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MaLingua Sci-Fi Book List
Some would say that linguistics has always been close to science
fiction—and that some theories are closer than others. . .
To promote investigation of this claim, we are offering a list of
science fiction books which feature linguistics or linguists. The
categories of books are given in the page index below.
Please send us your additions and
suggestions.
Our sincere thanks go to Suzette Hayden Elgin, who suggested most of
the titles in our list!
Alien languages /
Futuristic varieties of English /
Other invented languages
Linguist heroes /
Animal language /
Use of linguistic theory /
Other
Alien languages:
Confluence — Brian Aldiss (1967)
(consisting entirely of a lexicon of words in an alien language,
tentatively translated into English. It's in Judith Merril, ed.,
SF 12, Dell, N.Y., 1968.)
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Ficciones
— Jorge Luis Borges (1956)
"The Dance of the Changer and the Three" in The Best
of Terry Carr —
Terry Carr (1969)
40000 In Gehenna — C.J. Cherryh (1983)
Babel–17 — Samuel R. Delany (1966)
Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand
— Samuel R Delany (1984)
(language change, alien languages)
We Have Always Spoken Panglish
— Suzette Haden Elgin (2004)
(a linguist from "the U.S. Corps of Linguists" tries to save an
endangered extraterrestrial language)
Flight Of The Dragonfly — Robert L. Forward
(1984)
"A Tangled Web" in Dealing in Futures
— Joe Haldeman (1985)
(humorous alien language)
The Haunted Stars — Edmond Hamilton (1960)
West of Eden — Harry Harrison (1984)
Red Planet — Robert A. Heinlein (1949)
(alien language: phonetics,
semantics)
Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert A. Heinlein
(1961)
(alien language: phonetics, semantics, shading
into mysticism)
Inherit The Stars — James P. Hogan (1977)
Hellspark — Janet Kagan (1988)
Not So Certain — David I. Masson (1967)
Weltgeist Superstar — P.M. (1980)
"Omnilingual", in Federation — H.
Beam Piper (1981)
Contact — Carl Sagan (1985)
After Long Silence — Pamela Sargent (1987)
(actually it has to do with communication more
by music than by language, but
communication with alien intelligences at any rate)
Psychaos — E. P. Thompson
"A Martian Odyssey" in SF Hall Of Fame
— Stanley Weinbaum (1934)
Surfacing — Walter Jon Williams (1988)
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" in SF Hall Of
Fame — Roger Zelazny (1963)
Eye of Cat — Roger Zelazny (1982)
Futuristic varieties of English:
Barrier — Anthony Boucher (1942)
A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess (1962)
(futuristic version of anglicized
Russian)
The Inheritors — William Golding (1955)
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress — Robert Heinlein
(1966)
(future dialects of English)
Riddley Walker — Russel Hoban (1980)
(The whole thing is in the narrator’s
own dialect, which is a future form of English)
1984 — George Orwell (1948)
Hellflower
— eluki bes shahar (1991)
Other invented languages:
"A Tragedy of Errors" in The Long Night — Poul Anderson (1967)
(a planet that has new meaning for words like friend, slave, and business)
"Delenda Est" in Worlds of Maybe — Poul Anderson (edited by Robert Silverberg)(1970)
(1960s; incorporated as a chapter in a recent Anderson book; someone undid the Second Punic War and
Carthage became a major power in Europe. Anderson creates at least two languages that might have been
– a Celtic language with Semitic loanwords that would be used in North America, and a Germanic
language spoken by tribes that took over the Italy that had a power vacuum)
Native Tongue trilogy — Suzette Haden Elgin (1984)
(including: Native Tongue (wherein language and linguistics are
prominent issues in a future society; Laadan is a language in development.
Clans of linguists have become crucial because of their mediation with
non-humans. Raises issues about innateness, the bioprogram, language learning,
relationship between body stucture and language, as well as feminist issues),
and Judas Rose: Native Tongue II, [and Earthsong: Native Tongue III])
Day of the Klesh — M. A. Foster
(sequel to The Gameplayers of Zan; there is also a prequel. All three novels
feature the Ler, a race of genetically engineered humans designed to be physically
and mentally superior to us garden-variety types. The language of the Ler is built
largely on Slavic roots and is highly regular in form, and has different
"modes", distinguished by vocabulary, inflection and phonetic manifestation,
as well as at the "psi" level. The different modes have different purposes;
one to be used at home with family, one public, one for lovers, and one that packs a
psychic compulsion to do whatever the speaker is demanding.)
The Gameplayers Of Zan — M A Foster
The Memorandum — Vaclav Havel (1966)
"Gulf" in Assignment In Eternity — Robert A. Heinlein (1949)
(superior language; the limits of language)
The Left Hand of Darkness — Usrula K. Le Guin (1969)
(invented language: semantics)
Always Coming Home — Usrula K. Le Guin (1985)
(invented language: semantics, grammar, etc.)
Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov
The Klingon Dictionary — Marc Okrand (1985)
The Void–Captain’s Tale — Norman Spinrad
The Lord of the Rings — J. R. R. Tolkein (1954-55)
(invented languages, historical change, writing systems)
The Languages Of Pao — Jack Vance (1957)
(Comparative linguistics, Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (weak form), semantics)
Linguist heroes:
Rates of Exchange — Malcolm Bradbury
Double Negative — David Carkeet
The Full Catastrophe — David Carkeet
The Poison Oracle — Peter Dickinson (1974)
Lear’s Daughters — M. Bradley Kellogg, with William B. Rossow (1986)
Out Of The Silent Planet — C.S. Lewis (1943)
Hands On — Andrew Rosenheim (1992)
The Sparrow — Mary Doria Russell (1996)
Children of God — Mary Doria Russell (1998)
Pygmalion — George Bernard Shaw (1912)
Animal language:
Watership Down — Richard Adams (1972)
Tarzan Of The Apes — Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
King of the Sea — Derek Bickerton
(Not exactly science fiction. But deals with
human-dolphin communication. Best explanation of Bickerton's bioprogram available with
a valuable dicussion also of the problems of having a meaningful relationship with a
dolphin)
Sundiver — David Brin (1980)
(language change, animal language, dolphins)
Rendezvous with Rama — Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
(animal language, apes)
Congo — Michael Crichton (1980)
Oh’s Profit — Goulet
(the main character is a signing gorilla named Oh, and there's a Chomsky sound-alike baddie
called Sandground)
"Rachel in Love" in Points of Departure — Pat Murphy (1990)
(animal language, chimps)
Use of linguistic theory:
Linguistics and Languages in Science Fiction–Fantasy — Myra Edwards Barnes (1975)
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction — Samuel R. Delany
(essays about how sentences work in SF as distinct from other kinds of writing)
Starboard Wine: More Notes on the Language of Science Fiction — Samuel R. Delany
Ozark trilogy — Suzette Haden Elgin
Yonder Comes The Other End Of Time — Suzette Haden Elgin
Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction — Walter E. Meyers (1980)
(A scholarly work analyzing the linguistics in SF... how plausable it is, frequent errors that SF authors
make when talking about linguistics, and examples of good linguistics)
Essay "Some lists of things about books " in NLLT 6:2 — Geoff Pullum (1988)
(list of six SF novels featuring linguistics)
Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson (1992)
("Snow Crash goes into the theory of lethal texts ... defining them as ’speech
with magical force.’ ... the Sumerians developed what they called ’nam-shubs’,
incantations which destroyed the ability of their hearers to understand language ... the
Sumerian nam–shubs have an interesting effect. It makes them prone to glossolalia ..."
(http://www.deoxy.org/alephnull/snow.htm))
Gulliver’s Travels — Jonathan Swift (1726)
The Embedding — Ian Watson (1973)
(Universal Grammar, generative syntax)
Other:
The Troika Incident — James Cooke Brown (1969) [Loglan]
Etxemendi — Florence Delay [Chomsky ref]
Triton — Samuel R. Delany
(latter takes on the arbitrariness of the relationship between form and meaning and
builds a whole society around it, starting with, of course, an artificially engineered
environment on a moon (of Saturn?)); Neveryon series (second-hand report says it
incorporates a good deal of linguistics)
So You Want To Be A Wizard — Diane Duane
Tongues Of The Moon — Philip Jose Farmer
"Anniversary Project" in Infinite Dreams — Joe Haldeman (1979)
(the evolution of human language)
Dune — Frank Herbert (1965)
(carefully worked out historical derivations of Arabic religious language set thousands
of years in the future)
The Dispossessed — Ursula LeGuin (1974)
Love Me Tomorrow — Robert Rimmer (1976) [Loglan]
"The Translator" in Universe 1 — Kim Stanley Robinson
(edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber)(1990)
(a fresh look at the automatic translator)
Shall We Have a Little Talk? — Robert Sheckley
(for the evil Earth capitalist empire to take over a planet, they have to
buy some land on the planet. A representative goes to some planet to start
negotiating for a land purchase and finds that every day the language has
changed, not only in vocabulary but in grammar. At one point, he exclaims "Stop
agglutinating!" The inhabitants of the planet are using accelerated language
change as a defense mechanism, and at the end of the story, they are
communicating in identical monosyllables)
"The Attitude of the Earth Towards Other Bodies" in Full Spectrum 2 — James Sallis
(edited by Lou Aronica, et. al)(1989)
(Universal Grammar)
Terraplane — Jack Womack (1861)
(language change, dialect differences)
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Page Updated: 09-May-2008
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