Empire Star (and Babel-17)
Jun. 8th, 2020 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealFebruary: people on exchange Discord namedrop "Babel-17," which is a Sapir-Whorfish SF novel from the '60s
March: I run across it in my library, together with a shorter novella "Empire Star" also by Samuel R. Delany, and pick it up
I have lots of thoughts about Empire Star
I decide to write it up before I have to return it to the library
The library announces it's closing indefinitely due to quarantine, bookdrops will be closed, keep your books until they open again
June: ...
Anyway.
Babel-17, if you can accept the suspension of disbelief required for Sapir-Whorf stuff, is fine. (Basically, it's if you thought "Arrival" needed more polyamorous relationships.) There's a little heavy-handed characterization about a square who goes into the spooky ghost district after hours and has a hot one-night stand with a ghost and has some epiphanies about "wow, these people outside the mainstream are actually cool and great just as they are," but that's not the focus. There was also a weird line about how, when one of the POV characters first met the protagonist, she struck him as "near-autistic" after having been traumatized by an attack on her home planet, but given that this was written in 1966 there's a lot of context I'm missing and I only mention it because of some of the weirdness with Empire Star. There's also some cheerful fourth-wall-ness; "Empire Star" is referenced as an in-universe publication by "Muels Aranlyde," which is an anagram of Samuel R. Delany--sad to say I didn't catch that on my own. And the linguistics-nerd asiding is fun.
Empire Star is...different. Some stuff worked for me, some stuff did not, and that ambivalence is why I've been procrastinating on this post.
Cool/fun linguistics-y things:
-The narrator is a "Crystallized Tritovian" named Jewel. Except, for most of the story, they're not actually speaking in first-person, but admits that they're going to narrate in "omniscient observer" POV. And then occasionally interrupts to say "hi, I'm Jewel, remember me? If you don't this is going to be very confusing."
-At first, the main character (Jo) spea's in a rough di'lect like thi' that lea'es out a bunch of let'ers and makes him sound rus'ic and une'ucated. The people in the spaceport, who have seen more of the galaxy, converse with thous and thees. Eventually, as Jo adjusts to them, they all begin to sound "normal"-ish.
-Another character lampshades this by saying "I am going to teach you, Jo, how to speak my dialect, otherwise everyone will give up on your conceit by page 40." Harsh but probably true :D
-We learn about Jo's homeworld that "plyasil" is their primary export, and Jo swears by saying "Jhup" in his own dialect. Later, someone asks him, "What's the most important thing in the world?" and he instinctively replies "Jhup...uh, plyasil, pardon my language." Her response is "that's always how it goes, the most scarce and precious resource becomes taboo." Interesting way of thinking about how taboos are very culture-dependent.
Not fun, but (imo) well-written, was the main plotline of slavery and how oppression harms the oppressors as well as the oppressed, but not in the same or even a directly comparable way. One of the aliens has an aside about "you're fine, just don't say 'some of my best friends are of an enslaved species.'" Jo is like "what?" "...never mind, silly allusion." I did not realize until looking on Wikipedia that Delany is black (and gay), the treatment of slavery was pointed but not anvil-y. (Again, imo.)
Now the stuff I disliked or was iffy on...
Jewel, like lots of SF narrators, drops us into a world where we come across unfamiliar jargon and have to pick up what it means from context. The main case of that in this book are the terms "simplex," "complex," and "multiplex." Jo is not familiar with them either, so he's also trying to infer it, and we're struggling along with him. At first, it seems like it roughly correlates to intelligence--Jo is "simplex" because he lives on a remote planet and has no familiarity with the galaxy beyond, while the more cosmopolitan individuals are "multiplex." However, Jo has a run-in with some aliens who are trying to collect all of galactic knowledge in a very long sequence of encyclopedias. Later, his alien friend tells him that no, despite their intelligence, they're also simplex. (And that "simplexity" is a "sad thing.") So, it seems to mean something more like "shallow"--believing in objective perspectives (like there being a most important thing in the galaxy) is simplex. Tolerance of ambiguity, being willing to ask questions, perceiving the depth of other minds, is multiplex/deep/"better" somehow. And I'm probably projecting here because of my own issues, but ehhhhhhh, this rubbed me the wrong way.
Later on, Jewel breaks the fourth wall to be like "between last chapter and this all this conversation happened, which gives context to the non sequiturs in this chapter, but if you're really multiplex you don't need a linear chronology and can read between the lines." The end, likewise, is like "and then there was a time loop and it got complicated, you can fill in the rest because you're deep and make inferences etc." Ergh. Do not want.
The repeated time loops also mean that there's only one actual female character in the story, she just shows up in several characterizations out of chronological order, and...really? IDK, I felt the "oh no I must give you this artifact so you can give it to me in my past, which is also your future" felt a little contrived by the end.
Other stuff that stood out was the writer character who shows up to make Jo go "wait, has he just lived the exact same life I have?" and his alien friends are like "no, some people are just so talented they make you feel like they've experienced the exact same things you have, they have that effect on everyone, try not to be jealous." And the follow-up to the "most important thing" question, which is "artistic and criminal elements are the most important things in any society, because they challenge the status quo." I'm not enamored of this response, but it's not horrible, either. Also, more Muels Aranlyde references, it is quite meta.
Anyway. This is a biased perspective. But it definitely falls under the category of "thought-provoking."
March: I run across it in my library, together with a shorter novella "Empire Star" also by Samuel R. Delany, and pick it up
I have lots of thoughts about Empire Star
I decide to write it up before I have to return it to the library
The library announces it's closing indefinitely due to quarantine, bookdrops will be closed, keep your books until they open again
June: ...
Anyway.
Babel-17, if you can accept the suspension of disbelief required for Sapir-Whorf stuff, is fine. (Basically, it's if you thought "Arrival" needed more polyamorous relationships.) There's a little heavy-handed characterization about a square who goes into the spooky ghost district after hours and has a hot one-night stand with a ghost and has some epiphanies about "wow, these people outside the mainstream are actually cool and great just as they are," but that's not the focus. There was also a weird line about how, when one of the POV characters first met the protagonist, she struck him as "near-autistic" after having been traumatized by an attack on her home planet, but given that this was written in 1966 there's a lot of context I'm missing and I only mention it because of some of the weirdness with Empire Star. There's also some cheerful fourth-wall-ness; "Empire Star" is referenced as an in-universe publication by "Muels Aranlyde," which is an anagram of Samuel R. Delany--sad to say I didn't catch that on my own. And the linguistics-nerd asiding is fun.
Empire Star is...different. Some stuff worked for me, some stuff did not, and that ambivalence is why I've been procrastinating on this post.
Cool/fun linguistics-y things:
-The narrator is a "Crystallized Tritovian" named Jewel. Except, for most of the story, they're not actually speaking in first-person, but admits that they're going to narrate in "omniscient observer" POV. And then occasionally interrupts to say "hi, I'm Jewel, remember me? If you don't this is going to be very confusing."
-At first, the main character (Jo) spea's in a rough di'lect like thi' that lea'es out a bunch of let'ers and makes him sound rus'ic and une'ucated. The people in the spaceport, who have seen more of the galaxy, converse with thous and thees. Eventually, as Jo adjusts to them, they all begin to sound "normal"-ish.
-Another character lampshades this by saying "I am going to teach you, Jo, how to speak my dialect, otherwise everyone will give up on your conceit by page 40." Harsh but probably true :D
-We learn about Jo's homeworld that "plyasil" is their primary export, and Jo swears by saying "Jhup" in his own dialect. Later, someone asks him, "What's the most important thing in the world?" and he instinctively replies "Jhup...uh, plyasil, pardon my language." Her response is "that's always how it goes, the most scarce and precious resource becomes taboo." Interesting way of thinking about how taboos are very culture-dependent.
Not fun, but (imo) well-written, was the main plotline of slavery and how oppression harms the oppressors as well as the oppressed, but not in the same or even a directly comparable way. One of the aliens has an aside about "you're fine, just don't say 'some of my best friends are of an enslaved species.'" Jo is like "what?" "...never mind, silly allusion." I did not realize until looking on Wikipedia that Delany is black (and gay), the treatment of slavery was pointed but not anvil-y. (Again, imo.)
Now the stuff I disliked or was iffy on...
Jewel, like lots of SF narrators, drops us into a world where we come across unfamiliar jargon and have to pick up what it means from context. The main case of that in this book are the terms "simplex," "complex," and "multiplex." Jo is not familiar with them either, so he's also trying to infer it, and we're struggling along with him. At first, it seems like it roughly correlates to intelligence--Jo is "simplex" because he lives on a remote planet and has no familiarity with the galaxy beyond, while the more cosmopolitan individuals are "multiplex." However, Jo has a run-in with some aliens who are trying to collect all of galactic knowledge in a very long sequence of encyclopedias. Later, his alien friend tells him that no, despite their intelligence, they're also simplex. (And that "simplexity" is a "sad thing.") So, it seems to mean something more like "shallow"--believing in objective perspectives (like there being a most important thing in the galaxy) is simplex. Tolerance of ambiguity, being willing to ask questions, perceiving the depth of other minds, is multiplex/deep/"better" somehow. And I'm probably projecting here because of my own issues, but ehhhhhhh, this rubbed me the wrong way.
Later on, Jewel breaks the fourth wall to be like "between last chapter and this all this conversation happened, which gives context to the non sequiturs in this chapter, but if you're really multiplex you don't need a linear chronology and can read between the lines." The end, likewise, is like "and then there was a time loop and it got complicated, you can fill in the rest because you're deep and make inferences etc." Ergh. Do not want.
The repeated time loops also mean that there's only one actual female character in the story, she just shows up in several characterizations out of chronological order, and...really? IDK, I felt the "oh no I must give you this artifact so you can give it to me in my past, which is also your future" felt a little contrived by the end.
Other stuff that stood out was the writer character who shows up to make Jo go "wait, has he just lived the exact same life I have?" and his alien friends are like "no, some people are just so talented they make you feel like they've experienced the exact same things you have, they have that effect on everyone, try not to be jealous." And the follow-up to the "most important thing" question, which is "artistic and criminal elements are the most important things in any society, because they challenge the status quo." I'm not enamored of this response, but it's not horrible, either. Also, more Muels Aranlyde references, it is quite meta.
Anyway. This is a biased perspective. But it definitely falls under the category of "thought-provoking."
