Babylon Babies

I’m almost finished reading Babylon Babies* by Maurice Dantec, a crazy Frenchman who emigrated to Quebec. I came across his name in a recent book of letters exchanged between Bernard-Henri Levy and Michel Houellebecq.* (I’m a big Houellebecq fan). I was intrigued. I got the Semiotext(e) edition from the library rather than the stupid movie tie-in edition.* I was further intrigued by this copy from the back cover:

“A schizophrenic and the possible carrier of a new artificial virus, Marie is bearing a mutant embryo created by an American cult, the Cosmic Church of the New Resurrection. They dream of producing a genetically modified messiah, which will end all human life as we know it.”

I was a little disappointed that the “genetically modified messiah” was not a Monsanto product.

It’s a bizarre book. Maybe it’s the translation, but the language comes off as wooden in places and there are lots of warped cliches like, “They brought him tea, biscuits, Russian bread, blueberry jam, and he pounced on it as if his life were at stake.” I kept waiting for the next installment in this vein, something like ‘he devoured the omelette like a mountain lion raping a double stack of blueberry pancakes.’ But some of the weird language became endearing. And his use of the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze* was more interesting to me than Deleuze himself.

The novel tracks Toorop, a Bosnian soldier of fortune as he works for a shady group including a Russian general and the Siberian mafia, agreeing to transport and protect Marie Zorn, who has been impregnated with a pair of clones. She is schizophrenic and carries a new virus. Some of the minor characters are pretty interesting, especially the group of hackers in Montreal. (Favorite character name, a hacker called Commodore 64. I would have been called Vic 20 … 5 K of RAM was more than enough for my family, thank you very much). I’ll end this post now, then finish the book so as not to spoil it. I will say it took me about 100 pages to get into it. Overall, it’s been a pretty interesting read.

But I have to finish it and move on … to another weird sf novel i stumbled upon. Reading an old publication of the Penguin Collectors Society, I found this intriguing tidbit: “murderous mutant mushroom-women.” Oh Lord … The book is A Scent of New-Mown Hay* by John Blackburn. Murderous mutant mushroom-women sound almost better than the genetically modified messiah. They should have a battle for pre-eminence like that scene in The Ruling Class* between Peter O’Toole’s Christ and the Electric Messiah. So put that in your galvanized pressure cooker and … er … cook it, I suppose.