Our Reimagined World Might As Well Be Joyful

Babel-17. Samuel R. Delany. First edition Ace Books, 1966. Vintage, 2001 (with
Empire Star). 336 pp. $15.95 (paper).

For a science-fiction novel about space travel and intergalactic conflict,
Samuel Delany’s 1966 book Babel-17 begins with an unlikely scenario:
poet Rydra Wong is asked by the government to help save the universe.
Like ours, Wong’s Earth is full of military and political strife, and
although Delany does not delve into these conflicts in great detail, the
action of the book takes place against a backdrop of poverty, riots,
embargoes, invasions, cannibalism, and more. This is a universe that has
seen things, and it is also one where Wong is an intergalactic celebrity
whose poetry (written by Marilyn Hacker, Delany’s wife at the time) is
so well-known that she is revered by almost everyone she meets on her
travels through space. The world of the novel is difficult, but it is a world
where poetry matters, and in our own circumstances—pandemics,
political struggles, protests about racial injustices, economic
uncertainty—that is one of the most compelling reasons to return to
this book despite its age.

In addition to being a poet, Wong is an expert in linguistics. Baffled
after several acts of sabotage accompanied by radio transmissions in
a strange language they have named Babel-17, the government turns
to Wong, hoping she will be able to decipher it and help them learn
who is responsible for the attacks. Wong swiftly obtains a spaceship
and assembles a crew, and they take to the galaxy in search of answers.
Although Wong is quick to pick up the nuances of Babel-17, one of the
most efficient, streamlined, and effective languages she has ever
encountered, Wong’s ship is rocked by sabotage as well, making everyone
aboard a possible suspect and raising the stakes of her mission.

In a genre often marked by savage story lines and dark dystopias,
Delany’s novel stands out for its joyfulness, which stems in part from
the magic of its world. As Wong hurries to select her crew members,
for instance, she drags a customs officer to an illegal fighting match
where an audience of naked people ornamented with elaborate
cosmetisurgery enhancements watch an aerial wrestling match between
the Silver Dragon and the leonine Brass. It is easy for readers, like the
officer, to be overwhelmed by the unfamiliar elements of this scene,
particularly the scale of the bodily enhancements, such as the Silver
Dragon who has “wings working in the smoke, silver feathers like
clashed blades, [and] scales on . . . grand haunches.” Throughout
Babel-17 Delany unsettles us with unfamiliar situations and descriptions, all
the while surrounding us with characters who clearly love this world
and see its humor. By the end of the book we are like the officer, a
self-described “lonely man, in a city of lonely men” who later undergoes his
own cosmetisurgical procedure, explaining that “I saw a bunch of the
weirdest, oddest people I had ever met in my life   And they made
me laugh   and even fall in love a little myself.”

Babel-17 insists on open-mindedness toward the unfamiliar in its
portrayal of sociocultural elements as well. Wong’s ship, like most in
Delany’s universe, is piloted by a “triple,” an intimate arrangement of
three pilots whose coordination must be so precise that they need to be
bonded emotionally and sexually. When the customs officer expresses
his discomfort with this kind of relationship, another crew member,
Ron, explains, “There’re some jobs   you just can’t give to two people
alone. The jobs are too complicated.” Later in the novel Delany engages
with the emotional elements of this relationship in more detail, but
by foregrounding polyamory as an occupational necessity, Delany asks
readers to approach this idea from a vantage point of respect. The ship
also relies on the intel gathered by its three “discorporate” crew
members—in essence deceased spirits who can “sense” the environment
without being detected. Death in Delany’s world is often just a change
of state, only one of the many ways a person’s life can be transformed
into something new.

Delany encourages us to consider all phases of life without hierarchy
or judgment; for example, a large portion of Wong’s crew is young.
Unlike more traditional portraits of space travel, where ship culture
is militaristic and serious, marked by hierarchy, order, and discipline,
the “kids” on Wong’s ship are mischievous and exuberant, and their
unwillingness to take things seriously is an asset rather than a weakness.
For instance, when the ship is stranded due to a dire technical
problem, a young crew member, Lizzy, offers her marbles as help, with
the stipulation that she get them back “by tomorrow afternoon because
she’s been challenged by the kids in Drive and she wants to keep her
championship.” Babel-17 doesn’t argue or philosophize. It simply asks
questions. What would happen if intimacy and romance were a part of
work? What if death were just a doorway? Could giving our children
more responsibility and agency, while still honoring their playfulness,
strengthen society? As the work of a queer author of color, written in
the era of counterculture and sexual revolution, Babel-17 unsurprisingly
champions acceptance, asking its readers and characters to let
things in rather than keep them out. And in our current time, when we
are tasked with maintaining rigid and strict boundaries to an unprecedented
degree (this essay was written under a stay-at-home order),
the openness in Delany’s book is delightful.

Beyond subject and theme, Delany uses language and craft to have
readers participate in meaning-making. A mystery, the novel is automatically
interactive, as readers examine character action and dialogue
to guess who the saboteur might be. Considering the kind of puzzles
Delany has constructed is an inherently empathetic act, one that is
rooted in connection. When it is revealed that the ship’s saboteur can
only be a crew member, for instance, readers will look at each of Wong’s
carefully selected workers, reviewing the intricacies of their personalities
as well as possible motives—and they’ll do this in light of Delany’s
clear prioritization of open-mindedness and compassion in the narrative,
a process that essentially forces them to adopt his perspective and
practice it on their own.

Also, as an action-oriented genre novel, Babel-17 is surprising in how
it experiments with style, in a way that demands more of readers. As
Wong learns to speak Babel-17, sections of the novel are told in interlaid
blocks, to contrast the efficiency of that language with our own. Late in
the novel Wong encounters a character called The Butcher who does
not understand the difference between the pronouns “I” and “you.” As
the two characters speak to one another, readers must actively reframe
the pronouns to determine their meaning. This process could even be
seen to presage contemporary changes in pronoun use (such as the
singular “they”) that reflect transformations in how we see gender
identity.

If our minds are computers, Babel-17 suggests, then our perceptions
and thoughts are always determined by the “code” of the language that
transcribes them. The book is a call to examine the constraints placed
upon our seeing by the words we use. A respected scholar and critic as
well as an author, Delany is known for his essay “About 5,750 Words,”
which first appeared in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of
Science Fiction (Dragon Press, 1977). In one of the most well-recognized
quotes from his essay, Delany argues that “a sixty-thousand-word novel
is one picture corrected fifty-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine
times.” He describes how encountering unfamiliar worlds and
situations works on a linguistic level in science fiction, asking readers
to revise their ideas about the fictional world with each successive
word. This kind of reading is inherently participatory, and it requires
readers to detach from their own perspectives, teaching them, in effect,
a new kind of language. This kind of experience is revolutionary in that
it can compel readers to consider issues like race, class, gender, and
sexuality from unfamiliar perspectives, an encounter that can make us
more open to new viewpoints—like professional polyamory.

We’re all aware that today’s world is markedly different from what
it was a year ago, and even now, it is as difficult to remember who we
were in that previous world as it is to imagine who we will be in the
future. It may seem that literature from the past has little to offer us
now, in this new incarnation of the planet, but Delany’s Babel-17 is a
reminder of how immersing ourselves in speculative worlds can be
energizing, peeling away the constraints of language and expectation
and asking us to open up to something new. Though not always comfortable,
this kind of reading experience can be exuberant and joyful,
asking us to believe in our own powers of acceptance and resilience,
our own capability for change and transformation. This kind of reading
asks us to trust that poetry really can save us.

Read more from Issue 17.2.