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From: jerry.friedman99@gmail.com (jerryfriedman)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,rec.arts.sf.fandom
Subject: Re: Babel
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 16:58:20 +0000
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Scott Dorsey wrote:

> So, I am reading Rebecca Kuang's _Babel_ to see just what it was that the 
> Hugo Committee may have objected to, and I find it extremely pro-Chinese.
> It is strongly against British imperialism and against the Opium War, and
> the Chinese government of the time may not have been very strong but was
> determined.  

> If her previous works were anti-Chinese, I don't know.  But this seems
> sufficiently against that that I would expect it would more than make up
> for that.

> This book, I might add, is also very well written and extremely entertaining
> and was just a great read that thoroughly deserved a Hugo.  If it had been
> on the ballot I would have voted for it.  Is there hope for a Nebula maybe?
> There were some odd technical problems which all could have been accounted
> for by the differences between our universe and theirs but which did seem a
> little glaring.  But it was still great.
> --Scott

I thought it was good but not great.  The story and characters were engaging,
and the magic system was original.  One problem was that criticizing 19th-
century colonialism and especially the Opium Wars seemed too easy and
out of date.  And nothing was said about China's conquests or suppression
of dissent.

A minor criticism is that, after Kuang makes a big deal about researching
Oxford slang of the 1830s, she gives her characters a lot of 20th- and
21st-century dialogue, which I found jarring.

Begin extract:

'You rile her up,' Victoire said.

'Don't defend her--'

'You do,' said Victoire.  'You both do, don't pretend otherwise; you like
making her snap.'

'Only because she's up her own backside all the time,' Ramy scoffed.  'Is
she an entirely different person with you, then, or have you merely adapted?'

End extract.

"Rile" and "up her own backside" stood out to me.  "Rile", though originally
British, was considered regional and American dialect at the time, according
to the OED.  For instance, it appears in a list of Essex dialect words in 1815.
There's no reason for Victoire, a Haitian who has lived in Paris, to know it,
or for the two other characters present (one from China and one from India)
to recognize it.

"Be (stuck) up one's own arse" is first recorded in the OED from 1988.

That kind of thing won't bother a lot of people, but every time I see something
like that it sounds like a wrong note.

Also


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There seems to be a message that every single white person will oppose and
betray the legitimate aspirations of people of color.  No exceptions.

-- 
Jerry Friedman