"Il est vrai qu'avec le XXème siècle passé, nous n'en sommes plus à quelques dizaines de millions de morts près."
in interview
Babylon Babies
"Dantec is a literary revolution."
— New York Times
“What makes the novel so haunting is its vision of a near future in which
society has fractured along every possible national, tribal and sectarian fault
line.”
–The New York Times Book Review
In the hidden “flesh and
chip” breeding grounds of the first cyborg communities, Toorop, a hard-boiled
Special Forces veteran of Sarajevo, is hired by a shadow organization to escort
a young woman, Marie Zorn, from Russia to Canada. But what appears to be a
routine job is anything but. After completing the mission, Thoorop discovers
that Marie is no ordinary girl. A genetically altered pawn in an elaborate plot,
Marie is carrying a dark secret that could spell destruction for all
humankind–if Thoorop doesn’t track her down before it’s too
late.
“A vast encyclopedia of the future as seen through a crystal
ball with cracks in the glass.”
–The Sydney Morning
Herald
“Intense and powerfull.”
–Publishers Weekly
From Publishers Weekly
Explosive and paranoid, this futuristic fable by French sci-fi novelist Dantec explores the frightening ramifications of genetic experimentation. In a constantly shifting world conflict circa 2013, violent-minded (though well-read) Hugo Cornelius Toorop, a 20-year Special Forces veteran of the Bosnian conflict, is offered a lucrative new job by the Siberian mafia in Kazakhstan to transport a young woman to Montreal. Who is Marie Zorn, and what does she carry that is top secret? Armed with new identities and the requisite grenades, Hugo, along with his expert team—the gun-happy Israeli Rebecca Waterman and the hard-core Belfast rebel Dowie—get her to Montreal, where it becomes clear that Marie is a pawn in a vast, pernicious artificial biosphere program and that, moreover, she's pregnant, feared to be carrying an animal clone, and thus contaminated. The nimble, hyperbolic Dantec creates a surreal alternate identity for her on the streets of Quebec through a kind of virtual death. Toorop is pressed by a New Age army of cyborgs (aka Cosmic Dragons) to find Marie and bring her back, and under drug experiments he penetrates the double helix to achieve a surprisingly humanistic conclusion. Riddled with acronyms and pop culture allusions, this is an intense, intellectually labyrinthine ride.
"Babylon Babies, an under-appreciated novel by French punk rocker turned writer Maurice G. Dantec, deserves a wider audience, and not just because its author is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Michel Houellebecq (and definitely not because the book is being adapted into a movie starring Vin Diesel)... what makes this novel (translated by Noura Wedell) so haunting is its vision of a near future in which society has fractured along every possible national, tribal and sectarian fault line."
— New York Times Book Review
"Dantec has created a compelling story with evocative ideas that may prove even more illuminating with subsequent readings, and a reader who undertakes the arduous journey from cover to cover will be rewarded with an entertaining tale."
— Arthur Bangs, sffworld.com
"Riddled with acronyms and pop culture allusions, this is an intense, intellectually labyrinthine ride."
— Publishers Weekly
"The book deals with the breakdown of community and political certainty. It is gingered with snippets from Dantec's favourite philosophers and loaded with thoughts of his own. The result is a real workout for the reader. Babylon Babies is a vast encyclopedia of the future as seen through a crystal ball with cracks in the glass.... Babylon Babies is part of a genre that makes play with religious ideas. You might call it theo-fiction."
— The Sydney Morning Herald
"[T]his novel by Maurice Dantec was an epic ride. A great writer is born"
— Science Fiction Magazine
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Maurice G. Dantec was born in France in
1959. A former advertising executive and songwriter for a French punk-rock
group, Dantec is a shameless lover of science fiction, crime novels, and
metaphysics. He is the author of Red Siren, which won France’s 813 Award for
best crime novel, and The Roots of Evil, which won France’s Prix de
l’Imaginaire. He is also the author of Villa Vortex, Cosmos Incorporated, and
Theatre of Operations, a series of journal essays. He lives in Montreal.
Random House - Parution : 2006 -
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