Babel-17

I was very intrigued when I first began this book. Very quickly I noticed the odd way in which it was written. I had thought it to be a bad editing mistake, before I read on and realized that it was very intentional. Babel-17 by Samuel Delany is a highly philosophical novel.  This language has only third person in it; there is no “I” or “you” used. It is also a very precise language, each word layered with meaning. As a result, speakers of it would not have any ability to be self-critical, or to separate reality from what the language has programmed them to see as reality. Language mirrors ourselves, but those same selves are absent in the language. One of the questions raised by the novel is how much one’s language dictates the way in which one perceives the world. Does speaking another language change the way you think? Can one person ever truly know another?

The most important narrative thread of Babel-17 turns out not to be the plot, which bounces us across a couple of different planets and ships, but rather the question of whether communication between two people is possible. That is not to say that the plot is irrelevant or uninteresting though, the book is definitively not your stereotypical sci-fi novel. It takes the tropes and flips them upside down, which I found very refreshing. The hero is a telepathic Chinese woman who happens to be the most famous poet of her age. A woman, who also has weak moments. She can talk her way out of trouble and succeeds through using her wit and her empathy rather than force or technology. She’s not your typical warrior and, although fights take place, they have nothing to do with what turns out to be the hero’s victory. There’s none of the stereotypical male dominance. The crew on Rydra’s ship are all considered equals. The book shifts its focus away from what we’d expect from a space adventure yarn. The ongoing war between The Alliance and The Invaders is described not through battles but through the starvation and horror of its impact. The fact that humans have made contact with aliens is mentioned offhandedly in half a sentence. It just has a lot of elements that you normally wouldn’t expect from this genre, which made this a very interesting read.

The Stars My Destination

This week’s reading was a relatively hard read for me, given how I’m not at all familiar with the Science-Fiction genre. Works of this kind haven’t really been on my radar for the most part- much less a work written in the 1950’s. Even so, I feel like I have a slightly better understanding about Sci-Fi as a whole after reading this book, and I can see how why people would regard it as a classic in this genre. A lot of the elements it has are things that even people who haven’t read much Sci-Fi would consider to be science fiction staples, such as superhuman abilities like teleportation (jaunting), psychic abilities, and the existence of cyborgs (technologically enhanced humans). They've kind of become the norm in Sci-Fi, especially in what we consider today to be “cyberpunk.” Other elements that are similar to cyberpunk specifically are the mega-corporations as powerful as governments that rule over, and an overall dark vision of the future.

I initially heard that the novel was supposed to feature an unforgettable main character, the likes of which had never been seen before in science fiction. But Gully Foyle was a somewhat of a cartoon to me, an obsessed, brutal superhero/antihero force of nature, with hardly a nuance of human character at all. The author pulls no punches in his portrayal of Foyle, who is thoroughly unpleasant: a violent man, a murderous rapist, absolutely ruthless, qualities he never quite sheds. I realize that he was not meant to be a likeable character at all, but boy did I not like him. I also understand that the author probably meant to portray him like this to create complex understanding of the mixed ethical problems of human beings, the way few of us are all good or all bad. Hence, the anti-hero that people eventually find “charming” or compelling in a way.

The book is short, but it flies along at a very fast pace. Stuff is constantly happening and it never stops to take a breath. Although, I feel like the book is not supposed to be judged as an ordinary novel with nuanced characterization and carefully paced plot. Rather, with its hysterical personalities and outlandish gestures, it seems closer to what we think of as an opera. (Which makes sense, given how we’re discussing about Space Operas.) Bigger than life characters bellowing out their inner angst. Heightened theatre, using the speculative devices of science fiction to play out the revenge plot in which the protagonist is more profoundly affected than his targets. The characters make references to Shakespeare, and the Shakespearean comparisons are largely justified; this is a novel that is truly Shakespearean in scope, energy, vitality and character. I can definitively see the connection. Overall, not my cup of tea, but it was a pretty interesting read.

Anansi Boys

 This was my first Neil Gaiman book, and I had no idea what it was about. So, like I’ve been doing for many of the readings for this class, I went in blind. I was surprised by how much I actually liked this book. It was definitively not something that I would have picked out for myself, given the option at a bookstore. Yet, I got so immersed in the book and read through it in almost a day. I was not familiar with the myth of the god Anansi, and even took to doing some research on him online while I read; but even if I hadn’t done that, the book did a splendid job of explaining to the reader who the god was and what he did, all while still making it interesting and relevant to the story being unfolded.

The way the book employs magical realism kind of reminds me of “A Wild Sheep Chase” in the sense that it treats the fantastical elements in a way that they are not questioned too harshly; they are simply accepted by the characters and the reader after a while. The story had a perfect mix of fantasy elements entangling with the common human world, even though the line between them was so thin. There were many layers to this world and how it was built.

Even now, I’m still sitting here scratching my head, trying to put it into words. What was it about this book that I liked and was entranced by so much? What I know for sure is that one of the things I enjoyed a lot was the book’s tone. The way it was told was very matter-of-fact and almost humorous. Some of the moments in the book (such as Fat Charlie crashing the wrong ceremony at the cemetery) were downright hysterical. I had a lot of fun while reading it, and it did a nice job of having everything come together in an exciting climax and satisfying conclusion. I might pick up a few more of Gaiman’s work later in the future.