Babel-17 Audiobook By Samuel R. Delany cover art

Babel-17

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Babel-17

By: Samuel R. Delany
Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
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Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.

©2015 Samuel R. Delaney (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc. Adventure Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Space Opera
Innovative Language Concepts • Thought-provoking Ideas • Deep Voice • Interesting Protagonist • Creative Worldbuilding
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Samuel Delany wrote a masterpiece. Lots of things to make you think about language and meaning. Good work on how creating a future society, and what it would look like, and how folks would get along with one another. Normalized being in a threesome sexually.

Performance of both male and female parts was extraordinarily well done.

Wonderful performance

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I was amazed by Delany's creativity and inventiveness, especially in 1966. Any techno-geek will love it.

An incredible story

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Gawdz, I love this book. And I love Samuel Delaney’s brain. I first read this book almost 50 years ago, and revisiting it now as an audiobook, I swooned, and fell in love again, if you love sweeping ideas presented in the midst of a adventure narrative that make you suddenly think in Brand New expanded ways, you will love just about anything Delaney writes.

Decent story with mind blowing ideas

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Delany is one of the first sci-fi authors to think deeply about language and culture. He's also one of the first (perhaps the first) to explore alternative notions of sexuality within a sci-fi framework. He's not always easy to follow, but usually that's because he's exploring complicated ideas. I found it helped to listen at 0.85 speed. He's also very good as a prose writer and storyteller. This is one of his first books. It's simpler than what's to come, but it's already packed with interesting thoughts within the framework of a somewhat classic narrative that's told well.

Classic from a master

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Enjoyable, listened all the way through. Made a quick road trip fly by for me!

Great book!

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The final act was such a left turn, I'm still not sure what happened.

Just kept getting weirder and more hard to follow.

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This book has breakthrough speculation about the nature of awareness and how language effects perception. It's basically the breakthrough book speculating that the brain has programming like software. It also happens to be very entertaining with good characters. I recommend it.

Great Classic Sci-Fi

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I really enjoyed the pacing of this book. Rudnicki did such a great job capturing the spirit of the various characters here.

Fun story and fine production by Rudnicki

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i liked the story and the while language forming thought concept, but as an audiobook there were some parts that were hard to follow. still, one of the most original readings I've heard this year.

great book, interesting premise

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So many of the complaints are about the narrator. The man has a deep voice, but I never wondered which character was speaking, so it worked for me.

So I love many of the concepts, but the interpersonal relationships really reduced many of the characters to just functions of the plot, pieces of a puzzle - and sometimes they just weren’t people enough. And that feels about right for the era of science-fiction in which is was written.

I think if this had been written now it would have been a whole trilogy with some more multilayered character development and some more accessible world building.

But!!! All of the things that didn’t work for me are well worth getting to the end, like a good mystery. It needs about two more chapters of ending though…

Interesting concepts, but weird characters

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