Babel-17/Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany

This is supported by a scene where Rydra Wong remembers the two men with whom she was in a triple marriage, a fellow writer named Muels Aranlyde and a geologist named Fobo Lombs. Rumour has it that the character is based on Samuel Delany’s wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker, and that the poems found throughout the novel are her work. However, the use of poetry is entirely appropriate here, because Rydra Wong, protagonist of Babel-17, is a poet. This is something you occasionally find in vintage pulp magazines, but rarely in contemporary science fiction. The blurb promised a mix of space opera and James Bond style spy adventure, which sounded right up my alley.īabel-17 starts with a poem, and there are further poems scattered throughout the novel, used as chapter epigraphs. Delany, in the spinner rack at my local import bookstore. So I was happy to find Babel-17, the latest science fiction novel by Samuel R. With so much grim news in the real world, you just want to escape into a book. A pity he won’t be the one who’s in the cockpit when the next Starfighter crashes. West German Secretary of Defence Franz Josef Strauß poses in the cockpit of a Starfighter. Reasons include inadequate safety equipment and maintenance, general issues with the aircraft as well as the fact that West German Secretary of Defence Franz Josef Strauß, probably the worst German politician since 1945, requested alterations and add-ons, which the light fighter aircraft cannot handle. By now, the aircraft has a terrible reputation in West Germany, is nicknamed “widow maker” or “flying coffin,” and also gave birth to tasteless jokes such as “How do you become the owner of a Starfighter? – Just buy a meadow and wait.” This Starfighter crash in Twistringen, some 25 kilometres from where I live, cost not just the life of the pilot, but also that of a woman and her two daughters as well as a volunteer firefighter.Īfter so many crashes and avoidable deaths of both pilots and civilians on the ground, the West German parliament has finally launched an inquiry into why these accidents keep happening. All in all, the West German air force has lost fifty-four Lockheed Starfighters since 1961, twenty-six of them in 1965 alone. This would be a tragedy in itself, but what makes it even worse is that only eight days before, on May 2, another aircraft of the same type crashed near Rendsburg in the far north of West Germany, killing the pilot.

A Lockheed F104G Starfighter, actually flying for once. Before heading into the planned book review, I have sad news to relate: on May 10, two Lockheed F104G Starfighters of the West German air force collided over the North Sea and crashed into the waves, killing both pilots.

Babel-17/Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany