Babel-17 / Empire Star Book

Empire Star is the "short side" of Babel-17, flip Babel-17 upside-down and over and there's Empire Star, ready to be read. It's apparently the way Delany originally wanted it published but it never happened.

With Empire Star I can see more clearly the rollicking, adventurous, humorous sides of Delany's writing. It's a coming of age type of novella starring Comet Jo on his journey to deliver an important (though as yet unknown to him) message to Empire Star (which ends up being the sort of mystical heart of the universe). He's a simplex person from a simplex world and the journey charts his progress into a multiplex character. A simplex person is a one-sided person, a simple person who accepts everything at face value, rarely asks questions or questions anything, and sits pat on firm conclusions; but a simplex can also be very intelligent, just not multifaceted (Dubya and others come to my mind). A multiplex person takes nothing at face value, questions everything, accepts no final answer or conclusion, and basically sees the world through a variety of lenses that never settle into a single picture; but a multiplex is not necessarily an intellectual, just a person with an expanded mind.

This journey from simplex to multiplex appeared to be the main point of the novella, but there were other themes as well, like a final flourish in the form of a riff on Eternal Return or circular time. Delany obviously had a great time writing this, which according to a note he did in 10 days in 1965 to finance a trip to Europe.


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There was an odd static quality to Babel-17, even despite all the space travel and fighting. This static quality stemmed from the fact that while reading this book I felt like a space traveller inside Delany's head (space travel probably does have an odd static quality - confined in a pod, few if any reference points whizzing by). This readerly space-travelling pod-confinement inside Delany's head was a result of the novel itself being a big mental puzzle, or rather the embodiment of an intellectual problem (on deep issues of language and its relation to reality and identity) posed by then solved by Delany. In this way Babel-17 is like a high-brow thesis in the language of science fiction. This novel, more than most, benefits greatly from the reader being able to hold the whole novel in its entirety in one's head as an object to be contemplated once completed. Then one can see more clearly the knotted up thorny quality of the problem (which is the bulk of the book after all) as opposed to just the unloosening freedom of the solution at the end.

I'm sorry I can't say more, but Delany is one of those authors who obsessively deals with the same brainy themes in book after book, so it helps to read a few to really grasp what he's up to, and as this is only my first (completed), please tune in for more once I read more.