Babylon Babies

by Maurice G. Dantec

In this futuristic sci-fi thriller, hard-boiled veteran Thoorop must protect a young woman, Marie, who is bearing a genetically modified embryo created by an American cult which dreams of producing its own messiah.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Thriller, French Literature, Roman

Paperback

First published March 12, 1999

About the author

(English version below) Maurice Georges Dantec naît à Grenoble le 13 juin 1959, au sein d'une famille communiste, d'un père journaliste scientifique et d'une mère couturière et employée de service de la Ville d'Ivry-sur-Seine. Il passe la majeure partie de sa prime enfance dans cette ville, en pleine banlieue « rouge ». À l'âge de 5 ans, de violentes crises d'asthme vont éveiller en lui « d’atroces angoisses de mort imminente », dont le souvenir va hanter son adolescence. Ces problèmes de santé et la séparation de ses parents vont le conduire à vivre avec sa mère et sa soeur durant plus de 5 ans dans les Alpes, près de Grenoble, sa ville natale.

Après une scolarité brillante, il entre en 1971 au lycée Romain-Rolland, où il rencontre Jean-Bernard Pouy, futur créateur du Poulpe, qui amplifie son attirance déjà bien ancrée envers les littératures "marginales" américaines de l'époque (roman noir, écrits psychédéliques, science-fiction). Très tôt, il devient également un fervent lecteur de Nietzsche et Gilles Deleuze. À la fin des années 1970, une fois le bac en poche, il débute des études de lettres modernes qu'il abandonne rapidement pour fonder les groupes de rock « État d'Urgence », puis "Artefact" . Durant les années 1980, il continue ses aventures musicales tout en travaillant en tant que concepteur-rédacteur dans la publicité.

Après avoir créé, en 1991, sans succès, une société de communication multimédia, il décide de se « mettre à écrire sérieusement », tout en travaillant dans une agence de télémarketing. Sur recommandation de Jean-Bernard Pouy, il soumet en 1992 à Patrick Raynal, directeur de la collection Série Noire, un « volumineux et impubliable manuscrit de cinq cents feuillets de deux mille signes » : l’éditeur , qui voit en lui "les signes d'un phénomène littéraire", l’encourage alors vivement à lui livrer un autre ouvrage.

Maurice Georges Dantec was born in Grenoble, France on June 13th, 1959, within a communist family. His father was a scientific journalist and his mother a dressmaker, employees in the service of the City of Ivry-sur-Seine. He spent the majority of his childhood in the "red" suburbs. At the age of 5 years, a series of violent asthma attacks awakened his mind with the dreadful anxiety of imminent death, a memory that haunted him into adolescence. These health problems greatly affected him, along with the separation of his parents, and he lived with his mother and sister for more than 5 years in Alps, near Grenoble, his home town.

After primary schooling, Maurice entered the secondary school Romain-Rolland in 1971, where he met Jean-Bernard Pouy, future creator of the Octopus, who amplifies his growing attraction towards American "marginal" literature (black novel, mind-expanding writings, science fiction). Very early, he also became a fervent reader of Nietzsche and Giles Deleuze. At the end of 1970’s, once the receptacle in pocket, it starts studies of modern letters which he leaves fast to found the groups of rock " urgent State ", then "Artefact". During 1980s, it continues its musical adventures while working as concepteur-editor in advertising.

Having created unsuccessfully, a society of multimedia communication, while working in an agency of telemarketing , in 1991, he decided to write seriously. On recommendation of Jean-Bernard Pouy, he submitted some of his writing in 1992 to Patrick Raynal, manager of the collection Thriller. It was a huge, unpublishable handwritten manuscript of five hundred pages. Instead of rejection, the editor saw in Maurice "the signs of a literary phenomenon" strongly encouraging him to create other works.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m possibly being generous with a second star. Written twenty years ago, this near future (from the time of its composition—2017) action thriller features cyborgs, doomsday cults and homicidal mafioso and bikers leveling entire blocks of Canada fighting for a woman pregnant with technology that might result in a catastrophic viruses or perhaps a distillation of of all possible knowledge. One of the side effects of this surrogacy is schizophrenia.

Recognizing that all of the above should have been an impressive ride, it is a testament to the clunky cliches in nearly every sentence which made this a deplorable, bloated mess. Perhaps a cool 180 page novel lurks within? It’s just a damn shame.

[Bart Everson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got about a quarter of the way through Babylon Babies before giving up. The first chapter was a brutally boring account of one man's love affair with his AK-47, but I slogged through it. I waded through faux hardboiled lines like:

It was fucking hot.

and

Romanenko scanned his screen with fucking intensity...

I don't mind the f-bombs, but this just seems poorly written. Still I slogged on. Here’s the passage that did me in:

She was pretty. Her color was coming back. A mysterious glow played in the blue of her stare.

Toorop felt a kind of bulldozer turn on in a deeply buried excavation.

Something knotted at the base of his stomach.

Now is not the time, a warning light displayed on the dashboard of his consciousness.

Get this shit into program self-destruct right away, another voice screamed.

Imminent threat of sentimentalism, the alarm siren wailed.

He stared at the young woman with a strange smile…

I think the protagonist, Toorop, is falling in love with the other main character, Marie. But I’m not really sure, because I gave up shortly thereafter.

The author’s name is Maurice Dantec. I have to wonder if something got lost in translation. I gather he's big in France. This book has been made into a movie called Bablylon A.D. which I will studiously avoid.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Es difícil decir lo que se quiere si no se encuentran las palabras para ello o si las que se encuentran no son las precisas.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. A comienzos de la segunda década del siglo XXI, Hugo Cornelius Toorop es un veterano de la guerra de Bosnia y de otros conflictos que actualmente desempeña trabajos tácticos en solitario como mercenario al servicio de intereses independentistas uigures, pero con apoyo de la inteligencia militar rusa, en el territorio fronterizo del noroeste de una China convulsa. Un oficial ruso relacionado con el jefe mafioso que permite la financiación de los rebeldes mediante el tráfico de drogas recibe de este una propuesta de negocio muy lucrativo que consiste en el transporte y escolta de una joven llamada Marie Zorn hasta Montreal sin que sea interceptada por nada ni nadie, por lo que considera a Toorop como el más indicado para liderar el equipo que llevará a cabo la misión. Pero las cosas se van complicando.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not a great sign when the title of your experimental cyberpunk novel — published by “semiotext(e),” MIT’s theory imprint, yet! — has a title that makes you think of the Muppet Babies except everyone is in those big hats and beards. I thought maybe it’d be better in French — “Enfants de Babylone” doesn’t sound so dumb — but nope! Dantec gave it that English title despite the novel itself being in French.

Anyway… for a 560 page novel replete with references to literature, history, and especially high theory like Deleuze (presumably by it got translated into English by a theory-specialist academic press), I haven’t got that much to say about the actual plot. A magical girl holds the key to a future of Deleuzean schizo-something or other, where the boundaries between people, machines, animals, plants, et al break down and everything gets all freaky and liberated (but in a scary way) somehow. I don’t hate that kind of theory in the way vengeful nerds often do. Some of it I even get something out of. But more of it strikes me as posturing obfuscation, not offensive so much as uninteresting. Perhaps in keeping with the muddle of this kind of postmodern thought, it’s not entirely clear how the girl, or one of multiple hard-to-distinguish cults with an interest in her, is going to effect this change- something about viruses and genetically engineered babies? Who knows.

This magical girl (Marie- natch) needs to be escorted by the main character, Toorop, a Flemish mercenary with a philosophical bent, initially hired by the Russian mob but then wooed away to save the girl and one of the nicer cults, or… something. Honestly it got hard to keep track. At 560 pages and numerous digressions into High Theory you’re not doing cyberpunk, you’re doing cyberprog. There’s some cool stuff in here; it’s not the worst laid out near-future dystopia I’ve seen, and there’s some good twisty crime stuff. But it gets overwhelmed by sheer volume of (basically indistinguishable) characters, digressions, and just words. It’s too long and confusing to work as a novel. The translation doesn’t help- among other things, there’s mistakes even someone who can maybe quarter-read French could pick up, like translating “ancien,” as in “former,” to “ancient,” so you get stuff like “Toorop was an ancient soldier” when really he’s a retired, hence former, soldier, only in his forties. Sloppy, or “post-modern”? You decide!

I will say I’m curious about this Dantec figure. He died a few years back, but apparently cut quite a swath in French-language literature, a sort of love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. Supposedly his real magnum opus is where he pulls a Leon Bloy and wrote something like 3000 pages about how all of the rest of contemporary French literature is awful, and written by awful people. Untranslated, alas, and even the wikipedia article in French isn’t that informative- seems to be one of those literary fights waged fiercely in its circles and not making its way out, certainly not to Anglophone schlubs like me. Apparently, Dantec was on the political right, a supporter of the Iraq War and Israel. He selects some interesting backgrounds for his characters- Toorop fought for the Chechens against the Russians and the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs, and his two friends on his mission are an American emigrant to Israel and a Protestant militant from Belfast… the romance of small nationalisms? A lot of our contemporary very-online far right seems to prefer big nationalisms against smaller forces seen as disintegrative, ala Russia, the US, Syria… but you do get the other side too, the fantasy of breaking apart the liberal global monolith through multiple secessions of militant nationalities, eccentric enclaves and ministates, and so on, which is pretty in keeping with cyberpunk tropes… anyway, who knows if that’s what Dantec was in to, but I’m basically more interested in that than the theory-inflected stuff. **’

https://toomuchberard.wordpress.com/2...

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dantec is a French writer, and I suspect his novel is poorly translated. Why else would "smoked meat" be italicized? Not one but twice, a character purchases smoked meat. Everyone says "gonna," as in "I'm gonna do this or that," but there are no other contractions or slang -- never a "we're" or "I'll," always "we are" or "I will." I tripped on repeated references to the XXth and XXIst centuries. And while I might use "Dr." when addressing a check to my dermatologist, I would never write a sentence like "The dr. sat down on a chair." Babylon Babies starts out as a good war story, focused on a mercenary soldier fighting in a war-torn region between China, Mongolia, and Russia. The conflict is based on current realities, projected only a little into the future. Dantec quickly introduces science fiction elements, a la the near-future fiction of William Gibson -- cyberpunks, mafia figures, artificial intelligence, secretive labs manipulating DNA, and an interesting plot line where the mercenary is hired by the Russian mafia to transport a pregnant girl carrying genetically-modified babies out of harm's way, then protect her to term. All good so far. Then, halfway through the novel, Dantec lays on a bunch of New Age nonsense about the wisdom of primitive peyote-smoking native shamans and cosmic snakes, a frankly unbelievable war between outlaw motorcycle gang militias with military capabilities approaching those of First World nation states, and two rival religious groups modeled on the Heaven's Gate cult (remember the group that committed mass suicide during the transit of Comet Hale-Bopp?), complete with male and female Do and Ti figures. We go from a conceivable, reality-founded near future to mere fantasy, mumbo-jumbo fantasy at that. At first I thought Dantec was joking, but as the plot became more and more ridiculous I began to think he must actually believe all this UFO cult conspiratorial horseshit, and I lost my grip on the story, flipping past page after page of self-indulgent drug-addled nonsense, looking for the threads I'd lost -- the soldier of fortune, the woman he's supposed to be guarding, the babies. The threads were still there, buried under a thick layer of distracting, repetitive verbiage, and I had to hunt for them. Can the novel's progression from solid near-future sci-fi to Weekly World News Bat Boy fantasy also be a result of poor translation? Somehow I doubt it, and I doubt I'll be reading any more work by Maurice Dantec.

[Noémie J. Crowley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans un 2013 bien différent de celui que nous avons connu, Hugo Cornélius Toorop, mercenaire bourru, reçois pour mission d’escorter de Sibérie jusqu’au Québec une jeune femme, Marie Zorn. La mission parait simple, mais c’est sans compter lefait que Marie soit schizophrène, et porteuse de jumelles modifiées génétiquement, le prochain stade de l’évolution humaine.

Si l’idée de base, et celles développées dans le livre, sont hyper intéressantes et invitent véritablement à la réflexion et à la promesse d’un livre sortant des cadres de la SF FR classique, je ne peux m’empêcher d’avoir du mal avec. C’est extrêmement vulgaire pour rien (surtout dans un style à la 3e personne, ça sort de nulle part), on s’attache peu aux personnages, c’est parfois très long et verbeux, et le terme schizophrène ou schizo balancé en insulte me gêne pas mal. Tout comme le débat sur le sacrifice de la mère, blablabla. La fin m’a aussi un peu, hum, laissée sur ma faim. Du coup, plutôt pas mal, mais aurait pu tellement, tellement mieux faire.

[Lucia Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the movie Babylon AD(well up until the last 15 minutes) and so I picked up the book. I liked the book a whole lot more, while the story is similar, the book of course is much deeper. The cast is larger and it doesn't have the "WTF where did the kids come from" moment.

I would have rated it higher, unfortunately though some of the descriptions were awful. I think it was a combination translation from the original French novel, and what I interpret as an artificial effort by the author to try and sound more knowledgeable or highbrow, or perhaps the concepts themselves don't transfer directly between the languages as well as Dantec hoped.

Whatever the reason, it is a good, truly cyperpunk book, as long as you can get past some of the descriptions.

[C. J. Scurria · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is not in the far-future and a man named Toorop is a hardened veteran. He has for a while seen all the tough atrocities that haunt him so and looks for some kind of escape. He gets the chance to get away but by an unusual offer. He has to be on the run and escort a mysterious young woman named Marie to Canada where the plans for her are ready to take place. This all seems like some easy money for Toorop but does it come at a price?

That is the best way I can describe the plot and I was mostly mentally thinking of the plot to the film version called "Babylon A. D." (but I put in the original details from the book_).

This book is definitely interesting. But the best way I can describe the novel in one word would be "convoluted." That is actually the perfect word to describe it actually I think. The most annoying thing about this book though is how confusing and long it feels. Everything involving the story felt it winded around stretching off to a long degree at times. My experience reading it kept veering back and forth from "this is interesting" to "I have no idea what in the world is going on." The book takes so much time developing a history in the future I started just taking the details as they came after a while as just tiny pointless bits of rubbish.

(Quick note: To tell you how "bad" I thought this book was, I saw the movie first. It was called Babylon A. D. I didn't completely like the film though I thought it had interesting and intriguing concepts but I felt it was flat in many ways like coming up with a point. Then I read the book... and I appreciate the film a lot more than I ever have before!)

While Dantec's writing style is somewhat interesting he makes the pace of reading irritating with preposterous scenes that sometimes aren't clear with the plot and long stretches of back-story. And normally I do not care too much if an author uses language but this writer used it like a ten-year old that has learned it for the first time. (Statements almost as silly as "the potatoes were ****ing creamy" and "the day was so ****ingly clear as the sky was pure blue"). Even Stephen King has used it at times in a humorous way but seemingly not in a gratuitous way. Yet here it is just sloppy.

To get more specific:

For people who have seen the film version the plot to this book is stretched out to a huge extent. The familiar parts of the plot come later than you might hope for. The Noelite Church is not revealed until near the middle of the book and events are somewhat the same though pointlessly ridiculous. You might not like the "writer" twist that I think makes no sense.
Plus there are at least two major deaths where the characters later were revealed did not die (and at least one is not clearly explained). The "Cosmic Serpent" thing is hard to understand as well.

The content in the story is very awkward and I will not go into details here (I will not get into it but it made me think the sexual detail sometimes told too much information).

Besides this book having a few easy transitions here and there as the plot thickened I found myself becoming impatient with how long this book seemed. I actually set "page goals" because after a while I just wanted it to get finished. There is a lot to cover but I do not know how to describe it all.

I did not completely regret reading it though- I just wish it went along a lot easier than expected. There were times I did not hate the book and loved the language and word-usage but not at most times.

And while it was not so bad, I hope this is not a good example of the cyberpunk genre because if so, I want no part in reading it ever again.

[Nicolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce roman nous raconte les aventures presque communes de Toorop, mercenaire désabusé revenu de tous les conflits européano-asiatiques, et de Marie Zorn, une jeune psycho-quelque chose, qui transporte quelque chose. Babylon Babies est à ranger pour moi dans les grands romans du cyberpunk. Si il débute comme uen espèce de banal roman de guerre, et continue pendant un bon moment (à peu près jusqu’à la moitié) comme une bête histoire de gangs digne d’une partie de Shadowrun pré-éveil (1).
Mais passée cette première moitié, le récit décolle dans les hautes strates d’un mysticisme étrangement ancré dans le réel, où les shamans sont censés voir des hélices d’ADN lors de leurs trips hallucinogènes, et où l’humanité est appelée à être remplacée par une version future de l’homme où l’ADN, "vibrante antenne", permet de connecter en réseau l’ensemble de la biosphère. Dit comme ça, ça paraît délirant. En fait, ça l’est, mais Dantec a un don pour faire passer la pilule, et faire de ce récit une chose hautement crédible. A tel point que je me suis surpris, à plusieurs moments, à me dire que d’ici 10 ans, la réalité livresque qui y est décrite existera réellement. Et ça ne concerne pas que des points de détail : il y est décrit une Terre sur laquelle l’ONU a disparu, où la situation géopolitique a largement dépassé le stade du légèrement incontrôlé pour entrer de plein-pied dans le bourbier chaotique (guerre en Chine, guerre en Afrique, guerre en Amérique latine, guerre des gangs dans Montréal, ...).
Et si le clonage est officiellement interdit, rien n’empêche des sectes quelconques de se débrouiller pour obtenir des clones d’eux-mêmes qui seront envoyés dans l’espace. On sent clairement là-dedans un très fort ancrage dans la réalité contemporaine, réalité d’autant plus facilement compréhensible que le récit est censé se situer dix ou quinze ans dans l’avenir, ce qui donne toute sa crédibilité à la situation stratégique. Et puis il y a l’écriture coup de poing, le style terriblement efficace de Dantec, qui m’a pris aux tripes et m’a propulsé dans ce récit comme la balle que ne tire jamais Toorop. L’écriture est très fluide, et dynamise donc drôlement bien un récit dans lequel l’action est par ailleurs assez molle. Au final, il s’agit d’une forme de cyberpunk très différente des écrivains américains, mais en même temps très proche et très intéressante. Lisez-le, vous aimerez, si par exemple le Samouraï virtuel vous a plu.

(1) Shadowrun est un excellent jeu de rôle cyberpunk, où les humains cotoient des elfes, des nains, des esprits, le tout dans la matrice, et l’éveil y décrit le moment où les races y sont apparues

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is both brilliant and infuriating at the same time. The story, the concept, the imagery are simply stunning. The descriptions, the same imagery's, the execution are head-scratchingly numbing-- like grabbing a handful of M&M's, throwing them into your mouth and finding out they're rocks.

This is cyberpunk at its most faithful. And like most cyberpunk, this book deals with the Adam and Eve motif-- rebirth/birth of mankind through the shedding of flesh and the accepting of technological take-over. This is the story of a world at odds: mafia vs. military, water vs. food, killing vs. starvation. This is the story of a man who has shed his humanity, becoming a machine, and longs to reclaim it. This is the story of a woman who seeks to live long enough to give birth to a being/virus which can bridge the gap between humanity and machine, creating a messiah untold in our scriptures. This is a story on how through computers and drugs can someone access streams of consciousness unheard of-- much like the info dumps in Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan series.

This is the first book to be translated and released here in the States from the French writer Maurice G. Dantec. The translator deserves a world of credit because I can't imagine translating a French cyber-punk story into English to have been easy. Maurice's military and war knowledge is great and I loved how this is more a book on a man trying to fight a war through planning and not with guns a-blazzing.

Brilliant and flawed. I enjoyed this but cannot recommend this to many because it's just so hard to digest with all its cyberpunk symbolism. However, if the reader is well versed in this sub-genre they will be greatly rewarded with a hard fought reading.

-- this has been made into a movie starring Vin Diesel. If you had asked me what books I thought could never be made into movies, this book would be one of them. I imagine that all deapth and insight have been taken making the movie a hollywood actionair. Great. Why Diesel? Why? Stop making movies!!

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a novel with ambition, but underneath the gloss, I'm doubt there's anything there. Babylon Babies riffs on the usual cyberpunk tropes, mercenaries, mobsters, New Age cults, hackers and shamans, and it tries to transcend the genre by bringing in a bunch of abstruse theory, Deleuze and Guttari, Donna Harraway, Sun Tzu and Liddell Hart.

Instead of deepening the story, the philosophy about schizophrenia and the next evolutionary stage of mankind just overwhelms what could have been a tight, noirish cyberpunk thriller. In the incredibly fractured setting and plot, the inevitable betrayals and triple-crosses happen because they we all agree they're supposed to. Psyches break and go mad because the plot demands it, not because the characters have been pushed beyond their limits.

This novel consciously follows in the footsteps of Neuromancer. But while the novelty of its ideas at the time and the stark evocative force of Gibson's langauge made Neuromancer an instant classic, Babylon Babies just feels trite and forced.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stylistically, this was not an easy book to read. The author is frequently described as a "French cyberpunk," and there are good reasons for that. But, the story was so cool that I have to give it four stars. The concept sounds like X-Men (humanity as we know it is about to mutate into something different, and homo sapiens will soon go the way of the Neanderthals), but it plays out more like if Timothy Leary had given acid to a colony of Borg. I'm very curious how this will translate into a movie...with Vin Diesel, no less. [later edit: The movie was a complete disaster.]

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd book. Sort of cyber-punky piece about a mercenary assigned to deliver a schizophrenic woman pregnant with genetically altered clones of a wacky cult leader, said clones ending up being the next step in human evolution that will probably lead to the annihilation of humanity as we know it. Oddly written, perhaps as a function of the translation, perhaps as a function of the author's loopy sensibility. Interesting but not fully engaging. Despite how that plot summary sounds, totally serious in tone.

[Chade66 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to better understand the movie. After reading the book, I'm not sure what to think. I can't tell if the translation was just bizarre, or the original writing was just bizarre. But I do wonder why they thought they could make this into a movie. The story is so convoluted and such an attempt is made to pull you into the world of schizophrenia that I don't think would translate to screen no matter how you approached.

I wouldn't read it again, but it was interesting.

[Veach Glines · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't stay on the page. Not poorly written -- but the plotting and characters and dialogue made it impossible for me to want to keep reading. Ever have a book that seems to be something you would like? There is some bones in this book that I am drawn to . . . but all the flesh and character and plotting suck and force me to shelve it unfinished.

[Nicolas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pas révolutionnaire, pas polémique et pas même doucement raciste et conservateur comme son auteur.

Juste étonnamment chiant en fin de compte.



Très chiant quand même...

[Virna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the story was long and a little strange but ok.

[Emy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je me suis laissée tenter par la 4eme de couverture qui m’intriguait. Elle semblait prometteuse et réunissait des éléments de SF, dystopie que j’apprécie lire habituellement. Malheureusement quelle déception. L’écriture est inutilement grossière et vulgaire ce qui gâche l’expérience de lecture sans compter les remarques sexiste, grossophobe et homophobe à certains égards. L’auteur ne semble pas être capable de décrire un personnage féminin sans parler de ses attributs physiques. C’est tellement dommage, pourtant l’histoire avait du potentiel mais a été trop tiré en longueur. Finir ce livre a été davantage une corvée qu’une expérience agréable.

[Guitare Jazz · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'étais heureux de renouer avec le personnage principal de La Sirène rouge. Cependant, j'ai trouvé que Dantec s'égarait un peu avec le fumeux de pot qui retrouve quelqu’un à l'aide d'un voyage astral. J'ai décroché totalement de Dantec à cet endroit. / I was happy to find again the principal character of the Sirene Rouge. However, I didn't believe in the one who travel by astral travel. It's a kind of deception for me.

[Jeff J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The influences for Babylon Babies range from Philip K. Dick to more recent cyberpunk writers - pretty much a genre that I struggle with. Nevertheless, the Sarajevo setting was unique and the story kept me interested, a credit to the writer and the reason this has become a cult novel.

[Céline FrenchAlps · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je me suis vraiment forcée pour laisser une chance au livre, mais après 200 pages, j'abandonne. Le style d'écriture en premier lieu, l'histoire en second : un monde futuriste de virus, machines et schizophrénie. Next !

[Edward ott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the characters to be interesting and by the end well fleshed out. the story keeps you guessing. a lot of back story at the beginning of the book.

[BAGNULO MARCELLO · Rating 2 out of 5]

Letto nel 2008, cioè più di dieci anni fa, non mi entusiasmò gran che. Più bello il film che ne fu tratto anche se si distaccava molto dal racconto (forse proprio per questo).

[John Tallett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty flippy sci-fi. I can't imagine making it into a movie (which Fox did) and remain faithful to the text.

[Momo · Rating 2 out of 5]

a very ambitious, well written yet ultimately cluttered speculative piece that overstays its welcome.

[Federico · Rating 1 out of 5]

Magari poi diventa interessante e la colpa sarà stata mia che ho abbandonato a pagina 135.

[Theodora Catalina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Babylon Babies

Gândurile mele (Theo): Uneori eşti pus în faţa unui fenomen pe care pe moment nu eşti capabil să îl explici şi atunci te laşi puţin pe spate şi încerci să reanalizezi situaţia şi să încerci să vezi dincolo de limite.
Cartea aceasta este atât o compilaţie de sentimente în care nu eşti sigur dacă eşti furios sau fericit, sau ambele. Sau poate niciuna. Este cu adevărat una din puţinele cărţi care au reuşit să mă scoată din sărite pentru ca mai apoi să mă reintroducă în starea de calmă aprofundare în care nu mai ştiam sigur ce ar trebui să fac.
Într-un fel sau altul atât conceptul, cât şi ideile sunt absolut magnifice, dar şi puţin bulversante dacă nu eşti familiarizat cu ideea de război şi o groază de denumiri ale unor arme – aşa cum spuneam dacă nu eşti în temă cu ele – există posibilitatea să te confuze şi să te debusoleze, dar după o scurtă căutare pe internet poţi să îţi aduni ideile şi să ai o idee general valabilă pentru mai multe arme prezentate pe parcurs.
Ideea cărţii este una de acceptare tehnologică, este vorba despre un om care şi-a sfărâmat şi ultima picătură de umanitate, este vorba despre cum omul – ca şi fiinţă per total – se poate transforma într-o maşinărie complexă de luptă şi care nu face altceva decât să îşi recapete acest titlu din nou şi din nou, apărându-l chiar şi cu ultima suflare. Apoi apare femeia – cea care doreşte să supravieţuiască îndeajuns de mult pentru a putea să aducă la lumină inevitabilul: să reuşească să umple golul creat de tehnologie şi umanitate, acea mică părticică care deşi pare străină este mai mult de atât, este un intermediar puternic între două tabere total diferite.
Astfel, lupta începe. Apărarea singurei fiinţe capabile să aducă aceste două trăsături o dată împreună, acum separate, înapoi împreună pare o treabă absolut ridiculă şi uşoară, dar nu asta se întâmplă şi când ceea ce aperi este dorit de aproape fiecare suflet de pe planetă.
Descrierile sunt absolut fabuloase, simţi şi respiri o dată cu personajul, stările induse de droguri şi mintea personajului sunt implementate în tine ca un fel de a doua extensie a creierului tău. Faptul că autorul a reuşit să surprindă în atât de mult detaliu ideea şi magia creată de mintea umană m-a fermecat pe de-antregul.
Deşi acţiunea este complexă şi eşti aproape inapt să o prezici de fiecare dată, per total cartea este extraordinar de grea pentru cineva care nu are cel puţin cunoştinţe minime despre război, arme şi tehnici de luptă. Deşi autorul te ajută la maximum, oferindu-ţi indicii şi probe suficiente pentru a îţi putea dezgrădi percepţia te simţi oarecum minuscul. Dar, cultura generală care se prelinge printre aceste pagini este de nepreţuit.
Recomand cartea tuturor celor care doresc o porţie zdravănă de aventură care durează şi care pare că nu este niciodată pe sfârşite. Iar apoi, desigur, recomand şi vizionarea adaptării cărţii – filmul Babylon A.D. avându-l în rol principal pe Vin Diesel.
Lectură şi vizionare plăcută!

[Marco Freccero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scritto nel 1999, è ambientato nel 2013, in un mondo stremato dai conflitti. La Cina è piombata nella guerra civile e le mafie russe, cinesi e chi più ne ha più ne metta, si spartiscono traffici di tutti i tipi. In questo panorama emerge un mercenario della guerra nella ex Yugoslavia, Toorop. Costui era il protagonista del primo romanzo di Dantec, “La sirena rossa”. E anche l’amico Ari, presente in quel primo romanzo, fa capolino pure qui: solo che è morto.

Altro personaggio che era presente nel secondo romanzo di Dantec dal titolo “Le radici del male”: lo scienziato Darquandier.

Toorop viene incaricato di una missione all’apparenza semplice: deve scortare della merce sino in Canada, con altri 2 mercenari, un uomo e una donna. Lì riceverà le istruzioni su come completare la consegna. La missione è affidata a lui da esponenti di spicco della mafia russa con mani in pasta in tutti i campi più redditizi, che stanno cercando di diversificare le loro entrate. Infatti armi, droghe, droghe sintetiche non bastano più. Occorre sempre esplorare nuovi ambiti per fare i soldi velocemente.

Toorop accetta.

Ah, la merce è provvista di 2 braccia, 2 gambe e una testa. Si tratta di una giovane donna affetta da schizofrenia. Ma ben presto Toorop, e il suo intermediario, capiscono che quella donna trasporta qualcosa: o qualcuno?

Forse virus letali di nuova generazione?

Oppure animali mutanti messi a punto in segreti laboratori lontani dai regolamenti inutilmente severi dell’Onu?

O forse Marie Zorn, la giovane donna, trasporta dei feti umani di nuova generazione, una generazione che mandarà in pensione l’Homo sapiens che sarà sostituito dall’Homo Neuromatrix. Un nuovo essere che userà il corpo solo come ambiente ideale per consentire alle intelligenze artificiali di impiantarsi ed evolvere verso un superiore livello di intelligenza. E parlare, forse, a tu per tu con Dio.

[April Durham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic ride through an imagined near-future where the Russians, the Chinese, and peripheral Arabic speaking tribes are duking it out for world dominance while North American scientists are perfecting a schizo-machine from human and AI interface. The end of the world as we know it is nigh and it looks completely crazy but oh so interesting. Human evolution is being forced by greed, quest for power, and cultish nuttiness but no one is in control, except maybe the data.

While the translation has been claimed here and on many blogs to be faulty, in fact it is not. Dantec's writing style is intended to reflect the schizo-status of the characters and to develop the novel as its own schizo-machine. The wierd poetics are part of the punk vibe that uses disruption and inappropriateness to challenge given authority structures.

Addendum:
I have been writing an article about violence and creativity and analyzing this book and so have read it now three times and once in French. I stand by my interest in Dantec's schizo-machines which combine an advanced consciousness occurring in schizophrenic awareness that is corralled in a way that is managable for the schizophrenic, combined with the auto-augmenting artificial intelligence in the character Joe-Jane. But now I want to say that all his disruption and fragmentation and zany punk ideology results in the re-establishment of the heteronormative family in the form of the ex-war machine/protector daddy (Toorop) and the Mommy Machine in Joe-Jane. Interesting that the hope for humanity to survive its catastrophic climate change/technology induced apocalypse is the omnipresent data knowledge of little girls. It seems so purile. Well, maybe when I finish the article, I'll have something else to say.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I'm pretty sure this is one of those books that takes several reads to fully grasp the message and story as one cohesive whole.
His writing style is flamboyant, colourful and supplemented with a diverse vocabulary which makes the reading enjoyable purely from an artistic viewpoint, yet his subject matter and descriptive style often make passages and plot chains vague and over confusing to say the least.
It took me about 200 pages in to finally work out a rough plan in my head of what was going on in the shape of protag and antag characters and aims and counter aims of the largely varying and interlinked groups. 50 pages later, I was lost again hah.
I loved Toorop as a character, especially his shady and guilty/fond recollections of past conflicts and wars, and his continuing introspective analysis. In relation to all else, the book moves ahead at a stumbling pace, dispersed with coherent and understandable segments followed by completely mad and psychedelic phases (most often from Marie's schizophrenic point of view).
It was heavy going, yet entices you on with a vague promise of some plot based catharsis, basically a desire to know what the hell is going on and how it all connects, as well as a vaguely accurate if not morbid view of the near future, well, you eventually get a definite confirmation of the story's time setting and it occurs late 2013 to early 2014, eerie.