It's been a long time (apart from Too Like The Lightning) that I've read a novel that felt so tailored to me like Babel-17. I mean, it's a queer polyamorous scifi novel where linguistics are key, even to winning space battles, which there are plenty of. I have no words. It's also been the first time in a while that a novel brought me to tears. This is absolutely what scifi is supposed to be like. It's rapid, and fun, and deep, and thoughtful, and introduces alien concepts and human behaviour, and …. I can absolutely see why it won the very first Nebula Award – even though I was very surprised to hear it's as old as 1966. It doesn't feel aged at all. On re-read: I had forgotten the wonder that is Rydra. The brilliance. The empathy. The poetry. I had remembered some of the crew, but not the sheer wonder I felt at every little sentence. Just like in Empire Star, Delany draws entire worlds in hidden clauses, and makes me feel and see entire persons in two sentences. Two sentences! And imagine what he will do when he uses more than that. There's a heart-wrenching paragraph about being poly in a mono world in there, and that's an obvious one. But there's so much more, in every little sentence. Intermission: Imagine how Marilyn Hacker felt, being portrayed like that. Or used as a blueprint, at least – he wrote this while being in a relationship with her, the poet, and another guy, and … Oh, what do I know! Some people claim the four poems opening the four chapters are hers, and those people are the kind of old and knowledgeable that they are probably right – and the poems were taken out for later editions, which is a shame – (correction: those people are right, I found some of them, but the best one, the very best, I can't find published anywhere …) And the worldbuilding details. There are aliens sailing deep space in a triple yolked huge egg, and it's barely worth a mention and yet also deeply integrated with the story. The description of the language challenges in creating a treaty with them …! I put all those beautiful details into the plot summary, because it's too hard to pick out the spoilers. But man, the space ship crew on its own would make this a five-star book. And then there's the fact that he just sat down and wrote poems that made it plausible for his protagonist to be a star poet renowned in five galaxies.