#babel-17

[remnantglow]

part 2 of older lgbt scifi as described in out of context negative reviews - personal favourites edition (part 1)

[station451]

"Think galactic-or your world is lost" is one hell of a tagline.

1966 Ace books paperback of Babel-17 by the master himself, Samuel R. Delaney. First edition cover art--which is objectively incredible--by Jerome (Jerry) Podwil.

Sometimes, when I am using my beloved isfdb.org for research on the books I am posting, I discover something new about this little niche of collecting I have been inhabiting for years and thought I knew a lot about. It is always fun to find these happy little surprises; in this case, it is Mr. Podwil's work. He was prolific, especially in the 1960s, and did covers for some pretty big names in the speculative fiction world. I highly recommend checking out his page to see some of the awesome covers he did!

Now I have to control myself and not buy a whole bunch of books with his cover art on them, but I do not know how long I can hold off.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Babel-17 - art by Peter Elson (1977)

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 102: The science and fiction of Sapir-Whorf

It's a fun science fiction trope: learn a mysterious alien language and acquire superpowers, just like if you'd been zapped by a cosmic ray or bitten by a radioactive spider. But what's the linguistics behind this idea found in books like Babel-17, Embassytown, or the movie Arrival?

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science and fiction of linguistic relativity, popularly known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We talk about a range of different things that people mean when they refer to this hypothesis: a sciencey-sounding way to introduce obviously fictional concepts like time travel or mind control, a reflection that we add new words all the time as convenient handles to talk about new concepts, a note that grammatical categories can encourage us to pay attention to specific areas in the world (but aren't the only way of doing so), a social reflection that we feel like different people in different environments (which can sometimes align with different languages, though not always). We also talk about several genuine areas of human difference that linguistic relativity misses: different perceptive experiences like synesthesia and aphantasia, as well as how we lump sounds into categories based on what's relevant to a given language.

Finally, we talk about the history of where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis comes from, why Benjamin Lee Whorf would have been great on TikTok, and why versions of this idea keep bouncing back in different guises as a form of curiosity about the human condition no matter how many specific instances get disproven.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about two sets of updates! We talk about the results from the 2024 listener survey (we learned which one of us you think is more kiki and more bouba!), and our years in review (book related news for both Lauren and Gretchen), plus exciting news for the coming year.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 90+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.

Here are the links mentioned in the episode:

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany on Goodreads

Lingthusiasm episode on the linguistics of the movie Arrival

History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast episode 31: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Lingthusiasm episode 'Colour words around the world and inside your brain'

Wikipedia entry for 'Edward Sapir'

‘The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ by Harry Hoijer (1954) (archive.org)

Wikipedia entry for 'Ekkehart Malotki'

Wikipedia entry for 'Hopi time controversy'

'Key is a llave is a Schlüssel: A failure to replicate an experiment from Boroditsky et al. 2003' by Anne Mickan, Maren Schiefke, and Anatol Stefanowitsch

'Do Chinese and English speakers think about time differently? Failure of replicating Boroditsky (2001)' by Jenn-Yeu Chen

'Does grammatical gender affect object concepts? Registered replication of Phillips and Boroditsky (2003)' by Nan Elpers, Greg Jensen, and Kevin J. Holmes

'Future tense and saving money: no correlation when controlling for cultural evolution' by Seán G. Roberts, James Winters, and Keith Chen

Lingthusiasm bonus episode ‘North, left, or towards the sea? Interview with Alice Gaby’

'Samuel R. Delany, The Art of Fiction No. 210' Interview by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for The Paris Review (unpaywalled photos here)

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Bluesky as @GretchenMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Bluesky as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, our editorial assistant is Jon Kruk, and our technical editor is Leah Velleman. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Paperback - Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Bantam (1982)

[refurbishedconstruct]

I accidentally ended up with an Audible credit. What should I listen to?

I’ve recently read & loved: The Imperial Radch trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries, The Javelin Project, The Locked Tomb, The Expanse, Seveneves, Babel-17

[crownhate]

been sick with a chronic throat infection bleh bleh bleh lots of cat cuddles + coffee walks to the book store is my main form of therapy these days. Picked up The Word for World is Forest cause I heard it is “angry Le Guin” so I’m hoping it’ll be at least as good as Lathe of Heaven (my third fav of hers so far), and then saw the exact edition of Babel-17 that I’ve been looking for sitting behind the counter. Score. Also stopped at the record store to grab Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s latest record. Dark and beautiful jazz for the resistance. Legends.

[pop-art-sixties-seventies]

Davis Meltzer, Babel-17, 1974