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The Fiction of Ideas

The idea of using language as a weapon is incredibly bizarre and I wouldn’t have thought a book would try to tackle the concept, but hey, Babel 17 does just that.
Now, I have heard of the concept before but only in the video game Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain where the story was, well, bad. The idea was that a disease of some sort was spread by an underground military group and this disease would respond to a certain language spoken by killing the host. Not a bad idea, but it wasn’t explored to its full potential. At least now I know where Metal Gear potentially got the idea.


Babel-17 approaches the “weaponized language” concept in a different direction as it’s more of a boon to the user than a bane. Someone who learns the language Babel-17 has their brain rewired to think in the language, which is so precise that the user can think a mile-a-minute and describe intricate scenes in mere moments. Babel-17 tackles the concept of the self and whether we as people can ever truly understand one another with the languages we possess. The language Babel-17 is a stand-in for that mysterious language that makes everyone understand each other perfectly. As much of a pipe dream this seems to be, it’s a fascinating concept for sure.

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