Episode 217: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

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Episode 217: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
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In our last episode of the season Ralph, Liz and Josh struggle to communicate over Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17.

Show Notes

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

Elizabeth Lovegrove, Josh Fox and Ralph Lovegrove

Synopsis 00:45 // Jo Walton’s review 04:30 // Themes 05:10 // The Dead on tape 08:00 // Translation and Memory 12:40 // Hyperspace 14:25 // Non-binary life partners 15:45 // Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis 24:00 // Sleeper agents 28:35 // Gaming by hypnosis 30:25 // Faceless invaders 34:15 // RPG bit — Josh 37:55 // Liz (Grunting, Dialect RPGs) 39:00 // Ralph 44:40 // Last bits 52:20

Book References

Since we mentioned several titles in this episode, here’s our mini bibliography.

The Babel-17 wiki page lists other works that were influenced by this book including Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Ted Chiang’s Story Of Your Life (made into the film Arrival).

Finally, here’s Jo Walton’s review of Babel-17.

Game Notes

Five Conversational Hypnosis Tools For MCs by Pete Kautz.

Grunting is a free RPG by Jen Spencer.

Dialect is a game about how language dies. It’s post-Kickstarter (but I guess you can pre-order it).

We mentioned Night Witches (yes, AGAIN).

Ralph has started his Dramasystem/OSR mashup anyway (yeah, DEAL WITH IT JOSH). It’s called StormHack. Mini SRD here.

Music credits

“Is That You Or Are You You?” from Reappear by Chris Zabriskie

“But Enough About Me, Bill Paxton” from Direct To Video by Chris Zabriskie

chriszabriskie.com // bandcamp // free music archive

3 thoughts on “Episode 217: Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

  1. It’s been a very fine season. Fictoplasm is now my podcast of choice when I get to take a long country walk. There’s something about the superposition of the Surrey Hills landscape with wildly imaginary worlds.

    I’m sure you’re not short of ideas for next season, but here goes anyway:

    Bradbury: Dandelion Wine/Something Wicked
    Saki: the whole oeuvre
    Holdstock: Mythago Wood
    Tim Powers: could be any, but On Stranger Tides deserves reclaiming!

  2. I’m quite late to the party, but the description of “Grunting” reminded me of “Og,” designed by Wingnut Games and redesigned by Robin Laws in 2007. In Og, “the silly game of stupid cavemen,” the players may (at start) only use the 18 words known to their tribe.

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