(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: echoey synth violin)
Delany bio, non-spoiler discussion
Hello, this is Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Gretchen, joined by my co-host, Nate and JM. This section is part of our episode on linguistics in science fiction Works. The previous sections include a background on linguistics, some of its major concepts and its connection to sci-fi, and discussions of Ursula K. Le Guin and Jack Vance's "Languages of Pao".
On April 1st, 1942, Samuel Ray Delany Jr. was born in Harlem and into one of the most prominent black families of mid-20th century New York. Among his aunts and uncles were Sadie and Bessie Delany, civil rights activists who wrote "Having Our Say", a joint memoir which would be adapted for Broadway and film, Miles Page, the first black criminal court judge in New York State, E. Franklin Frazier, a well-known sociologist and Hubert Delany, also a judge, as well as a civil rights and anti-McCarthyist leader.
Delany's father ran the most successful funeral parlor in Harlem, Levy and Delany, which was renowned enough to be mentioned in some stories by Langston Hughes. This led to Delany experiencing death rather early in life. He writes of seeing his first dead body at the age of five, leading to terror over his mortality, a feeling which played him very frequently over the next few decades of his life, lessening only once he had a child of his own.
Also at the age of five, in 1947, Delany began attending the Dalton School, where he was one of the only three black children in his class, one of the other two being his cousin. In fact, all of the black students at Dalton were either related or were family friends. Delany also has struggled with severe dyslexia throughout his life, which he has combated through laborious editing and heightened attention to the written word. He claims that he first learned to read through comic books, the first text he ever read on his own being a Batman comic.
During summers, Delany attended camp, first at Camp Hill-and-Dale in Nassau, New York, then at Camp Phoenicia, the latter of which was known for its leftist ideals, members boycotting businesses that discriminated against non-white campers and drawing socialist folk singers like Pete Seeger, who Delany got to meet during his summers there. It was also at this camp on his first day where Delany earned the nickname Chip, which his close friends call him up to this present day.
Graduating from Dalton, Delany attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he met future poet and his future wife, Marilyn Hacker. While at this school, Delany focused a lot on his writing as well as composing music, and by the time he graduated, he had written nine novels, none of which he had ever been published. He also taught a reading class after school for Puerto Rican young men. When he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, he began as a student at City College, but dropped out during his first year after the death of his father in 1960.
He also married Hacker during this period, who was attending NYU. Hacker worked as an editorial assistant at Ace Books. Through her, Delany's manuscript of his first science fiction novel, "The Jewels of Aptor", came to the attention of the editor-in-chief, Donald A. Wollheim. It was published in December of 1962, when Delany was 20 years old. He published eight more novels within the following six years, two of which the "Einstein Intersection" and the novel will be covering tonight, "Babel-17", won him the Nebula Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of their respective years.
This period also saw some instability for Delany. In 1963, he suffered from a breakdown, due mostly to overwork, and spent three weeks in Mount Sinai Mental Hospital. Delany and Hacker also had a brief three-way relationship with a man named Bobby Folsom, which led to a separation of the couple, during which Delany went with Folsom to work on shrimp boats. The experience is recounted by Hacker in her poem "The Navigators", the name inspired by a thruple in "Babel-17". The couple would reconnect and separate multiple times over the rest of their marriage until their divorce in 1980, and engaged in multiple romances within the context of their open marriage. After their divorce, Hacker herself would identify as a lesbian.
During 1965, Delany took a six-month trip to Europe, traveling through places such as Paris, several places in Greece, Munich, and London, before returning to New York. He'd soon visit London again, meeting with fellow sci-fi writers Judith Merrill, Brian Aldiss, J.G. Ballard, and Pamela Zoline, among others. When he returned to New York, he finished writing "Nova" and transformed "The Star Pit", his first short work of sci-fi he published, into a radio drama for The Minds Theater, in which he played the lead character.
At this point, Delany had just joined a commune with members of a rock group he was working with, The Heavenly Breakfast, which disbanded the following year in 1968. This year also saw his nebula win for "The Einstein Intersection", as well as an award for best sci-fi short story with "Aye, and Gomorrah".
Alongside writing science fiction, Delany also experimented with other types of works at this time, writing a pornographic novel called "Equinox" that got published a few years later in 1973, under the title "Tides of Lust", working on the now rather infamous "Hogg" between writing "Dhalgren", finishing the first draft days before the Stonewall Riots, which happened a day before the time we're currently recording this, and filming a short film called "Tiresias" Delany would also film another piece called "The Orchid" in 1972, which was screened at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago and caused a riot.
Delany's non-fiction work about science fiction during this time is also significant. It, as one of his short autobiographies claims, turned on the idea of science fiction not as a particular kind of text, but rather as a discourse, in his words, a way of reading, a way of making certain texts make sense. By the same time, his critique was deeply grounded in the material reality of the genre, printing practices in pulp magazines, editorial conventions in history, biographical occurrences in the lives of writers, editors, and particularly committed readers who put on SF conventions and published SF fanzines during the 30s.
During the year of 1971, Delany flew to London on several occasions to meet with Hacker, who had moved there from the U.S. to conceive a child together. This would be their daughter, Iva Alexander Hacker Delany, born in 1974. Delany soon after this was offered a chair of professorship at SUNY Buffalo and later a visiting fellowship at University at Albany, which very good to know. as an alumni there now, and published "Dhalgren", the novel he had worked on for five years. It was an immediately divisive work garnering both immense praise and immense criticism.
After his next book, "Trouble on Triton", Delany composed a collection of tales collected together as "Return to Nevèrÿon", the last tale of which from 1984 is considered the first work from a major publisher to cover AIDS in the U.S. This collection got him blacklisted from Dalton Books, then the largest American bookstore chain, lifting only once the chain was sold to Barnes & Noble.
As he was working on this collection by the late 1970s, Delany began dating Frank Romeo, an aspiring actor. Their relationship was a fairly rocky one. For the initial period of it, Romeo was abusive towards Delany until a point when Delany hit him back and told him if Romeo hit him again, they were through. They were, like Hacker and Delany, in an open relationship, but Romeo was very jealous about Delany's other romances. However, Delany did write scripts for films that were star Romeo, "The Ants" and "Bye Bye Love", and Romeo was apparently a good co-parent of Iva when she was with Delany. Still, the relationship came to an abrupt and violent end in either 1988 or 89 when Romeo punched Delany in the jaw and Delany declared that their relationship was over.
A few years later, Delany met and moved in with his current partner, Dennis Rickett. He continued to take on academic posts, including one from Temple University, which started in 2001, and he kept until his retirement in 2015. His most recent works are from a few years ago, as he still wrote especially non-fiction throughout the 1990s to the 2010s.
As mentioned previously, "Babel-17", published by Ace Books in 1966, won Delany a Nebula Award, a joint winner alongside "Flowers for Algernon" in 1967, and was nominated for a Hugo that same year. Delany at the time was fascinated by the concept of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, even though he did not know the term for it. However, he has since challenged its validity. He has said, "the realization of the flaws in the Sapir-Whorf in that they caused me to begin considering the more complex linguistic mechanisms of discourse you may say gave me my lifetime project."
So yeah, what are your thoughts, both of your thoughts on "Babel-17"?
Nate:
I liked it, and it's definitely a very, very nice contrast to the Vance as it deals with almost exactly the same themes with regards to language, but approaches it from a totally different angle, both in terms of the content as here, it's almost like a code breaking thing at first, rather than like an academic transmission from master to student like we get in the Vance. And also the plot is unfolded very, very differently. Like the Vance has a very much traditional hero's arc for its plot structure where we get more or less the same characters interacting throughout the entire time, whereas this one is a lot more episodic in nature, I think.
And if I had one complaint about this novel as it does feel like it ends right when it starts to really get going, he creates just such an awesome and weird world. And this is definitely the kind of thing that I wouldn't mind spending a lot more time in with all these characters having their own plot lines weaving in and out of one another.
There is definitely some cool tie ins to real world language. Like at one point, Rydra uses Basque to bypass the need for special equipment because it's just like such a complex and difficult language to learn and nobody else would understand it, which I thought was pretty funny. They also mentioned that complexities of Finnish at some point.
Gretchen:
I really liked that with the Basque where it'll be like, she thought in Basque. So you know exactly what's going on with that.
JM:
Yeah. So this was actually my second time reading this one, too. Again, the first time was probably even longer ago than "Languages of Pao". So definitely needed a refresher. I had read a little bit of Delany before I have "The Fall of the Towers". I think that's the name of the full trilogy, or maybe that's just one of the book in the trilogy.
Gretchen:
Yeah, that's the full trilogy, which was also one of the first works that he did right after.
JM:
Yeah. I really liked that one a lot. And I like "Aye, and Gomorrah", which is in "The Big Book of Science Fiction". I'm not sure if that's where I first read it though, but that's an interesting piece. And out of curiosity, I have read his, I don't know what you want to call them, I guess "Hogg" is like anti-erotica and "The Tides of Lust", aka "Equinox" is sort of like a, it's really hard to describe, iIt's like a parodical adventure with a lot of, I don't know, subversive sexuality and stuff like that. I mean, it's, it's a kind of stuff that a lot of people would be very uncomfortable with, but it's also "Equinox" is mixed with a lot of like really interesting rumination, I guess, and interesting prose of the, one of the main characters is, as a fan of science fiction magazines. So it's just kind of a little bit of an insertion there. I don't know, you definitely see his love of big muscular pirate type people in this book too. So in "Babel-17", that is, sorry, I, I was always calling it "Babel-17". So I don't know, some people say Bay-bel, some people say Babble, I don't know which is correct, but...
Gretchen:
I feel like it could go either way. I feel like it's kind of like the data versus data thing.
JM:
Yeah. I don't really like this one too. I think there's a lot of really great set pieces. It's definitely episodic, but he does manage to tie everything together pretty cleverly. I think there's a lot of things that just get like really brief mentions that kind of come to mean something by the end, which I think is really well done. I do think the book is too, like it's almost, things happen too quickly. Like it's too compressed almost. And I kind of feel like the ending is a little not rushed, but I'm not sure. It's like a happy ending. But at the same time, I think, I think that maybe it's a bit overconfident or something. I don't know. It could have gone on longer for sure, but Nate said, you wouldn't mind spending more time there. Originally, this was supposed to be published with "Empire Star" and "Empire Star" is actually mentioned in the book. So "Empire Star" is written by one, it's not really a character in the book, but he's like used to be the partner, one of the partners of, I guess, the main character, and he wanted this to be a double, an Ace Double with "Empire Star", which he actually did write. And it didn't happen until 2001 when there was a reissue with both books together.
Gretchen:
The copy of the "Babel-17" that I read from my physical copy here is actually the double feature of "Babel-17" and "Empire Star". So I did also read "Empire Star" after reading "Babel-17", although I read "Babel-17" a couple of months ago before, almost because I kind of forgot that we were going to be covering this really soon on the podcast. So I think it was very interesting that I read it a couple of months ago and then I returned to it again to kind of do the summary and to make the notes and refresh my memory and having read a couple of articles and stuff about it, because I do agree definitely with some of the pacing comments that both of you were bringing up. It definitely like, it does have this really abrupt ending to the point when like, even though I just read it very recently, I'm like, how does it actually end? Like it's very hard to keep in mind just because the rest of the story, it gets so involved and then it feels very much like right at the climax, it sort of cuts out. But I think what's interesting that I did see some critics and stuff talk about is sort of this idea of it being like using sci-fi coding itself and kind of taking tropes and like the pacing of like a space opera, something like a Jack Williamson or something and maybe trying to do something a little experimental with it, which I think is a really interesting way of approaching it.
JM:
Me too.
Nate:
Yeah, so if you read the two combined in the edition that you have, what would you suggest for a reading order between the two novels?
Gretchen:
I feel like, I mean, I am a bit biased as I did read "Babel-17" and then "Empire Star" and I think that is a good reading order. I think it's interesting to get a sense of the world that the novel that you're then reading afterwards sort of originates from, they kind of are a little bit, you can see the influence of the war that is going on in "Babel-17", that influencing the way that "Empire Star" is telling its story, which also is kind of during the same kind of war and the same sort of conflict. So I think that's a really interesting kind of parallel between the two works.
Nate:
Interesting. Yeah, I'll have to check that out sometime.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I definitely got the impression from "Babel-17". I mean, I didn't read "Empire Star", I'd like to, but I definitely got the impression from the way people talking about it was that it was like the favorite of the boy, like a young character and it's kind of pictured like very swashbuckling space opera and there's some of that in this too.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
I was actually surprised just at how much it follows the space opera mold, even though a lot of philosophy of language and stuff like that and there's certainly some depth to the main character, but there's also some interesting humorous sides that I really wouldn't expect. Like there were parts of "Babel-17" that were really funny, but in general, it's like a quest. They're going on a quest. They're visiting different planets, space pirates almost. I don't know. It was really cool though in that aspect. I enjoyed that part of it as much as the introspective character stuff and the language oriented detail that was in the book.
So I don't know. It was really good. It was quite fast paced and it's, yeah, I mean, my one complaint I guess sort of relates to Nates and that I kind of feel like it's just too like things happen really quickly sometimes and I just kind of feel like I'm not really sure how much time is passing. When you go back to the Alliance towards the end and you see like, you know, we returned to a character that was there in the beginning and it feels like, oh, okay, like six months has passed or something like that. And it just, it just feels like I'm not quite grasping the temporal aspect of things. And I think that's just because it feels like it's just being raced through. But on the other hand, I do like a really tight narrative and I feel like, yeah, if this book were written now, maybe the publisher would encourage him to include like all kinds of extra detail. And we do have a like 600 page book on our hands that would talk a lot more about certain things.
When I kind of said about the Vance that he deliberately chose to focus on certain things, I feel like that's kind of true of Delany as well. We don't get a lot of detail about the conflict. The invaders, there's like the whole thing is set in the background of a war and a so-called invasion, I guess. And we don't really see much about that. We don't learn anything about them or who they are or what they're like or anything like that, he's like deliberately kept them not even in the background to the point where it's like, I kind of was questioning that whole thing in the end. I kind of had this sense while reading the whole book that, oh, there's going to be some big twist at the end where the whole conflict is not what it appears to be or something like that. It wasn't quite that. I mean, there was a bit of a twist at the end, but yeah, I think you just, it was an interesting choice.
I think when I show some newer readers, I guess, like more contemporary readers, I show them some of my favorite works from like fifties, forties, fifties, sixties science fiction or fantasy, even like stuff like the "Fafhrd and Mouser" series from Leiber. There's sometimes a complaint that there's not enough background and that everything, they just throw you right into it and they don't really give you enough detail on, sorry, my cynical side might be coming out again, but maybe it's just because they're used to reading those like 900 page doorstoppers books that have a 200 page prologue at the beginning explaining how the world was created. We don't get that in these kind of books. And I like that because you have to piece it together as you go. But it's also the author's choice to deliberately withhold certain pieces of information.
And yeah, I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't have minded spending more time on the ship with Rydra and her crew and stuff like that because there was some nice bonding going on there. And the book does seem like, I guess, that sequel would not have been uncalled for, you know, because I kind of feel like they might be a little overconfident and thinking they're going to end the war at the end of the book, right? I don't know. I don't want to get into that too much yet because we haven't talked about what happens.
Nate:
Yeah, the crew in particular really like the three navigators, I guess, how they're all linked together. It's a cool concept.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, to me, what I was thinking especially, and this kind of relates similarly to what you were saying, JM, about like how much information is divulged and how much is like kind of gradually given to the reader. I couldn't help but think of Tiptree and like "The Girl who was Plugged In" and like the amount of like sort of background details that are just kind of thrown out and not really explained. It has like this whole, all the different ways that the crew, the different purposes of the crew and all the different concepts just relating to that is like very fascinating.
JM:
Right. Yeah. The world was really interesting. There was definitely thinking about like, I don't know, now I would like to read "Empire Star" thinking that it might contain a little more of that, but I guess it's sort of like supposed to be a fantasy within the, within the fantasies kind of so to speak, but so it might not really totally resemble the world of "Babel-17", but it was a really fun and interesting place and I really liked how rowdy it was. I kept thinking this was written in the 70s, but I knew it wasn't. I mean, you mentioned 1966 and I'm like, yeah, that's right. It's, you know, it's from 1966 and just like a lot of things are just taken for granted like basically, I don't know what the right word is, like a sort of pansexual characters and stuff like that and way stuff, like a lot of that stuff is just sort of, it's not like out there stridently for you, but it just feels like something that could be written nowadays, you know.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
Gretchen:
To me, this really interesting intersection of these more conscious ideas that you see is like the product of like, you know, the 60s and 70s with again, this sort of space opera feeling that also makes me feel like this is like something from like the 30s as well. I feel like there's a Leigh Brackett, there's a Jack Williamson sort of feeling to it as well, that it just kind of is more conscious of the moment that it's written in.
JM:
Yeah, very true. Yeah. I mean, it's obviously the influence from the kind of stuff that Delany grew up with, I guess, you know, it was very much there. And also though, like, you know, you kind of think about, I mean, this is the 60s, right? Everything was changing that the New Wave of was kind of coming around and everything. And we're still kind of in the 60s. We kind of expect, I guess, things to be a little more conservative, I guess, like if you look at even something like Star Trek, which was just starting that same year. I mean, yeah, sure, Star Trek for television. I mean, we all love Star Trek and for television, it's quite progressive. But this is like a whole other level.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
This is way more forward thinking and like, you know, out there in terms of like challenging people's preconceptions and people's ideas about, I can imagine, in the 60s, some older readers kind of blanching at some of the people walking around naked and all kinds of like body modifications and, yeah, like just a very pretty open sexuality, even though there's nothing explicit in the book.
Nate:
Yeah. It's cool that Wollheim was publishing this stuff like 30 years after we were talking about him in the fanzine episode.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. I do think of reading the background on Raymond Z. Galun and Delany pretty much being the only "modern" science fiction author that he would talk about. And it's kind of interesting that this old guy is picking up Delany books and going, hey, that's really good. Except for "Dhalgren". He thought that one was a bit too much.
Gretchen:
Yeah, that's the source of contention for quite a few different writers is Dhalgren.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
That is actually funny enough, the first Delany I read. So I feel like I started with one of the more difficult texts that he wrote.
JM:
Yeah. And he can be. And I guess like he did a lot of for him, I guess, like "Babel-17" is it's an early work. So again, it's like maybe a bit more traditional in a lot of ways, but in others, I think it's quite groundbreaking.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
(music: mechanical movement)
spoiler plot summary
"Babel-17" begins 20 years into what is known as the invasion, a war between the Alliance and the invaders and a General Forester waiting to meet a poet by the name of Rydra Wong known as this age's voice. She has been asked by the military to solve a code called Babel-17, but Wong tells the general that it is a language rather than a code. Unlike the latter, Babel-17 doesn't rely on a preexisting languages structure and logic, but has its own internal logic, making it a language.
She has made some progress on translating it with this information, but still needs access to more of the classified information around it, such as the context and circumstances surrounding its use. Before Forester divulges this information, he asks to know a little bit more about Wong.
Rydra Wong isn't from Earth, but from the outer planets of the Alliance, the edge of the solar system, which was hit hard by starvation and plague due to an embargo when she was young. Her parents, both knowledgeable with language, died and Rydra was potentially left with brain damage and with total verbal recall, though even beforehand she had been able to learn a dozen languages before she was a teenager. She started to write poetry and also worked for the government in cryptography, but soon left and focused more on her own writing at the age of 19, then soon married and published her first book of poems. At age 26, she has become a sensation in both Alliance and invader spheres.
In turn, the general tells her more about Babel-17. When it first seemed like a series of accidents, failure of important equipment on military ships and explosions killing important officials, this was realized to be sabotage. This revelation is due to the use of Babel-17 in radio exchanges before, during and immediately following the incidents. She tells him she'll need a full report of the accidents timed to original tapes of the radio exchanges. In order to figure out Babel-17, she needs to know exactly what is being talked about and needs to hear exactly how it sounds from the speakers themselves. When Rydra leaves, the general, who had become enamored with her during their conversation, believes he hasn't communicated a thing about his affection.
Rydra herself heads immediately to a longtime friend and therapist, Dr. Markus T'Mwarba, to whom she confides that during the meeting with the general, she could, as she had on a previous occasion, tell exactly what he was thinking. She explains that it isn't that she could read his mind, but translated his gestures and movement and what he was actually saying into what happened to be his exact thoughts.
Wong could tell then that he had fallen in love with her, but she was distressed that when she left he felt that he hadn't expressed this to her at all, thought she didn't understand. She also then tells T'Mwarba that with the new information she received that the Babel-17 she read is a dialogue and not a monologue. She has a better comprehension of it than she did before her meeting. She knows where its speakers plan the next accident and she wants to go to the scene of it, getting a spaceship and a crew of her own ready and solve who the speakers are for herself.
T'Mwarba brings up the difficulty Wong might have with her plan that she has only managed to ship with an automatic crew before, not with the working class transport people. Wong is customs, but her parents were transport, and so was she when she was younger. Still, despite the challenges, she plans to leave with her crew by tomorrow morning.
A Danil D. Appleby, who mostly just thought of himself as a customs officer, goes along with Wong to find her crew.
JM:
This guy is adorable, the customs officer, I loved him, he was so, and I'm glad that we came back to him at the end and he's like, he's still kind of golly gee whiz, but now he's like all enthusiastic and happy and like he's changed, become like all open minded and like, he just makes me think of this little guy, you know, like in his little job, this person just shows up and she's like, okay, time to blow your mind, right? The funny thing is, though, I don't really understand like why he hadn't done this kind of stuff before. I don't know. I don't know. Is it normal that they bring the customs officers with them when they look for the crews? I don't know.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Is it just that they were in a rush? I don't, it was, I don't know, I don't really, I guess again, there's a couple of things that like because the book is so compressed and quick, I had questions about the world that they were in and stuff, but I didn't quite understand everything, right? It's not that I didn't understand the text, but I just felt like there were some gaps in my knowledge.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I don't know, like if it was this normal procedure, and if so, surely he would have been to transport town before, but I don't know, I guess not.
Gretchen:
Yeah, maybe he was new on the job, you know, although he does seem like someone that is very naive and hasn't really done much before, very typical like reader stand-in character, which is very fun.
JM:
Yeah. That would make sense.
Gretchen:
Appleby goes with Wong to transport town on authorization from General Forester. First, Rydra wants to find a pilot and they attend a wrestling match to do so. Pilots need good reflexes as the controls of the ship are connected directly to their nervous systems and controlling the ship is basically like wrestling itself. The pilot they're watching wrestle is Brass, who's had cosmetic surgery, popular among transport people to appear lion-like with claws, mane, and saber fangs. While at the match, they meet with Calli and Ron, who are navigators. There are supposed to be three navigators on ships, but they had lost their third during a run-in with invaders. Rydra offers to find them another, to which they show reluctance, given how close triples are and their previous connection with the navigator they lost.
Still, they decide to see who Wong can find. Brass wins the wrestling match and accepts the opportunity to be Wong's pilot. The next crew members they need to find are the Eye, Ear, and Nose, and Wong and her group visit the Discorporate sector to find them. In the sector are the Discorporate spirits, dead transport people who do jobs that would kill and drive to insanity living beings. The job of the Eye, Ear, and Nose, acting as the sensors of the ship and standing all of its external information, does fall to Discorporates.
Though Corporate people can see and hear them as typical humans, once they can no longer be seen or heard their appearance and what exactly they've said is forgotten without the necessary equipment.
JM:
Was it just me or did the Discorporates kind of remind you of the ghosts in Leiber and like "The Big Time" and stuff?
Gretchen:
Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't made that connection.
JM:
Obviously they're a bit more like, I don't know, like that's another thing I had a lot of questions about. And then everybody just sort of takes it for granted and it's like cool, creepy, but like not in a horror way. Like they're just normal people, but they're uncorporeal and like, I'm not sure, how does that happen? Some of them get revived and become corporeal again. The female navigator, what was their name?
Gretchen:
Oh, Mollya?
JM:
Yeah, Mollya. Right. She was discorporate, but then she became corporeal again, or no, her body was there, I guess.
Nate:
Yeah, they got her from a morgue.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
So she was frozen or something like that, but she was basically dead and she was brought back to life.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Whereas these Discorporates have no bodies.
Gretchen:
It does seem like, again, this is one of those words, just like with the stuff we've read, like with Tiptree and stuff, like there's kind of these blink and you miss it sort of explanations or implications where it seems like if the ones that are at the morgue seem to be people who have committed suicide or have like, left it, have gone through a process where their bodies are still intact, while Discorporates are people who have died like a very violent, in a very violent accident, so their bodies can't be recovered, or that's what it seems like.
JM:
When people die in space, a lot of the time their bodies can't be recovered, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
So we have, I guess, their minds are returned somehow, I guess.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
There's definitely some weird tech implied in this book.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yes. Well, the customs officer, our Appleby, the naive Appleby, has an encounter with one of the Discorporates, who is succubus, apparently, is what that is the term that Calli uses, who seduces him and takes his money, which he can then barely remember. One of those kind of funniest sides that just happens.
JM:
Yeah, yeah.
Gretchen:
The others, during this time, find their Discorporate crew and also find out about their slug and platoon, the latter a group of a dozen young kids who do mechanical jobs on the ship, and the former their nursemaid who keeps them in order. That leaves the final navigator, with whom Calli and Ron will have to work, and for that they go to the morgue, where that crew are held and can be brought back as corporate.
Rydra asks Calli and Ron what they'd like from a new first navigator, what would make them love her if she could love them, and selects a woman named Mollya Twa. She doesn't speak English, which Wong says is perfect, as you'll have to get to know each other before you can say anything really foolish. With all of her crew found, she's ready to leave the next morning.
The crew has taken off and is orbiting Earth when there's a malfunction, leaving the crew unable to determine their position, and unable to jump into hyperstasis. While the crew are trying to discuss how to find out their location without their electronicized methods of navigation, Wong has an idea. She works out using marbles and their circular movements, which will intersect to determine where they are in the ship's position of orbit around the planet, and she comes to this idea through her understanding of Babel-17, and its word for great circle.
Unfortunately, one of the platoon shows her that the malfunction was caused by intentional destruction of communication and maneuvering circuits, meaning there's a saboteur aboard their ship. Wong and the others arrive at their location, the Alliance war yards at Arms Edge, with no further complications. It is there that she meets Baron Von Dorco, involved in weapons research and testing. He invites Wong for a tour and the crew to dinner, and Wong asks the eye, ear, and nose to spy for her during both.
While other people need a special equipment to communicate with the Discorporate and recall their words, Rydra can remember their messages by translating them into Basque, maintaining the gist of their contact by sending it along different synapses in her brain through the act of that translation. While on the tour of gruesome weapons technology, she gets a thought in Basque from one of the Discorporate trio to ask her about a room the Baron hasn't shown her. She learns about the TW-55, a human who's been shaped through specialized breeding, genetic engineering, drugs, and mental training to be a perfect spy.
After this tour, she and the crew attend a fancy dinner hosted by Dorco and his wife, his colleagues also attending it. Rydra steps away from the event and finds Ron alone. She asks him how things are between him, Calli, and Mollya, and in a moment of frustration, he accuses her of not understanding what it's like to be part of a triple. She however reveals to him that she herself was tripled, married to a captain, Fobo Lombs, and a writer, Muels Aranlyde. Ron knows of the latter through his book, "Empire Star", and the character of Comet Joe.
JM:
Joe Comet!
Gretchen:
And the first time I was reading this, because I did have the copy of "Babel-17" and "Empire Star", I had not realized that they were actually connected until I got to this part of my first reading.
JM:
I didn't realize either necessarily, but I thought there had to be a reason he wanted them together in the same book, right? And then when I saw it mentioned in there, I'm like, oh, okay, because I didn't remember that from the first time, obviously. Before we go on about the whole tour of the weapons facility and the Baron von Dorco, did you get Dr. Strangelove vibes from that?
Gretchen:
Yeah, I definitely can see that.
JM:
Yeah, yeah, I was totally picturing him talking in a Peter Sellers faux German accent or something like that. I was also reminded of "In the Penal Colony" by Kafka for some reason, just like showing all these these instruments of torture and death very proudly. And I was also thinking, yeah, this probably isn't going to end well somehow, like some of these, you know, all these weapons just hanging out in the guy's house apparently.
Nate:
Yeah, that part in particular reminded me of some of those pulps from the 20s that we looked at, like that one from Weird Tales, "The Devil Ray" or whatever, or the Sophie Wenzel Ellis who did "Creatures of the Light".
Gretchen:
That was also what I was thinking was "The Devil Ray", very much gives that when I was reading that, especially the way that he's always described as like, hungry and the hungry stare that he gives. And at one point, what is it, the praying mantis, they refer to the praying mantis.
JM:
Yeah, it was fun and sinister at the same time, but I felt like Delany was having a good time just describing this and she was so uncomfortable, but she kept making glib comments and stuff to try and maybe offset her discomfort with like being in the room with all these, this lethal technology and stuff and stuff and stuff.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it definitely feels, it does give a very pulpy kind of villain there.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
But yeah, with Rydra tells him that she's now alone as Fobo died and Muels is in suspended animation while doctors try to find a cure for a disease he has. She started writing her poetry after Fobo's death, but had learned some of what she knew from helping Muels with his stories. Ron in turn opens up expressing concern that Calli and Mollya haven't been getting close, that he's been acting as a bit of a go-between and Wong tells him he has to teach them how to communicate with each other and bring them closer together.
Returning to the party, she runs into a man who looks familiar, but she's sure she's never met before. The two discuss the Baron with this taste. She sits down for dinner, she receives another Basque alert about the use of Babel-17. She tells the Baron of a potential attack that's about to occur at the Yards and he says they should act naturally at this time. The stranger then kills the Baron and starts shooting down other weapons experts, transforming the party into chaos, and Rydra realizes that he was the TW-55.
JM:
Food flying everywhere.
Gretchen:
Yeah, because it's all mechanized, so it's all these machines going haywire and stuff. It's really a great image.
JM:
Yeah. The interesting focus on food, actually describing the food they were eating and everything, did actually make me think a lot of Vance too, because even though it's not so much in "Pao", but he does that a lot. He wanted to focus on, I mean, as you would expect from what I said about his autobiography, it seems to be a thing for him going to all these places and sampling all the food. So a lot of his books are like traveling around and testing out all the food. And I guess Delany seems to go into that a lot as well, says there's lots of mentions of food in the book, like even not during just this scene, right? It's just all over the places as they're talking about the food that they're eating. And at the end of the last meal, they have his burgers and it's like the fanciest one, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah, I was going to mention that's a part I was, I didn't include in the summary, but it was a part that I very much was tickled by is that idea that like, because they talk about eating like pheasant and like these really fancy, the peacocks and all this cake and just really rich and luscious food, but like the real, the real treat is hamburgers and French fries. That's where it's at.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. Putting mustard on his hamburger. Yeah.
Gretchen:
And Molly is very taken by the ketchup. She really likes the ketchup.
But during this food fight that the crew is currently in, Rydra realizes that the stranger was the TW-55 she saw on the tour earlier. She and the rest of the crew escape back to the ship and when she gets there, she sends out her own Babel-17 messages, but then she hears from the yard and from her platoon slug that she apparently requested permission to and gave orders for takeoff. She tries to correct them as Brass isn't hooked up to the ship in order to pilot it, but it is too late to prevent takeoff. She comes to another ship's infirmary, catching herself thinking in Babel-17, which allows her to connect linguistic concepts with the netting in which she is being held and figure out how to extract herself from it.
She learns that the ship is Jebel, captained by a man named Tarik, who picked up the Rimbaud Wong's ship after the disorienting and damaging trip from Armsedge. He's not an Invader, but a pirate who for the most part fights Invaders ships, though in desperation will attack and salvage material from alliance vessels as well.
Besides Tarik is his right-hand man known simply as the Butcher. Rydra is wary of him. Jebel encounters an Invader ship chasing an Alliance one and prepares for an attack. The Butcher and several other crew are sent out in cruisers for battle, which Wong witnesses. As she watches the battle, she slips into Babel-17 again and imagines the web of the battle formation as the infirmary's netting, knowing where the cruisers should position themselves. She sends out a strategic order and the Butcher surprisingly follows it, leading to the Invader's defeat. As her thoughts return to English, Wong feels nauseated and dizzy at the change.
With her ship wrecked from its unpiloted jump, Wong and the crew, then that of Jebel, take anything useful from it before jettisoning it. While doing so, the request for takeoff from the yards is found on one of Wong's tapes, implying the saboteur was able to break into a room to make it. She asks the Butcher if he could request to Tarik that they set a course for alliance headquarters so she can deliver her new information on Babel-17, which he does, showing trust in her. She also realizes that his speech, which she felt was unique, is so because he never uses I or refers to the self. She wonders what kind of language that would be.
Regarding language, she once again tests her knowledge of Babel-17 to translate the movements and gestures of people around her into it. Between her new skill of Babel-17 and her already present knack of reading people, she can essentially read people's minds. And while she's doing so, she discovers that a man and Tarik's crew, Geoffry Cord, is planning to overthrow him. She reveals his plot and the Butcher kills him instantly. She's hit with another wave of sickness and collapses.
JM:
Yeah, she reveals the plot through poetry.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
That was fun.
Gretchen:
I really did enjoy that moment as well. It feels very Shakespearean, almost like this sort of dramatic reveal done through the stage. It's a very cool moment.
JM:
Yeah, definitely. You can see that. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I don't know. I also kind of got a bit of a "No Great Magic" vibes to it. I think as well.
JM:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Elizabeth from "No Great Magic". Yeah. That's true. I didn't think of that. That's cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I really enjoyed that part. But after waking up in the infirmary once again, Rydra leaves it and comes across the Butcher who asks her why she saved Tarik by exposing Cord. She responds that she likes him and wants his help, then asks him about his speech. The Butcher tells her that he was imprisoned after a massive bank robbery and the murder of nearly a dozen people, only after something caused him to lose his memory and his ability to speak and read. He knows that whatever happened was caused by the invaders when they captured him at one point before this action.
Rydra teaches the Butcher about the concept of I and you, which he first assumes are fixed. Copying Rydra's speech, he refers to himself in the second person and her in the first person. Rydra, however, corrects him and she tells him that they are interchangeable in this sense, encouraging the Butcher to think both of the self and to empathize with others around him to not commit acts of violence so quickly. When Rydra can tell something is still wrong and she wants to read the Butcher's mind, he becomes distressed. But he tells her that she can do so if she is ever in danger and needs to.
Jebel runs into another invadership, much more powerful, so Tarik decides to attack it before it can attack them. Wong joins the Butcher during the attack and at one point when the invaders try to board the ship, she thinks in Babel-17 again, which slows down her experience of time. She and the Butcher fend off the attempted boarders in hand-to-hand combat and Brass comes to them with news that Tarik has died, though he's there as a Discorporate and Jebel is in bad shape.
They are on their way to headquarters when Wong, along with the Butcher, gets sick from the use of Babel-17 again. In her fear, she reaches out to the Butcher's mind and they are linked together. It is then she realizes the language she knows, the one without self-reference, is Babel-17. She sees parts of the Butcher's past and comes to understand that his criminal acts were forms of sabotage, like the ones she herself caused on the Rimbaud. The two of them, speaking as one, tell the crew to take them to General Forester and send a tape to Dr. T'Mwarba.
T'Mwarba speaks to customs officer Appleby, who now enjoys going to Transport Town after his adventure with Rydra about the tape and is told he can only have it after he meets with Forester at Alliance headquarters. When the two meet, the doctor demands to know what's happened to Wong and he gets to see her and the Butcher. He's unnerved at the lack of her usual movements when she suddenly emerges, telling him that she and the Butcher are prisoners, that Babel-17 is like the programming languages of On Off and Algol, and that she needs to find out who the Butcher really is.
T'Mwarba takes her crew out to eat to learn more about what they haven't told the General and they confide in him about the saboteur and Wong's connection with the Butcher. His plan then is to feed the Butcher a bunch of paradoxes, which as a programming language should prove difficult for Babel-17 to handle, and get him access to parts of his consciousness blocked by amnesia, a very Kirk move to be honest, very reminded of a lot of TOS episodes with that.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Wong also feels the effects as they are joined telepathically, but it works. The Butcher remembers that he is Niles Ver Dorco, son of the Baron, who had modeled him to be a spy working behind enemy lines before the creation of TW-55s.
When the invaders captured him and programmed him with Babel-17, the language itself cost him to turn against the Alliance and wreak havoc upon it, given a prejudice against the Alliance within its very structure. The other acts of sabotage were committed by TW-55s as Niles had a radio transmitter implanted into his brain by his father, which controlled them. He is therefore responsible for the murder of his father.
Although Rydra and Niles, through their interactions and connection, have learned how to control the effects of Babel-17, General Forester wants them held under guard. The two, though, managed to escape, setting off for the Wong's crew back to Jebel, leaving the message "this war will end within six months", a goal they will work towards together.
JM:
And yeah, they're off again.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
(music: spacey humming)
spoiler discussion
I mean, the ending was nice, I guess, and happy. I don't know. I kind of, I felt like they were being a bit overoptimistic there, just because, like, so if I'm not understanding this correctly, I'm not sure. But now the Babel-17 tapes are in the hands of the military, right? So presumably they, they have as much ability to reverse engineer Babel-17 as she did. So they could also take advantage of this now. I don't know. It seems like, I don't know, we're just left to wonder, I guess, but they seem pretty optimistic. I don't know. It's wrapped up pretty quick, which I think is kind of going back to what Nate said.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
I do think the rest of it is interesting and good. And I think that it tells a good, complete story on its own, but I do think parts of it feel kind of compressed. Well, okay. I mean, I'm glad they escaped. Don't get me wrong. I think that's really good. And they didn't even lose any of the crew members. So I thought something bad was going to happen to some of them, right? And then in the end, they're a unit and they're, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed the camaraderie and I enjoyed the fact that like, it seems like the way he portrays it, the people in space have, they have to have such a bond, not just the three navigators, but everyone pretty much because they have to work together so flawlessly, right? And it's like a group of 21 people that are completely in sync, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I had a feeling too. I had a feeling about the saboteur on the ship. I had a feeling it was her all along somehow and it was probably because of the language she was decoding, but it's interesting that, yeah, like everybody trusts everybody. And even like the Butcher, you know, he gets introduced to the crew. Nobody at one point is like, wait, why do we trust this guy? Right? It's just like, well, our captain, our captain trusts him.
Nate:
With such a pleasant name. I mean, how could you not?
Gretchen:
Yeah. It really makes a great impression.
JM:
It's because they have so much faith in their captain and she trusts him, so everybody else does too.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
But I mean, that is another thing. So what do you think of Wong as a protagonist?
Nate:
Yeah, I like her a lot, even though she's kind of like a super celebrity in this universe and does feel to have like language powers, but yeah, she's a lot of fun, definitely.
JM:
I liked her. I thought I enjoyed her, but I also think it's good that I liked her because if I didn't, I would say she's probably a bit of a Mary Sue.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
I mean, she just seems she seems kind of capable of everything and like she's done everything. She's only 26. She's already been a spaceship captain. She's a poet. She's a linguist and she's telepathic and pretty much whenever she talks to anybody, she establishes like an instant bond with them, right? They right away want to know her better and want to spend time with her. I don't know. It's sort of convenient, I guess, but she's a good character. So I guess I didn't really mind too much, but it just seems like she's kind of like a super person.
Nate:
She definitely is.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think what is really interesting is that, yeah, her linguistic abilities are impossibly incredible. I think that's something that they consistently bring up, but I think what's really interesting is that that's kind of what makes her vulnerable. That is the reason that she initially is the saboteur and that she is kind of under the influence of Babel-17. So I feel like it kind of balances out where it's like this one thing that like, yeah, she's incredible at it and like maybe too good at it. That's also kind of what leads her into some of the situations that she's in.
Nate:
How language affects one's behavior in that way where it's like a virus kind of reminded me of "Snow Crash", this being a precursor to that line of thinking where that definitely explores like some similar themes and ideas. So I mean, it's interesting how, again, far ahead of this time this feels.
JM:
You like this one better than that?
Nate:
Yeah, yeah, definitely I did. Yeah.
Gretchen:
And it's interesting. One thing that I did look at for research, there was a podcast that kind of talked a little bit about "Babel-17" and like the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and they did bring up "Snow Crash" idea being in that as well.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't think they specifically, well, maybe they do mention the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and that, but yeah, I definitely like this way better than that for a wide variety of reasons. But yeah, I mean, it's cool to see this kind of work from the 60s when the trends in publishing really start to change and embrace this kind of, it's not necessarily experimental, but the style definitely feels different even though it does draw from a lot of those same 20s, 30s, 40s, pulp stories. Just like his writing style in general and his prose is a major, major positive for this book. I could feel like I could just read him right about this world for hundreds and hundreds of words more, you know.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, like we've been saying, like it's very rich in different concepts and details. One thing I think also kind of regarding, even though it may not be the most experimental thing you might see from New Wave, I think what's interesting is that it does have this almost like a pulpy vibe to it, but you would never see in an Amazing story like, oh, this problem is solved because she remembered this one word for circle that she's then uses to like for a mathematical concept of figuring out where they are.
I don't know. Like it's when we were reading like the Amazing and Astounding stories, you know, there is that focus on like the hard science and taking this hard scientific concept. I think what you see with Babel-17 is this melding of hard science and soft science concepts and you get to see more of these like, of course, with linguistics and the social sciences being used more. I think that's really interesting.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely is. Yeah.
JM:
We're seeing a lot more of that in the 1960s, right, especially with like Delany, but also people like Le Guin, for example, bring in a lot more of the what would have been called, I guess at some point, the soft sciences, anthropology, and yeah, linguistics, which is some big multidisciplinary thing as we talked about last week. But yeah, I love one of the things that marks this apart, right? Yeah, this is 1966. I guess somebody like Heinlein is considered in his prime right now, for example. But like this is just so, I don't know, it's just different. There's some tense suspenseful parts in this book and it kind of like turns away from that just as the right moment, like, for example, when Wong and the Butcher are sort of like merging their minds and I'm like, Oh, is something good going to come out of this or something bad? And Wong kind of shuts down. She basically turns into a robot, right, for a brief time. And she's talking to the crew and she's like a machine pretty much, right? And they instantly know something's wrong. And then after that, we go to a new part and the scene shifts and we go back to the customs officer. And it's just such a neat, we're ending on a cliffhanger a little bit, but instead of resolving the cliffhanger, we go to something else and something much, much more lighthearted.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
And it's kind of an interesting choice that I actually really liked, especially like at first I was like, Oh no, what's happening to Captain Wong, right? But then I'm like, Oh wait, he's this guy again. Okay, cool.
Gretchen:
Also, as a funny aside, this is also the part where you see Appleby go and get some cosmetic surgery where he puts a dragon into his arm, which is very, just a very fun little thing that happens.
JM:
Yeah. He meets a psychiatrist and it's like at first, oh, these two are not going to be friends, right? But then not only friends, but like within an hour, the customs officer is like, Hey, will you come with me while I get a tattoo? Like basically, it wasn't really a tattoo, but it's kind of like that's kind of what it was like. Right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
It's like, Oh, then we can watch some wrestling and then I'll help you get on the ship that you want to get on. It'll be fine. Like, and they totally take the time to do this. It's so, it's, it's hilarious, but I thought it was great. I love it.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Did you all notice the epigraphs at the beginning of the parts of the book?
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
Yeah. So you know who wrote those, right? It was Marilyn Hacker, his wife, Delany's wife at the time. She wrote those parts, those little excerpts at the beginning of each chapter. I guess they were part, or not chapter, but part, I guess they were parts of her poems or something like that.
Yeah. It is M.H. and then I didn't quick it right away, but then I was reading on, on Goodreads or something like that. I came across that. And I was just like, Oh, okay, that makes sense. Right? This is like, so I guess she had a lot to do with him initially getting published. Right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
And I also kind of thought like, okay, maybe Rydra Wong is kind of like his tribute to her almost in a way, because she's a poet, right? Maybe that's how he thought of her, right? That's being not just a poet, but also very, very capable and strong-willed and stuff like that and fun and just like, yeah. Even though like maybe their relationship wasn't exactly 100% what he needed. It was still fulfilling in some ways, right? And so that's, that's, I don't know, that's kind of cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think that's really interesting. I had been meaning to check on the poems, the epigraphs, and I just didn't do that. I thought at first that maybe it was like he was writing them as Rydra Wong, like sort of a more like a meta-textual sort of thing, but I hadn't even realized that it was, it was Hacker.
JM:
Yeah. I suspect that. I don't know. I love the unexpected flashes of humor and the colorful characters. I do think, again, like, I sometimes wonder, yeah, like if the book had been longer, I mean, there's a whole platoon of characters and like we get little hints about them and so on, but like, I kept having to check, luckily, the nice thing about ebooks is that you can do text search.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
That is very helpful. And I do that a lot, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
He does this thing where he'll mention a character's name, but we haven't seen that character before and he mentions it like, oh, we should know who this character is, but I think it's just like there's 21 people and there's not really, besides the cook maybe and the girl who plays with marbles, which was an amazing coincidence, did a lot of people play with marbles in the 60s? I guess maybe they did.
Nate:
I have no idea. I assume so.
JM:
I mean, I don't think now, if I was like in a room with 21 people and I desperately needed some marbles and I said, did anybody bring any marbles? I don't think anybody would be like, yeah, I brought marbles. I guess, yeah.
Gretchen:
I feel like maybe I do get the stereotypical image of like, he grew up in like the 40s in New York City. So I feel like maybe that is a very stereotypical image of like a bunch of children outside of like an apartment playing with marbles. So that you maybe could have been influenced by that.
JM:
And she was so confident again. She's like, oh, it's no problem. Somebody brought marbles. I guarantee it. And sure enough, her name's Lizzie and she seemed like she was fond of her. Again, it's like characters get mentioned and they get mentioned like they're familiar. Like we should be familiar with them already, but we've never, never heard their names before. I was kind of wondering if maybe there's a longer cut of this book somewhere. I mean, there probably isn't, but like it just made me wonder that. Like is there a longer cut where we, we got to see some of these scenes play out a little longer. We got to see her getting to know the crew a little bit because like they obviously love her so much. And we do get to spend a little time with the navigators and that's nice. And we get Brass is really fun. But other than that, yeah, there's, there's a whole crew there that has talked about very familiarly, but that's not really introduced. So it just felt like, oh, there's just names. He makes it seem like we should know who they are and we don't.
Nate:
So one character name I did like was Jebel Tarik, who was a real person that lived from around 670 to 720 and basically was the Umayyad commander who initiated the conquest of Iberia, Spain and Portugal, and he's who Gibraltar is named after.
Gretchen:
Oh, interesting.
JM:
That makes sense.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, there is like the moment in the text where they describe like they're like, oh, this man isn't an invader. He's from Earth because the name is like Moorish.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And they bring that up. I didn't realize though that it was a real person's name.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Oh.
JM:
Yeah. I liked him as well. I thought he was going to do more with Jebel as well. I thought there was going to be more like, because in the beginning, I'm not sure, is this a good thing that they're with these people now or is it not, right? Like, there's something sinister about this and not sinister necessarily, but like, are their aims going to cross at some point and not be congruent, right? And it's like, this is going to be, and it just seems like because the Butcher instantly had a connection with Rydra Wong, Jebel just kind of went along with what the Butcher said from then on, right? He seemed like he was going to be this strong, like dominant character and he wasn't really. So I don't know. I think it was cool. I mean, I still appreciated that part of the book, but it just, it wasn't really what I was expecting.
I guess I thought there was going to be more conflict or more, more tension. There's more like exploration of him because he seemed like a really intense person. But again, that wasn't the focus of the book. That's not where he went, but I guess I was surprised too, because he seems to like those kind of characters. Like he seems to like those kind of, I don't know, pirate kind of big pirate guys basically again, right? He's just like, seems to like that. So I just, I thought that that would be more of a thing in the book, but it wasn't. So it's all right though.
Nate:
Yeah. Well, I certainly enjoyed this one and I definitely like to check out "Empire Star".
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
And surely some of his other stuff too.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
I definitely would like to maybe cover some other works by him in the future. "Dhalgren" would be interesting, that one will be, it's a bit of a challenge for that. It is a pretty good work. So.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
We want to focus on an anthology or, or do, I mean, obviously we're going to do more short story episodes. There's a really good one in "The Big Book of SF" by him too. And yeah, there's "The Fall of the Towers", which is pretty amazing. So I don't know, that's, that's maybe a little much for the podcast as it's trilogy, but he does kind of do some interesting, more fantastic stuff too, like maybe a little less in the science fiction realm. I even, I even kind of felt like from what I read, his first book almost felt like it was maybe more of a, like a sword and sorcery kind of influence a little bit.
Gretchen:
I mean, it does seem like he was just a very, he still is, he just hasn't written anything recently, but like all of his works are very, he has a lot of experience in different fields and especially nonfiction. I got to read a number of essays that he wrote. I got to read some interviews and the interviews between the Delany and his interviewers are always very interesting because he is so exact with language that he'll usually spend a good chunk of the answer initially kind of going over the implications buried in the language of the question that he's about to answer, just very precise with his words. So you can, you can definitely see why writing about language and writing this book about the linguistic theories that he was interested in, why it works so well.
JM:
Yeah. I mentioned Leiber earlier, but it's a fun, a fun little piece of trivia I found out while researching that episode actually was that the Delany wrote a few comics and he wrote, he actually ended up writing a Wonder Woman comic at one point in the 70s and he managed to sneak Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser into the comic, which was fun because they also have their own comics made by Dark Horse later on.
So yeah, this was really good. I had a lot of fun with it. When I sound like I'm nitpicking a little bit and questioning certain things, it's not like I was, it didn't annoy me or anything. It was just like, there were certain things that I thought would happen or might go a certain way and they didn't. And it's fine. It's just what he decided to focus on, I guess. And it's just like, I had a really good time with it. I'd read it really quickly. So it was just like, that to me is always a sign that I'm really into it. I mean, it's, it's, there are certain things like "Moby Dick" where it takes me a long time to read and I really enjoy it, but usually if I'm really into something, I read it pretty quickly and that's a good sign that, that it's, it's going well for me. So maybe like three settings, I think, and I finished it. So it's, it's short, but there's a lot happening and it's pretty tightly packed. So it's, it's really, really enjoyable.
Bibliography:
Delany, Samuel R. - "Silent Interviews" (1994)
Delany, Samuel R. - "Why I Write: Getting ready not to be", The Yale Review https://yalereview.org/article/samuel-r-delany-science-fiction-why-i-write
Delany, Samuel R., Takayuki Tatsumi- “Interview: Samuel R. Delany,” Diacritics, volume 16, issue 3 (1986)
Hardesty, William H.- “Semiotics, Space Travel, and ‘Babel-17,’” Mosaic, Volume 13, Issue 3 (1980)
Lukin, Josh - “About Samuel Delany,” The Minnesota Review, issue 65 (2006)
Samuel Delany website biography https://www.samueldelany.com/biography
Steiner, K. Leslie - "Samuel R. Delany" https://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/KLeslieSteiner-SamuelRDelany.html
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