Saturday, September 12, 2009

#38: Babylon Babies by Maurice G. Dantec

An Eastern European mercenary helps a young schizophrenic woman impregnated with two mysterious babies travel from Russia to Canada, along the way brushing up against the Siberian mafia, Native American hackers, Canadian biker gangs, a self-aware Artificial Intelligence, a doomsday religious cult, and more strange characters.

Maurice Dantec's baroque cyberpunk novel Babylon Babies is a dense, maddening chunk of
sci-fi, but not without its merits for patient readers. Dantec is brimming with fresh ideas, delivered in a sardonic tone, but is prone to lengthy digressions and side treks. I would recommend this to anyone who had read a lot of the sci-fi canon and would like a challenge.

The movie Babylon A.D. is a Vin Diesel action flick theoretically based on the book, though the movie has the slenderest whisper of a connection to this sprawling, chewy work.

I listened to a very good audio book version of this on loan from the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

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