Babel-17 (1966)

A poet decoding a weaponised language gives Delany's 1966 novel an unusual kind of intellectual hero. Rydra Wong's investigation turns the relationship between words and agency into a lively space adventure, with bodies and social arrangements less conventional than a narrow picture of vintage science fiction allows. Treat its linguistic determinism as an imaginative proposition to argue with, rather than an account of how language has been proved to work.