Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
Babel-17 won the 1966 Nebula award for best novel, tying with Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon. Samuel Delany’s space opera novel is dated in many ways, but still holds up.
In the future, humans have colonized many star systems. Currently, the Alliance is engaged in a war with the Invaders, who, despite the name, are also human. The Alliance has intercepted many dispatches in a code they can’t break. They’ve labeled it Babel-17. Desperate, they turn to the inter-galactically renowned poet Rydra Wong to help them decipher it.
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I might say "formulaic" actually.
Your review made me curious, so I looked this book up. Sure enough: Tor. Tor seems to specialize in these…
It's a tightrope act for sure.
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yes, I mean, there are certainly lots of good sci-fi/fantasy novellas out there, so they aren't impossible to do, but…