#babel 17

[tyger-land]

𝗦𝗮𝗺𝘂𝗲𝗹 𝗥. 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘆 New York City, 1997.

[smokefalls]

You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can’t express—and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn’t hurt anymore: that’s my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.

Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

[sir-libearian]

Some of Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany (1966) on Triples (throuples)

-

“Calli, Navigator Two.” 

“Where are your One and Three?”

“Three’s over there somewhere getting drunk. One was a sweet girl named Cathy O’Higgins. She’s dead.” He finished the drink and reached over for another one.

Ron, Cathy, and me, we’d only been tripled for a couple of months. But even so…” He shook his head. “It was bad.” 

…

“Don’t got no One,” Ron said. His smile was quick and sad again. 

“Suppose I found a One for you?” 

The Navigators looked at each other. Calli turned to Rydra and rubbed the side of his nose with his thumb. “You know the thing about a triple like us—” 

Rydra’s left hand caught her right. “Like this, you have to be. My choice is subject to your approval, of course.” 

“Well, it’s pretty difficult for someone else—” 

“It’s impossible. But it’s your choice. I just make suggestions. But my suggestions are damned good ones. What do you say?” 

Calli  shrugged. “You can’t make an offer much better than that.”

Rydra looked at Ron. The kid put one foot up on the stool, hugged his knee, and peered across his patella. “I say, let’s see who you suggest.” 

She nodded. “Fair.”

…

“You know, jobs for broken triples aren’t that easy to come by.” Calli put his hand on Ron’s shoulder.

Ron reached behind his neck and rubbed his scapula. “You don’t worry about us till you get a Navigator One.” The hard, adolescent face held an engaging belligerence.

Rydra nodded. “What about the Eye that came back with you?”

“Lost his Ear and Nose. They were a real close triple, Captain. He hung around maybe six hours before he went back to the Morgue.”

…

He would have spat it, but Rydra’s copper eyes were now as close to his face as the hostile, pitted visage had been. She said: “He was part,” the words lean, calm, her eyes intent on not losing his, “of a triple, a close, precarious, emotional, and sexual relation with two other people. And one of them has just died.” 

The edge of her tone hued away the bulk of the Officer’s anger; but a sliver escaped him: “Perverts!” 

Ron put his head to the side, his musculature showing clear the double of hurt and bewilderment. “There’re some jobs,” he echoed Calli’s syntax, “some jobs on a transport ship you just can’t give to two people alone. The jobs are too complicated.” 

“I know.” Then he thought, I’ve hurt the boy, too. Something else was working in the Officer’s mouth. He looked from Calli to Ron, back. “I’m sorry for you.” 

“Ron,” said Rydra. “No, Ron and Calli too.” The Navigators stepped up, puzzled.

She passed her hand before the filing crystal. In the concaved screen at the base, words flashed. She paused and ran her hand in a different direction. “…male, male, male, female. Now, you talk to me, Calli, Ron.”

“Huh? About what?” 

“About yourselves, about what you want.” (in a third)

…

“I mean if she’s a good navigator, and she loves us.” 

“…could love us,” said Calli. 

“If she was all you wanted and herself besides,” asked Rydra, her head shaking between two names on the screen, “could you love her?” 

The hesitation, the nod slow from the big man, quick from the boy. Rydra’s hand came down on the crystal face, and the name glowed on the screen. “Mollya Twa, Navigator One.”

…

“I don’t think she speaks English.”

“Yes. I know,” Rydra grinned. “But other than that she’s perfect. This way you’ll have to get to know each other before you can say anything really foolish.” "She lost two-thirds of her triple seven years ago, also killed through the Invasion. She says she will go with you. Will you take her?” 

…

I’m sure they’ll think it was magic for the rest of their lives. The basic requirements, however, were all on file: a female Navigator-One who lacks two men. The final choice was a stroke of genius, if I do say so. I had it down to six young ladies who would do. But it needed to be more precise than that, and I couldn’t play it more precise, at least not by ear. One young lady was from N’gonda Province in Pan Africa. Lost two husbands in an Invasion attack, and returned to earth in the middle of an embargo. You remember what the politics were like then between Pan Africa and Americasia; I was sure she didn’t speak English. We woke her, and she didn’t. Now, at this point, their indices may be a mite jarring. But, by the time they fight through learning to understand each other—and they will, because they need to—they’ll graph out congruent a foot down the logarithmic grid. Clever?

…

“Captain?” Ron sat in the corner of the balcony, hugging his knees. 

“What’re you doing?” 

“Too many people.” 

She nodded, watching him press his shoulders downward, watching his triceps leap on the bone, then still. She asked: “Trouble between you, Mollya, and Calli?” 

“No. I mean…just…” 

“Just what?” She smiled and leaned on the balcony edge. 

He leaned his chin to his knees again. “I guess they’re fine. But, I’m the youngest…and…” Suddenly the shoulders raised. “How the hell would you understand! Sure, you know about things like this, but you don’t really know.” It came out in little explosions of half-whispered sound. She heard the words and watched the jaw muscle jerk and beat and pop, a small beast inside his cheek. “Perverts,” he said. “That’s what you Customs all really think. All those people in there staring at us, who can’t understand why you could want more than one lover. And you can’t understand either.” 

“Five years ago, Ron, I was… tripled.” 

“You’re Customs, Captain. You circle Transport, but you’re not Transport.” 

“Ron, I’m public. I talk to Customs and Customs looks at me and says: ‘You’re Transport.” She shrugged. “I’m neither. But even so, I was tripled. I know about that.” 

“Customs don’t triple,” he said. 

“Two guys and myself. If I ever do it again it’ll be with a girl and a guy. For me that would be easier, I think. But I was tripled for three years. That’s over twice as long as you’ve been.” 

“Who were they?” 

“Customs or Transport?” She shrugged. “Like me, neither really.” 

…

“We even had fun arguing about who was going to sleep in the middle.” 

It was like a cue. Ron began to pull back together, knees rising, arms locking around them, chin down. “I got both of mine, at least,” he said. “I guess I should be pretty happy.” 

“Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t. Do they love you?” 

“They said so.” 

“Do you love them?” 

“Christ, yes. I talk to Mollya and she’s trying to explain something to me and she still don’t talk so good yet, but suddenly I figure out what she means, and…” 

“It’s wonderful,” she supplied. 

“Yeah, it’s…” He looked at her. “It’s wonderful.” 

“You and Calli?” 

“Hell, Calli’s just a big old bear and I can tumble him around and play with him. But it’s him and Mollya. He still can’t understand her so well. And because I’m the youngest he thinks he should learn quicker than me. And he doesn’t, so he keeps away from both of us. Now like I say, when he gets in a mood, I can always handle him. But she’s new, and thinks he’s mad at her.” 

“Want to know what to do?” Rydra asked, after a moment. 

“Do you know?” 

She nodded. “It hurts more when there’s something wrong between them because there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do. But it’s easier to fix.” 

“Why?” 

“Because they love you.” He was waiting now. “Calli gets into one of his moods, and Mollya doesn’t know how to get through to him.” Ron nodded. “Mollya speaks another language, and Calli can’t get through that.” He nodded again. “Now you can communicate with both of them. You can’t act as a go-between; that never works. But you can teach each of them how to do what you know already.” 

“Teach…?” 

“What do you do with Calli when he gets moody?” 

“I pull his ears,” Ron said. “He tells me to cut it out until he starts laughing, and then I roll him around on the floor.” 

Rydra made a face. “It’s unorthodox, but if it works, fine. Now show Mollya how. She’s athletic. Let her practice on you till she gets it right, if you have to.” 

“I don’t like to get my ears pulled,” Ron said. 

“Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.” She tried not to smile; and smiled anyway. 

Ron rubbed his left earlobe with the ham of his thumb. “I guess so.” 

“And you have to teach Calli the words to get through to Mollya. You’ll help him.” 

“Teach him?” Ron asked. 

“That’s right.” 

“Do you think he’ll do it?” 

“To get closer to Mollya?” asked Rydra. “Do you think so?” 

“He will.” Like metal unbending, Ron suddenly stood. “He will.”

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

Favorite Standalone Books

Round 2

The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) VS Babel-17 (Samuel R. Delany)

The Night Circus

Babel-17

Show results

Voting ended onJun 23, 2025

Propaganda for Babel-17 :

"Linguistic science fiction space opera at the kind of wild and inventive and weirdly retro in its future imagination that only the 60s could provide (spaceships run on tape decks!) but with the bonus that the author is a gay Black man so it’s NOT got most of the pitfalls that 60s sci-fi has. The protagonist is a bisexual, polyamorous, autistic, Asian woman who is also the most renowned poet and best linguist in the galaxy, and also a spaceship captain, and a codebreaker, and Delany clearly has so much fun throwing every idea that occurred to him into this book."

[waywordsstudio]

3 Word Review: “Babel-17” by Samuel R. Delany -

Fascinating sf yarn from a master world-builder on how our language might be manipulated against us.

[phenakistoskope]

story of you life by ted chiang was very reminiscent of samuel delany's babel-17, both meditate on how language influences how we think, and how this extends into our perceptions of space and time, cause and effect. personally, i enjoyed delany's novel more because it explored how language can alter our perceptions of gender and politics. chiang left things far more ambiguous, which in this particular case wasn't quite as impactful.

[thereadingmoon]

In babel-17, the mc mentions two territories: pan-africa and americasia. ignoring the fact that this was published in 1966 bc fuck implied imperialism and western expansion, i will assume that this book is set in a future so far that america and asia has literally collided because of the continental drift 🥰

[boring-scifi]

Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17 (Ace, 1973 vs. Vintage Books, 2004)