Babel-17

This was a truly remarkable novel to be published in 1966 by a 24-year-old writer (who was 22–23 when he wrote it). It has a style and imagination that wasn't characteristic of most sf of the mid-1960s, and it survives well into the 21st century.

True, if you read it as a book written now, it could seem rather strange and clunky, and there are anachronisms in it. But it's silly to read a book from 1966 as though it were written now; would you treat Jules Verne or H. G. Wells like that?

As with all fiction set in the future, the bizarre and colourful universe it describes is surely not going to be our future. It's an imaginary future, in which the Alliance battles the Invaders, and spaceships have discorporate crew members and pilots reshaped by cosmetisurgery. In this imaginary future, they record sound on tapes and find some use for punched cards, and that's OK, because it's not our future; think of it as the future of some other timeline.

Babel-17 is the name of a language, and this is a story about the effects of language on how we perceive and understand the world around us. What the young Delany had to say about language wasn't necessarily correct in all respects, but it stimulates thought about the subject.

I've been rereading this book since the 1970s, and I still enjoy it: it's quite a trip. I notice now that the story skates glibly over a number of implausibilities, especially at the end, where everything is wrapped up rather quickly. My advice is to sit back and enjoy the trip without worrying about such things.