Babel-17

Babel-17 is a science fiction novel by the American writer Samuel R. Delany, published by Ace Books in May 1966. It is set during a war between the stars.

Rydra Wong is the woman at the centre of it. She is a poet and a linguist, and she is recruited to decipher a language that the enemy appears to be using in connection with acts of sabotage.

What she finds is that the language is a weapon in itself. Learning it changes the way a speaker perceives and thinks, to the point where somebody who has learned it can be made a saboteur without intending to be one, and the novel is about her attempt to understand it and to change it. She is not certain, by the end, how much of what she is doing is her own decision.

The book is concerned with communication, perception, identity and translation alongside its space-going adventure, and it shared the Nebula Award for best novel in 1966 with Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon.