Language

Reading Babel 17 was fairly interesting, but also hard to understand at times. I found that the entire idea of understanding languages was explored by actually reading it. For example, the one character, Brass, who could never use the letter P and said "Ca'tain Wong" or "A one-tri' grou' can be a hell of a 'roblem to disci'line." Then there was an entire scene where all the sentences seemed to be cut short. I actually thought I had a bad copy of the story and looked it up online, but no. There was meant to be a scene with uncompleted thoughts. For example, they would say, "Her ease infected him; and either she reached playfully to take his hand or he amazed
himself by taking hers, and the apparition as real beneath his fingers with skin as smooth
as." I kept thinking, smooth as what? It was interesting that the language would make me think this way. Also, another aspect of the book I found interesting was the scattered way it describes things. Sometimes, descriptions are perfect. I felt that I knew exactly what Captain Wong looked like, but i had almost no idea what Brass looked like. I couldn't decide if he was an animal or a human.
Probably the biggest part that caught me off guard even though it shouldn't have was the scene where they were trying to correct the space ships course. They were stumped and needed to find a way out, but Wong discovered the answer through the language she's trying to decipher, Babel 17. The entire scene left my brain a mess as they were explaining these seemingly complex equations and ideas that somehow fixed their problem. I figured a scene like that would happen considering it's a sci-fi novel, but I was completely lost. But, that interestingly falls into the language barrier that the book is trying to convey.
I thought the concept behind the story was great and I do like stories about a ship with a captain. In that sense, it reminded me of star trek only with crazy body-mod'ed crew members.