Babel-17 (1966)

Poet and linguist Rydra Wong investigates transmissions associated with attacks, discovering that understanding the apparent code may alter the person doing the understanding. Delany takes an extreme imagined relationship between language and thought into a space adventure about agency and identity. A compact choice for readers who enjoy intellectual play inside an energetic story. Its linguistic premise is speculative, rather than a reliable account of how learning a real language changes a mind.