaks only using Tamarian cultural and mythological figures and events, the references for which Picard (and his universal translator) lacks. It is endlessly fascinating, the study of language, and a life could be spent in trying to come to terms with how it influences and reflects cultures and perceptions.

And in coming full circle, it is equally interesting, and irritating, that an algorithm has replaced the active pursuit of knowledge, making obvious the links between discrete authors and works that might not be observed by casual readers such as myself.

However, if a human reviewer were still capable of influencing a reader, then I would suggest that Delany’s novel perfectly complements a dilettantish interest in linguistic anthropology (as does ST-TNG) and sits happily alongside Boas, Sapir, Whorf (ah-ha, linguistic and nominative coincidence!) and Pinker, not to mention Miéville, Ted Chiang and Neal Stephenson.

*It’s behind a paywall but you can read quite a lot of very interesting things about Delany before the text disappears over at the Paris Review of Books.

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