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The Babel Effect

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With all the imaginative depth and narrative power of Michael Crichton's Timeline or Jurassic Park, The Babel Effect is an electrifying, thinking person's thriller based on cutting-edge neurological and genetic research. From the author of the widely acclaimed Skull Session , The Babel Effect artfully brings the speculative thriller to new literary heights.

Is violence a virus? Can your genes make you a killer? Why are we so willing to hurt each other? In The Babel Effect , the brilliant husband-and-wife research team of Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are charged with answering these urgent questions. Beginning as a neurological study of murderers on death row, their research explodes into an investigation into the biomedical foundations of human history. The quest takes them from prison cells to research labs to war zones throughout the world and forces them to doubt their most  basic assumptions about the human species, about themselves, and about their marriage.

Combining systems theory with modern epidemiology, they soon learn that our propensity for violence resembles a contagious disease. But is the human carnage of the last hundred years an ancient plague or a new nightmare? Can they identify the cause and find a cure? As their discoveries reveal frightening secrets about multinational corporations, clandestine military programs, and millennial religious cults, they realize that finding the answers depends on a still more urgent and terrifying Can they survive the search?

When an unknown enemy steals their data and abducts Jessamine, the FBI investigation stalls, and Ryan realizes that it is up to him alone to find his pregnant wife. He soon finds that to learn where she is, he must discover who she is -- and confront the question of whether we can ever really know the one we love.

As real as the astonishing and disquieting news coming out of today's biotechnology revolution and as disturbing as our suspicions of global conspiracy, The Babel Effect provokes us with an astonishing perspective on human nature as it brings us face-to-face with our most unspeakable fears -- and our brightest hopes. Though The Babel Effect is part thriller, part mystery, it is at its core the very human tale of one man who simply seeks to know his wife -- to find her and love her again.

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

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171 people want to read

About the author

Daniel Hecht

14 books170 followers
I was born into an artist's community founded in 1946 by my parents and their friends in the wilds of Westchester County, N.Y. Surrounded by these individualistic yet communalistic bohemians, I saw artists in every discipline working their magic, and could not help but follow in their footsteps.

I've lived all over the U.S. and have worked at every kind of job to make ends meet, and I enjoy the labor of body and hands as much as the effort of the mind. Mailman, logger, carpenter, musician, musical instrument builder, graphic designer, apple picker, farmhand, nonprofit organizational director, college administrator, educator -- the great thing about a checkered past is that you see the world from a lot of perspectives. This is the best education for a writer!

I have lived in Vermont for many years, have three kids and several cats, am active on behalf of environmental causes, and am highly reclusive.

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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Profile Image for Hannah Berendsen.
26 reviews
March 19, 2023
'Meh' is het juiste woord voor dit boek. Het plot was opzich goed genoeg en zorgde er wel voor dat ik door wilde lezen, maar de schrijfstijl van deze schrijver was gewoon te traag en te wollig. Er werd teveel context gegeven naar mijn smaak en het duurde te lang voordat er weer iets gebeurde wat de aandacht van de lezer triggerde. Ik heb meer boeken van deze schrijver gelezen en ik denk ook dat dat gewoon zijn schrijfstijl is, maar ik weet in ieder geval zeker dat ik niet weer een van zijn boeken hoef te lezen.
Profile Image for Qyana Curry.
16 reviews2 followers
February 16, 2025
The premise of this book was really interesting: neurological pathology to be blamed for violence around the world. This comes with the implication that violent behaviours can be medically treated and thus prevented. Mid investigation, one of the researchers is kidnapped. The title is of course in reference to the biblical tower of Babel, it should be no surprise there’s religious themes throughout: redemption, root of all evil, salvation etc.

Unfortunately, this book became less about a possible plague and more of a crime thriller, but also not very thrilling. It took me quite a while to finish this book, I’ve finished a few books between starting and finishing it. I almost shelved it at a few points because I wasn’t too fussed about seeing it to the end, I mainly finished it because I wanted to see the biomedical explanations but then it never came.

I’ve seen a few reviews talk about how it gets a bit too “scientific”. I’m by no means an expert but I am a second year university student and my minor is in biology. I’ve done biochemistry, molecular biology and microbiology papers. There’s quite a lot of biology jargon in this book that will disrupt the average reader’s experience, there’s plenty lists of biological processes throughout the book that those familiar will read through just fine but many will feel more comfortable skipping over. One thing I did enjoy about this book is it includes references to real events which I didn’t know about such as the Sin Nombre outbreak. This book could have been a really great speculative dystopian novel but it just fell flat, and the ending was average.

The content of the book was interesting but it was very hard to be wrapped up in the book with the … casual racism? fetishisation? weird line about autistic children? Nothing blatantly offensive but things that just absolutely rubbed me the wrong way, and then it kept happening, and all of the examples in one book just made it so much worse. I had to put the book down multiple times and just pause. For background, Ryan McCloud is Polish-Irish American and his wife is African American. I was getting the vibe that Ryan’s a weaboo except for black women. Even worse, most if not all examples had absolutely no bearing to the book or characters, they’re just kind of there. I’ve read plenty books with offensive content and the content, although often disturbing and much worse than the stuff in this book, it mostly actually makes sense within the context of the book or the character.

For example:

Jess is wrapped in a towel after her shower: “ . . . Naked from the waist up, brows knit and breasts swaying, she looked like a Watusi warrior woman.” … Huh?

Ryan is in Africa, working within a refugee camp area: “Jess, they look a lot like you! You’ve often talked about the mystery of your ancestry — the great curtains that the relocations of slavery drew across the family histories of most African-Americans. Could you have Tutsi ancestors? Despite their exhaustion and demoralisation, I find these people quite attractive because of this resemblance to you.” Yes. You’ve cracked the great mystery Ryan McCloud.

Jess had an idea inspired by a trip to the zoo. Ryan asks their daughter about it, she said she told her mum the gorilla looked like grandpa: “Ryan could envision it: the big black face of the gorilla, the alert, deep-set eyes, the solemn regal, forbidding bearing, and yet only a kid, a grandchild would have the innocence and the insolence to make such a comparison.” Not only a child, Ryan, but the numerous people in the past centuries who compared black and brown people to apes.

Ryan and colleague Dagan talking about a nazi they just interviewed, wondering how he got his information: “Meaning, here’s a candidate for our enemies list. The scenario would be that Jess and Bates came here, and Richter altered his buddies in the U.S. that some uppity n*gger scientist was on to something they should know about.”

Ryan and Dagan talking about the theory of mind and being able to treat others as kin: “It’s the basis of our ability to impute a consciousness like our own to another person. Another built-in-faculty that’s localised in modules in the visual association cortex and the anterior temporal lobe. It’s how we differentiate between a person and, say, a piece of furniture. A person experiences things, believes things, a refrigerator doesn’t. Normal kids start differentiating between ideas and reality, and between their own mind of others, between the ages of three and four. Autistic kids don’t, which is why they’re os isolated, socially dysfunctional.” Reading this as a neurodivergent person is almost … comical.

Some other things:

Dagan, who was written as a very logical, put-together scientist suddenly becomes an emotional woman who just throws herself at Ryan. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being emotional and sappy but for this character it didn’t make sense, the entire chapter of her having a sulk over stud Ryan could have been omitted and nothing would have changed in the story. In a few chapters before, Ryan’s thoughts of Dagan explain he thinks of her as a daughter, and then in the next sentence he admits Jess’ absence has left a hole and he’s feeling attraction to Dagan. Your wife is missing and you’re crushing on your 2-decades-younger colleague? Who you said you thought of as a daughter? DIVORCE! JAIL!

Jess was rescued from the kidnapping, she’d just given birth about a week prior to her rescue. Tell me why there was even any “post-partum lovemaking” within the next week. HUH? You aren’t recommended to have sex within the first 6 weeks after birth, and that’s just the recommended timeframe for a regular, no complications birth. Nevermind the fact she was kidnapped and stuck in a refugee camp for over a week malnourished. You’re telling me two respectable scientists did this? Very hard to believe. Edit: I have since had my own child via C-section and am in extra disbelief that this occurred a week later.


I really wanted to enjoy this book, the premise was so promising. But my GOD.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
6 reviews
August 27, 2012
This book is ridiculous. I really hate when an author creates characters that the subsequent writing fails to support. He claims something to the effect that the husband and wife team the book follows are essentially the smartest people on the planet. However, the couple does nothing at all over the course of the story to make this seem one bit believable. In situations like this, I believe it is the author's inflated sense of his own abilities that makes him feel confident enough to direct the thought processes of a super-genius (two in this case). Needless to say the author fails miserably at this. The science and logic in the novel are also utterly ridiculous although you'll get the feeling that while the author was writing it he believed he was being very clever.

This is the worse book I have read in the past year. IMO this book is a total disaster.

Profile Image for Elizabeth.
417 reviews
September 30, 2009
While I really enjoyed the Cree Black books, I couldn't really get into this one as much. While the premise was intriguing, I found the main character's emotional struggles a bit distracting and could not get into the flow of the story.
Profile Image for Hope.
30 reviews3 followers
March 8, 2021
I held off rating this because I wanted so bad to love it as much as I loved Skull Session.
The premise is fantastic, and I was so intrugied at the idea of studying the world's worst serial killers in the hopes of unraveling their behaviours as a sort of mental pandemic?!
But alas, the pages involving the interviews with murderers on death row was about 10% of the book...
The rest was deeense scientific jargon that went on for, in my opinion, way too long. I get that we needed an insight into what they were doing and I was interested in that, but I ended up skim reading a lot of it.

Also, the main character, Dr McCloud Man Genius... Very "all the girls want me and all the guys want to be me" type, but tries to play dumb about it???
Profile Image for Beverly Fuqua.
875 reviews7 followers
July 11, 2020
Fascinating, I had to suspend disbelief to enjoy it, I mean it's just a novel right? It just SEEMED so real, like what could be happening today. I had to keep looking at the publish date-2001-thinking this could have just been written. I may reread this some day, the plot is really involved, and I feel that I might have missed some details due to reading way too late into the night.
Profile Image for Cayla.
10 reviews
January 30, 2020
Well far out...I don't even know where to begin. The way of writing was absolute astonishing all throughout, and viewing the developing thesis was amazing. The development of the babel effect being weaved through the story continuously was done beautifully. An amazing read!
2 reviews
August 11, 2020
Probably the most boring book I've ever attempted to read. Got 100 pages in (of a very small print version) and couldn't do it anymore. Literally nothing had happened, not a thing. Not worth the paper it was printed on. Don't bother.
Profile Image for Rashel.
1,037 reviews
September 1, 2023
I absolutely enjoyed reading about the theories of violence. brilliant scientists establish links between cause and theories to find a way to stop what seems to be a growing rampage of violence. There are loose ends to the story. It drags in places and too pat in others. No resolution in the end.
335 reviews4 followers
November 13, 2023
Slow, would’ve read better as a non fiction book without the attempt of a narrative.
Profile Image for Arne Patat.
106 reviews
July 31, 2025
Hmmmm interesting. Definitively some interesting arguments made about why everyone is crazy. Some flavourful twists as well, I don't know what I expected but I can say that things changed and stuff
Profile Image for Kristin Lundgren.
305 reviews16 followers
July 1, 2012
This is the second book by Hecht that I have read, and it was as good or better than Skull Session. The story is about a group of geniuses, a think tank nominally pursuing neurological areas, but also working on the larger pictures that emerge - emergence, pattern recognition, etc. At the beginning of the book they were finishing off modeling computer software that, taking all the epidemiological and medical information about a disease outbreak, and being able to correctly and accurately predict when and where the disease would move, and also the ability to trace it back to the source, or patient zero. The leader of this group, Ryan McCloud, is approached about working on finding out what causes violence in killers, and other such types. He and his wife Jess and the group agree to do it, but as they look at it, and do some preliminary work with a bunch of guys on death row, they begin to see that the pattern of violence is much larger, and indeed, encompasses society as a whole, with staggering trends in the past century, and also, going back into history, waves of violence that would travel through populations, almost like a disease. Jess, several months pregnant, take this one to heart, as she is still grieving the murder of her sister two years ago. She wants to know why - to put things into perspective. Are we victims of our genes, of a disease vector that attacks the areas of the brain known to cause violence and aggression, or are we victims of environmental poisoning, etc. She begins to pull away, and since Ryan is working on concomitant projects and other areas of this one, he doesn't realize. He is called to Africa to study a new outbreak there, and while there, sees an opportunity to look at the people there for the new project, called the Babel Effect. He studies two groups of Congolese Africans, those who are prisoners, and were killers, and those who refused to get caught up in the killing and took refuge at a plantation nearby. As he is closing up that project, all hell breaks loose and he is captured by a new warlord, and imprisoned for several months. Meanwhile Jess is stateside, pursuing leads on this Babel Effect, where people loose their connections to others, both the kinship connection and the theory of mind, or the ability to relate to others. When Ryan gets back, he finds that his wife and their colleague who had been working with her have been kidnapped, and all traces of their work destroyed. So the group sets out to retrace her thoughts, her work, who she talked to, since the FBI is stymied. What follows is a blend of thriller, and thoughtful discussion of what it means to be good, is it because of our genes, or because we choose it, and what are we really made of. Lots of tough questions, and tons to think about, so this book took me longer, since every few pages, my thoughts would latch onto something and wander off on that tangent. I'd have to grab my mind and bring it back to the book - not because it was dull, but because there was so much of interest that you could study, follow up on. Hecht did 3 years of intensive research for this book, and most of the neurological and genetic stuff is real, as is the historical record. One fascinating book for me.
1 review
August 17, 2014
SPOILERS AHEAD:

The premise of the novel is very intriguing. What if violence was a disease for which there is a pathology? However, the execution itself is lacking.

Negative Comments:

First, the theories of the scientists were presented to the reader heavy-handedly and redundantly. Especially to those with some background in sciences, the ideas in the novel were very redundant. There were only two main causes, presented early in the novel that were the cause of violence. Nothing more. Secondly, the plot was predictable, with the villain being a not-so-subtle Chekov's Gun. Last and worst of all, the romance between the protagonist and lead was quite grating. Those portions were particularly horrendous, because it reads less like a science fiction novel than it does romance.

Positive Comments:

The characters were not at all bland and were, in my opinion, written well and differently enough that each character can be read differently. The leading roles are also likeable and I was rooting for them the whole way. I definitely formed an emotional connection on this thrill ride.

You have to give it to Daniel Hecht. The science in this novel holds true enough that it's not outside the realm of possibility that this actually is what is happening to our bodies.

Overall:
I enjoyed it, and despite a slow start trying to get the science out of the way, once it gets to the human aspect, it had me tensed, although I did roll my eyes in some portions of the novel.
Profile Image for Cheryl.
1,343 reviews122 followers
November 26, 2008
I have mixed feelings about the book; while I was reading it, I thought it was so brilliant and well written, but now I feel let down. The ideas are very interesting, there is intrigue, mystery, philosophy, love, violence...but I never felt like I couldn't put it down. I would say it is better than any Crichton book I have read, but I also know a little about neuro and genetic research and even I had a little trouble following their technical paragraphs...so good, but not great. I will read more of him though, he has a very distinctive voice that I like... another cool thing is that he is not a PhD educated physicist or something which you would think as he runs thru intellectual topics (from genetics to game theory to electro magnetic theory to theology!!!!) but is a former musician! I love that...
Profile Image for Havala.
47 reviews1 follower
May 31, 2008
Appealed to my science geek side, a little.

The author seems to go on about psychology and the theory of affects of (probably) real concept that morphs into almost sci-fi. Sometimes it was boring and went too far in depth (it was a character doing his own soul searching and working out issues with a technology). But I'm sure that those more interested in cerebral things will enjoy this. I am still not a very comprehensive reader so I may have missed out on some finer points that others would pick up clearly.
I may read again.

This book is not difficult to read, but you should like science /psychology themed fiction books with a love story between man and wife.
Profile Image for James Marinero.
Author 9 books9 followers
March 31, 2016
It took time to get going with this. It's a huge piece of work underwritten by much research. Some might find it heavy going in parts, but it's well worth the effort - particularly if you are into the workings of the human mind, conspiracy theory, black ops and epidemiology. If you're not, don't be put off - give it a shot.

A few aspects didn't quite ring true for me - such as the incredibly happy family and facets of the Africa trips.

Well worth the effort.
Profile Image for Evelyn.
1,762 reviews
November 5, 2008
A brilliant husband and wife research team is hired to discover if there is a link between societal breakdown and human genetic makeup by studying the brains of violent criminals. An original, intellectual thriller. Highly recommend.
Profile Image for Lisa Greer.
Author 73 books94 followers
June 11, 2009
Not as good as 'Skull Session,' but still good.
Profile Image for Debi Dary.
2 reviews
Read
July 25, 2012
Great book...not an easy read for everyone. I loved it because it's about neurological & genetic research!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews

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