Digital Fortress - And why real toilet paper is better.
Another waste of eyesight... I spent last night reading this. What a waste of rainforests and ink.
Da Vinci Code was ok, but only because it was a little different and some (much controversial) historical references. Then I read Angels and Demons which had nearly the same plot as DVC. I mean, both have the same guy (the brilliant and dashing whats-his-name), in both he gets his sleep disturbed because some guy's croaked with a symbol on his ass.. gimme a fukken break! Couldnt the stories start a little different? WTF!
Then it's off to a tour of entire europe while assasins follow u. And in one total stroke of (unorginal) genius the assasin is of the Hashshashin variety. (Applause) The illuminati.. freemasons... jesus's lovechild... gimme a break.
Fine, Digital Fortress is about cryptography. Another term which the average person doesnt know jackshit about, hence, a fertile ground for weaving a halfbaked story. But since literary wisdom says that no horse is too dead to beat, we have the BRILLIANT AND BEUTIFULL leggy Ms SOMEONE, the only female cryptographer in the NSA and the ONLY-MAN-SHE-EVER-LOVED Mr SOMEPROFFESSOR. All through the story they're on different sides of the atlantic and there's no sex scene. Which is ok, the rest of the novel is fucked anyway..
Rule no. 1 for Movies/Tech books
If there's a huge computer (multiple stories) it WILL burn out in the end. Explosivly. Now i havent seen computers melting down because of heat, but I dont think supercomputer which overheat will explode in the way they're depicted. Apparantly the cooling freon mixed with oxygen and generated a huge fireball. The fact the freon is an inert gas is obviously not important. Hell liquid nitrogen will burn if it can add one page to the story.
Rule no 2
Huge computers which gets locked by hacker/virus/alien/in-general-bad-guy will have to switched off manually. The switch is always located in dark basements with flickering lights. The person who goes to switch it off manually WILL die of an accident, killed by the bad guy or eaten by dinosaurs (assuming there ARE dinosaurs in the plot).
Good thing regular comps have a Control Alt Del feature, i wouldnt like to go to my dinosaur infested basement evrey 5 mins. I run windows.
Rule 3
Female mathmaticians/nuclear scientists are beutifull. Its a prerequisite for nuclear science colleges. Brilliance is directly propotional to beuaty and inversly propotional to dress size.
They also manage to find time for self defence lessons, but that usually doesnt help and its up to some other GUY in the story to get her out of shit city. Also, self defence usually involves a well placed kick in the groin region of the adversary.
This quite unlike real life, doesnt incapacitate the attacker, but only makes him squirm for 5 seconds, before he comes back with a vengenance.
Enough rules. Back to specific suckiness of Digital Fortress. The NSA's the perfect organizaion for this. Since noone known what it does, it could do anything. No one known anything abotu crytogrphy too, so say ANY shit and ppl belive.
IT SUCKS! Some japanese cryptogrpher's made the unbreakable code and hell breaks loose.. the beutfiull heroine gets called to office on a saturday and her boyfreind (the only man she evre loved) gets sent to europe on a wild goose chase to find the ONE code.. then he runs from clue to clue in the quest of the one ring and the ring has an incriptoin to unlock the super code. But its not in elvish though. Its in latin :p
Anyway.. the europe part of the story is totally unbelivable.... too many coincideces just to get the story going... its amateurish. I know its tough to write a novel, but there have been a million better ones. Just everything seems to happen to the poor bastard (the only man she loved), then theres a auto-shooting sequence on the airport. Theres the ubiquitous assasin following the dude killing everyone he has the misfortune of meeting. Unneccisary murders.. just for the sake of showing (writing) blood. Insane plot.
The author manages to pad out the story nicely with unneeded references for everything... half the novel is probably explnations of cryptography or computer speak. Misses no opportunity to display how much he learned from other sources. Even manages to mention why a computer bug is called a bug.
Another sign of a fucked plot. Every small nuance mentioned in this "explanatory" way will have relevance. IN the begining theres the mention of the code system used by caesar and sure enough u have the thing being used in the end.
Pretty sad.
Another trend in dan brown novels. The GOOD guy is the bad guy. the person who calls in the leads is the bad. There's another HIDDEN IDENTITY PERSON who is dealing with the bad guys and controlling the assasins, that too is the guy who called in the leads. It all comes out in the end, but if u have ANY imagination u know after reading 1 chapter who'll do what.
Anotehr D.B. trait. Every one has illegitimate children who are revealed in the end. In angels and demons it was the Pope who had a son, in da vinci code he went a step higher and Jesus had children, in digital fortress, a bad japanese business man discovers the crytogrpaher is his son. SUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!
Then again japanese businessmen in movies/novels. I've never been there. But they're all serious faced people in blue business suits who talk about honor and nothing else. Everythign is honor this honor that, and in between there's a lot of "face saving" then theres some more honor talk and then it's off to the sushi bar with a blond silicon queen (the american poor family girl stuck with kinky japanese bosses). They're all racist and u wont find a japanese woman in the place of business. Half the japanese are named Tanaka san. If there HAPPENS to be a japanese business woman, she'll probably be American born (or half american) and will be against japanese and 8 out of 10, she'll be played by Lucy Liu.
Then there's the boring over predictable end. THe virus takes down the firewalls for the NSA supercomputers, and theres this long line hackers waiting.. all this is visually depicted on screens and the computer geeks are using terms like Sharks int eh water, Hyenas waiting outside... sick sick sick. The depiction of computer geeks/terminology in hollywood/novels is sick. The firewall "shield" disintegrates in a very video game like fashion.. slowly with a countdown...
"Shields are 50% down" WTF?
And finally the thing that turns my stomach is the final breaking the code.. imagine this, a room full of NSA. Top minds in the country (which obviously means the world right?) and the puzzle they have to solve is
The prime differece between the elements used in Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs.
And the hint is its a numerical value. Now what do these geniuses do? THey search the fucking internet for this!! Gimme a break PLEASE i cant suspend reality to this level just to read a book! Even i knew the answer as soon as i read this line and the fucking geniuses coudlnt figure it out!! This is beyond bizarre. Its a very very very very bad attempt at lenghtning the end for another suspense filled ending!!
Numerical difference between ELEMENTS
The genious are surfing the net (and that too on NETSCAPE!! THE HORROR!) and discussing about what elements could the ridle mean. And the lead guy figures out the answer (the only man she evre loved, who at this moment has been shot by the assasin, then stunned by soldiers, and has spent the entire day running around dodging bullet). This great man figures out the answer while the director of NSA and a team of comp experts battle out the sharks!!
It just makes u wanna throw this book down the toilet! This one sucks.. it sucks sucks sucks.. why bother. I am never gonna read another dan brown... same goes for Micheal Crichton. State of fear? Gimme a break.. the anti-kyoto-protocol propoganda is fine, but where's the story kenneth? Shooting rockets to create rainstorms!! But of course.....
And its not just me who doesnt like this trash. Here's 22,000 people who agree.
Thus spake the screaming monkey:
My advice: If someone gave it to u and u have time to kill, fine, read it. But Dont spend money on it. Buy real toilet paper instead.
Da Vinci Code was ok, but only because it was a little different and some (much controversial) historical references. Then I read Angels and Demons which had nearly the same plot as DVC. I mean, both have the same guy (the brilliant and dashing whats-his-name), in both he gets his sleep disturbed because some guy's croaked with a symbol on his ass.. gimme a fukken break! Couldnt the stories start a little different? WTF!
Then it's off to a tour of entire europe while assasins follow u. And in one total stroke of (unorginal) genius the assasin is of the Hashshashin variety. (Applause) The illuminati.. freemasons... jesus's lovechild... gimme a break.
Fine, Digital Fortress is about cryptography. Another term which the average person doesnt know jackshit about, hence, a fertile ground for weaving a halfbaked story. But since literary wisdom says that no horse is too dead to beat, we have the BRILLIANT AND BEUTIFULL leggy Ms SOMEONE, the only female cryptographer in the NSA and the ONLY-MAN-SHE-EVER-LOVED Mr SOMEPROFFESSOR. All through the story they're on different sides of the atlantic and there's no sex scene. Which is ok, the rest of the novel is fucked anyway..
Rule no. 1 for Movies/Tech books
If there's a huge computer (multiple stories) it WILL burn out in the end. Explosivly. Now i havent seen computers melting down because of heat, but I dont think supercomputer which overheat will explode in the way they're depicted. Apparantly the cooling freon mixed with oxygen and generated a huge fireball. The fact the freon is an inert gas is obviously not important. Hell liquid nitrogen will burn if it can add one page to the story.
Rule no 2
Huge computers which gets locked by hacker/virus/alien/in-general-bad-guy will have to switched off manually. The switch is always located in dark basements with flickering lights. The person who goes to switch it off manually WILL die of an accident, killed by the bad guy or eaten by dinosaurs (assuming there ARE dinosaurs in the plot).
Good thing regular comps have a Control Alt Del feature, i wouldnt like to go to my dinosaur infested basement evrey 5 mins. I run windows.
Rule 3
Female mathmaticians/nuclear scientists are beutifull. Its a prerequisite for nuclear science colleges. Brilliance is directly propotional to beuaty and inversly propotional to dress size.They also manage to find time for self defence lessons, but that usually doesnt help and its up to some other GUY in the story to get her out of shit city. Also, self defence usually involves a well placed kick in the groin region of the adversary.
This quite unlike real life, doesnt incapacitate the attacker, but only makes him squirm for 5 seconds, before he comes back with a vengenance.
Enough rules. Back to specific suckiness of Digital Fortress. The NSA's the perfect organizaion for this. Since noone known what it does, it could do anything. No one known anything abotu crytogrphy too, so say ANY shit and ppl belive.
IT SUCKS! Some japanese cryptogrpher's made the unbreakable code and hell breaks loose.. the beutfiull heroine gets called to office on a saturday and her boyfreind (the only man she evre loved) gets sent to europe on a wild goose chase to find the ONE code.. then he runs from clue to clue in the quest of the one ring and the ring has an incriptoin to unlock the super code. But its not in elvish though. Its in latin :p
Anyway.. the europe part of the story is totally unbelivable.... too many coincideces just to get the story going... its amateurish. I know its tough to write a novel, but there have been a million better ones. Just everything seems to happen to the poor bastard (the only man she loved), then theres a auto-shooting sequence on the airport. Theres the ubiquitous assasin following the dude killing everyone he has the misfortune of meeting. Unneccisary murders.. just for the sake of showing (writing) blood. Insane plot.
The author manages to pad out the story nicely with unneeded references for everything... half the novel is probably explnations of cryptography or computer speak. Misses no opportunity to display how much he learned from other sources. Even manages to mention why a computer bug is called a bug.
Another sign of a fucked plot. Every small nuance mentioned in this "explanatory" way will have relevance. IN the begining theres the mention of the code system used by caesar and sure enough u have the thing being used in the end.
Pretty sad.
Another trend in dan brown novels. The GOOD guy is the bad guy. the person who calls in the leads is the bad. There's another HIDDEN IDENTITY PERSON who is dealing with the bad guys and controlling the assasins, that too is the guy who called in the leads. It all comes out in the end, but if u have ANY imagination u know after reading 1 chapter who'll do what.
Anotehr D.B. trait. Every one has illegitimate children who are revealed in the end. In angels and demons it was the Pope who had a son, in da vinci code he went a step higher and Jesus had children, in digital fortress, a bad japanese business man discovers the crytogrpaher is his son. SUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!
Then again japanese businessmen in movies/novels. I've never been there. But they're all serious faced people in blue business suits who talk about honor and nothing else. Everythign is honor this honor that, and in between there's a lot of "face saving" then theres some more honor talk and then it's off to the sushi bar with a blond silicon queen (the american poor family girl stuck with kinky japanese bosses). They're all racist and u wont find a japanese woman in the place of business. Half the japanese are named Tanaka san. If there HAPPENS to be a japanese business woman, she'll probably be American born (or half american) and will be against japanese and 8 out of 10, she'll be played by Lucy Liu.
Then there's the boring over predictable end. THe virus takes down the firewalls for the NSA supercomputers, and theres this long line hackers waiting.. all this is visually depicted on screens and the computer geeks are using terms like Sharks int eh water, Hyenas waiting outside... sick sick sick. The depiction of computer geeks/terminology in hollywood/novels is sick. The firewall "shield" disintegrates in a very video game like fashion.. slowly with a countdown...
"Shields are 50% down" WTF?
And finally the thing that turns my stomach is the final breaking the code.. imagine this, a room full of NSA. Top minds in the country (which obviously means the world right?) and the puzzle they have to solve is
The prime differece between the elements used in Hiroshima and nagasaki bombs.
And the hint is its a numerical value. Now what do these geniuses do? THey search the fucking internet for this!! Gimme a break PLEASE i cant suspend reality to this level just to read a book! Even i knew the answer as soon as i read this line and the fucking geniuses coudlnt figure it out!! This is beyond bizarre. Its a very very very very bad attempt at lenghtning the end for another suspense filled ending!!
Numerical difference between ELEMENTS
The genious are surfing the net (and that too on NETSCAPE!! THE HORROR!) and discussing about what elements could the ridle mean. And the lead guy figures out the answer (the only man she evre loved, who at this moment has been shot by the assasin, then stunned by soldiers, and has spent the entire day running around dodging bullet). This great man figures out the answer while the director of NSA and a team of comp experts battle out the sharks!!
It just makes u wanna throw this book down the toilet! This one sucks.. it sucks sucks sucks.. why bother. I am never gonna read another dan brown... same goes for Micheal Crichton. State of fear? Gimme a break.. the anti-kyoto-protocol propoganda is fine, but where's the story kenneth? Shooting rockets to create rainstorms!! But of course.....
And its not just me who doesnt like this trash. Here's 22,000 people who agree.
Thus spake the screaming monkey:
My advice: If someone gave it to u and u have time to kill, fine, read it. But Dont spend money on it. Buy real toilet paper instead.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, August 27, 2005 at 2:35 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
7:28 AM, August 27, 2005Thanx for the review. Have been tempted a lot to buy it. But my ESP always made me go for something else. Have u tried reading "Jeffrey Archer - honour amoung thieves". Now this one badass Writer who can write some good gripping novels with public figures as novel base. A sportsman, politician, Criminal, Writer all in one. Probably he can write something on himself :-).
7:41 AM, August 27, 2005
He took your advice. His prison diaries are a long boring example of what a person can when serving time.
Prison Diary (Amazon)
The prodigal daughter was an amateurish attempt at a sequel for Kane and Able. And to top that, he re-wrote "Shall we tell the president" to make it the Kane and Able Part 3.
First Among equals: I tried readin this several times, got so bored couldnt finish.
Honor among theives: Saddam hussien steals the declaration of independance.. Yeah right, how do u digest the story NOW? In the current political scenario.
Eleventh comandment: A weak dripping plot. makes The Transporter look like a brillant movie. Top CIA assasin becomes hunted by its own! Puleez... never been done before, except a million times.
A twist in the tale: Good short stories with surprise endings. Roal Dahl does better
Twelve red herrings: Also good, short stories
blablabla.. rest arent worth mentioning..
10:17 AM, August 27, 2005
Well ok maybe this is the book that u might like then. Arthur C Clarkes July 20, 2019. An envisioned world of the future book found from the old books for sale section of hyd road side sellar. Really Interesting read. And will give more NM ideas something like the speaking monkey you got here. :-)
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