A cult novel in France, this sci-fi thriller is now being made into amovie by Mathieu Kassovitz. Set in the hidden "flesh and chip" breeding grounds ofthe first cyborg communities and peopled by Serbian Mafiosi, Babylon Babies has asits hero a hard-boiled leatherneck veteran of Sarajevo named Thoorop who is hired bya mysterious source to escort a young woman named Marie Zorn from Russia to Canada.A garden variety job, he figures. But when Thoorop is offered an even higher fee byanother organization, he realizes Marie is no ordinary girl. A schizophrenic and thepossible carrier of a new artificial virus, Marie is carrying a mutant embryocreated by an American cult that dreams of producing a genetically modified messiah, a dream that spells out the end of human life as we know it.Inspired by Philip K.Dick, William S. Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze, and other extrapolationists of thefuture, Babylon Babies unfolds at breakneck speed as Thoorop risks his life to saveMarie, whose brain -- linking to the neuromatrix -- loses all limits and becomes theuniverse itself. Exploring the symbiosis between organic matter and computer powerto spin new forms of consciousness, Maurice Dantec rides Nietzsche's prophecy: "Manis something to be overcome."

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