Week 10: The Fiction of Ideas

Week 10: The Fiction of Ideas 

The novel I chose to read this week is Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delaney.
Babel 17 is about the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, a theory that individual’s thoughts and actions are determined by the language that the individual speaks.  It states that all human thoughts and actions are bound by restraints, shaping our behavior.  The books starts out where the Alliance military comes across a new code (by the invaders) from a radio transmission that they cannot crack.  They hire Rydra Wong, a top poet, cryptologist and top linguist to crack the code.  She informs them this is not a code at all, but an actual language and agrees to crack itProtagonist Wong assembles a crew and studies the data, which the Alliance calls Babel-17.  The crew is truly an unusual group.  She recruits discorporates, triplings and cosmetically surgerized team members. 

She discovers that this language is used to cause a human host to be against the Alliance and try and sabotage it.  She improves the language and shifts the power to the Alliance.  Babel-17 is really a thought experiment and cultural awareness together.  Some of these ideas are very similar to some cultural language we hear today.  For instance, when someone says, “I’m from a Third World country.”  That could imply they are less-educated.  What do most people visualize when they hear that.  We need to be more diverse and open-minded.  I find the author of this book, Samuel R. Delaney was way beyond his time, 1966.  The main character/hero is a woman and multi-cultural as well.  I feel he is attempting to stretch cultural understanding to a higher level.