Babel-17/Empire Star

Author of the bestselling Dhalgren and winner of four Nebulas and one Hugo, Samuel R. Delany is one of the most acclaimed writers of speculative fiction.

Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy’s deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he’s entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany’s vast and singular talent.

About the author(s)

After his seventh novel, Empire Star (1966), Samuel R. Delany began publishing short fiction professionally with “The Star Pit.” It appeared in Worlds of Tomorrow and was turned into a popular two-hour radio play, broadcast annually for more than a decade. Two tales, “Aye, and Gomorrah” and “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones,” won Nebula Awards as the best science fiction short stories, respectively, of 1967 and 1969. Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories contains all the significant short science fiction and fantasy works that Delany published between 1965 and 1988, excepting only those tales in his Return to Nevèrÿon series. A native New Yorker, Delany teaches English and creative writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. In July of 2002, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.