Two of my favorite novels are Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Both novels use the tower of Babel legend as a central plot device, and I find it interesting how they use it in different ways- the first is a modern fantasy while the second is satirical cyberpunk, the first focuses on the hubris element while the second focuses on the linguistic element.
Anybody have any recommendations of other novels that share a common plot device/ theme while being very different from each other?
Tower of Glass by Robert Silverberg is an earlier sf novel that used the Tower of Babel as a thematic device.