Linguistics in SFF Recommendations | Vlogmas Day 8

Language, xenolinguistics, interspecies communication. This is my favorite topic in science fiction by far. I've been asked occasionally for a recommendations video about this, so today I am attempt to deliver.

FYI, I think I called the spiders Sophids but they're actually Portids. Woopsie.

THINGS MENTIONED

Semiosis by Sue Burke

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

"Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang (a.k.a. the movie Arrival)

Everything Is Made of Letters (especially "Learning Report") by Sofia Rhei

Monteverde: Memoirs of an Interstellar Linguist by Lola Robles

"The Silence of the Asonu" and "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" by Ursula K. Le Guin (also sort of The Telling, which is a Hainish novel)

Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh

Amatka by Karin Tidbeck

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany

ME ELSEWHERE:

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

[ThatsSoPoe]

I'm so glad you did this video. I have read a few of these and completely agree with your comments on them, and many of the others are already on my TBR based on hearing about them on your channel before, but some were new to me - I didn't realize Children of Time had a strong linguistics focus, for example! I want so badly to read these all now...

[williamstewart]

A really old short story is "Omnilingual " by H Beam Piper and two stories where language is important is "Blued Moon" and "Spice Pogrom" by Connie Willis

[AlwaysDoing]

This video has been calling to me from the middle of my Watch Later, but I've been strong! 😂 Children of Time immediately jumped on my TBR! And Foreigner is already on my list thanks to you talking about it previously. Looking forward to catching up with the rest of your Vlogmas vids 😊

[FinalBlowJoe]

Yay, I've been looking forward to this for some time now. This is so much a Rachel subject at this point considering your love of language and communications. The two Le Guin short stories I only recently read with Shannon and found them both to be really interesting.

[psikeyhackr]

I see someone has mentioned Omnilingual by H Beam Piper already. A related issue is General Semantics developed by Alfred Korzybski and his book Science and Sanity. Robert Heinlein was interested in this and mentioned Loglan, Logical Language, in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

[JamesDAmadan]

I'm currently finishing A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason which has strong elements of linguistic science fiction. It's a first contact novel with human explorers meeting and studying life on another planet. The natives are at the cusp of what we would consider Bronze Age culture but they seem to be stuck there and for reasons may never enter it. Our primary viewpoint character is Lixia, one of the Earth explorers.

It's interesting for me. I don't know if I'd recommend it for many. You will probably enjoy it, if not get something out of it.

[bretgrandrath]

Foreigner of course but interspecies communication plays an important part in the Chanur series by Cherryh. I don't think I've heard you mention Chanur, I think you would like them. But then I think everyone would enjoy them.
I would also have to mention The Lord Of The Rings and Game Of Thrones.David Peterson (creator of the Dothraki language for the TV show) gave a fascinating talk at WorldCon.

[voluminousbooks]

Great video! I love this topic, and you've covered most of my favorites.


A few other SF novels I liked that deal with language and/or communication are:
- Snow Crash by Stephenson (which involves hacking the human brain with a language virus)
- The Color of Distance by Thomson (which is about aliens that "speak" with color, and the challenges that poses for communication with humans)
- Solaris by Lem (which concerns an alien intelligence that communicates in an ENTIRELY odd way)
- Hellspark by Kagan (which is about the non-verbal aspects that make communication across cultures so perilous, even when the language is shared)


I also thought the book Aliens and Linguists by Walter Earl Meyers was a really interesting deep-dive into linguistics in science fiction, though it was published in 1980 and is pretty dated now.

[ThePurpleBookwyrm]

Great recommendation video! :) It's funny that I immediately thought of the "Author of the Acacia Seeds", and then... you mentioned it! Now I really want to read a few of the books you mentioned! Babel-17 is already on my TBR shelf, and I'll be purchasing Embassytown as well in the near future. Semiosis really sounds like my kind of thing as well, and it somewhat reminds me of a novel version of Ursula K. LeGuin's short story "Vaster than empires and more slow". Another series that comes to my mind, personally, on the wider topic of communication, is The Southern Reach trilogy. I mean it's definitely not about linguistics or language specifically, but the theme of communicating with an "alien" entity is definitely an important one I think.

[Kim_Traveling_in_Books]

Great idea for a video! I think too many science fiction novels, TV shows, and films overlook the differences in language and communication and how they affect the way different cultures interact with each other. Sure, universal translators make it easy for showrunners and authors to get around major differences in linguistics, but computers can't translate nuance, idioms, and tone the way an intelligent brain can. Now I really want to read Children of Time! All I'd heard about before were the spiders!

[darookmezd]

You recommendations are really good. I got to discover Semiosis previously because of one your videos.
By the way, in Rama series there are Octospiders whose anatomy allows them communicate via colorful light, then it gets interesting how they find ways to communicate with humans.

[annamup]

You managed to make me interested in Foreigner! I've been avoiding it for some reason, now I want to read it soon. I also really want to read the Lola Robles and Sofia Rhei books, I've had them on my wishlist since you first reviewed them, maybe I should stop waiting for a price drop and just buy them!

[likelyowl]

Thank you so much for this video! I am a linguistics freak and I absolutely adored Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life. It's a shame that there's only a few good linguistic themed books in sci-fi, although there's as much interesting theories to build on as there are in physics or biology.

[valeriehazel]

A year late, but if you’re interested in why Linguists are generally not convinced by the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, try The Language Hoax by John McWhorter.