Some pretty wild linguistic work building up what actually is a pretty straightforward space opera. A bit of "pushing through" at the beginning totally paid off, easily my favorite Delany so far. ( )

For a book written in 1966 it was quite innovative in how the author saw the future and unique in how space travel, with its complexities, was controlled by specialists using emotions, instinct and heightened senses to master the controls and navigation- with some of these specialists in the crew being deceased with their thought patterns and memories retained artificially.
The main thrust of the plot is the use of language and how it shapes thinking in individuals and cultures. The effort to transmit this concept was often hard to follow and detracted from enjoying the story. The ending too was sudden and somewhat disappointing in my opinion. ( )

Aha, something from my 2015 support-POC-in-genres list. This is classic sci-fi, with the spaceships and battles and whatnot, but I enjoyed it. Much more about language and class and identity and skepticism of war. Cool to know this man was out there in the 60s imagining new worlds and winning awards for it. ( )

It's been a long long time since I've read this book for the first time. I think it was school? Or maybe university? Somewhere at that time I read it for the first time and was seeded with this idea that our language defines our perception. Many years and books since then I just read it for a second time as that seed grown into a one hell of a weird tree... sorta.

It took me years to explore this idea and put it into conscious belief. I explored some languages, some concepts, I compared and thought about many little things, I started noticing them in translated books, I paid attention to the cases when author explicitly provided commentary for nuances and difficulties.

Overall this was just a right book at the right time. ( )

A science fiction classic from 1966, and one that is, sadly, still somewhat ahead of the times. Not in terms of the technology (there are still phone booths!), nor the linguistic theory (Sapir-Whorf linguistic determinism having since fallen by the wayside), but in terms of its social and sexual diversity. Delany paints a world lush with strange and interesting details that aren’t directly required for the story—body modification, polyamory, ethnic diversity, many of which are still considered outlandish by some people today. Rydra Wong, poet and linguist extraordinaire, is the character who pulls all the disparate elements together, even as she builds bridges among people of different classes, ideologies, and languages.

Communication is a key theme. An intergalactic war is going on between the Alliance and the Invaders. Key Alliance military targets are being sabotaged, and when they are, a strange transmissions are detected that the military believes to be a code but that Rydra recognizes as a language. How Rydra goes about translating that language is the core of the plot, but there are many fascinating side trips. Rydra’s recruiting her spaceship crew to take her to the scene of what she’s determined will be the next target of sabotage takes up a good part of the early chapters, and this is where Delany flaunts the sociocultural details that color his universe: from the stiff, bureacratic Customs officer who is introduced to the wrong side of town, to the bars and wrestling rings where potential pilots with exotic body modifications fight, to the Morgue where a dead navigator is brought back to be the third member of the required polyamorous triple of navigators; these chapters were my favorite part of the book.

I haven’t read enough Delany, and I’m inspired to take on Dhalgren at long last. ( )