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Decipher
What it's about: Tag line: Mankind had 12,000 years to decipher the message. We have one week left ...
Let me make something clear. Although this is my first Slashdot review, I do not give this book a 10 lightly.
March 2012. The whole world is experiencing unusual weather. A commercial research ship is drilling in Antarctica when the drill breaks against something hard. The pressure sends up chunks of C-60 (Fullerene) with glyphs on them. Cameras show a wall miles under Antarctica: Atlantis has been found.
A linguist, a geologist, a physicist and an engineer convene at CERN, invited by the U.S. military to analyze the C-60 and the writing on it. They discover that the mysterious molecules can create standing waves to temporarily solidify liquids. The government wants them to go on an expedition to the site, assisted by some U.S. marines.
In the meantime, the earth is being hit by gravity waves emanating from the sun, and astronomers predict massive solar flare activity that will practically destroy earth.
And home by dinner time ... Natural disasters are occurring everywhere because of the solar activity, and a plasma cloud is being sucked into a hole in Antarctica. Atlantis is sucking in all that energy without any trouble. Everyone is hoping that the answer to the coming cataclysm lies in Atlantis. Just to round things up, the Vatican wants Atlantis blown up with an atomic bomb, and the U.S. president agrees. The marines will be carrying a warhead; if Atlantis does not yield its secret, it will be blown away.
The linguist and the physicist figure out that every 12,000 years the sun goes through a massive coronal mass ejection (it's a pulsar, but with a 12,000 year period) and last time this happened Atlantis was destroyed. They were building equipment to prevent the destruction, but could not do it on time. However, the Atlanteans left automated nanobots to complete the task for the next time it happened. The time is now.
The expedition reaches the core of Atlantis, but the nanobots, as a result of over 12,000 years of artificial intelligence evolution, do not want to help humanity. They know that if humanity dies, they will take over; but if humanity survives they will have to go. Last-minute tension, the hero gives his life for humanity, the earth is turned solid for a second by standing waves generated from structures all over the earth, the gravity wave passes safely and then earth and all its creatures are returned to normal form. All is well.
I strongly recommend this book, but note that this is not a quick read: you have to assimilate this book to appreciate the wide scope. Good reading!
You can purchase Decipher from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
A review of Moby Dick is not, "A guy goes hunting after a whale."
Where is all of that mythic influence you briefly mention? What do the characters bring to the story? What does any of it mean to you? What is this story's context within the rest of the world?
I can read the back of the book for a non-spoiler summary. Add something of your unique perspective if you're doing a review.
You did not read the article closely.
Warning -- spoilers within.
What the big print giveth - the fine print taketh away...
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From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Well, the Book Review Guidelines don't say anywhere that you shouldn't ruin the story for readers...
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
No, the value of everything in my existence is *not* determined by the amount of suspense it offers.
However, I don't think I am going to be reading this book for its literary prowess.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
www.TheOneRing.net shows spoiler this way: you must highlight the spoiler to be able to see it.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Snipped from BN.com, excerpts from an actual review of this "book":
In British screenwriter Pavlou's adolescent first novel, it's March 2012 and huge storms are raging around the globe, sparked by giant sunspots.
An unconvincing gaggle of scientists discovers they have only one unholy Holy Week to ship a nuclear device to Antarctica and bomb the underwater threat to smithereens.
The often ludicrous dialogue and the ham-fisted handling of human relations and motivations, however, make for an unfocused novel, one patched together like Frankenstein, with every stitching line, every unnatural feature, unblushingly exposed to the most casual glance.
I think I'll pass.
From Publishers Weekly In British screenwriter Pavlou's adolescent first novel, it's March 2012 and huge storms are raging around the globe, sparked by giant sunspots. The villainous U.S. Rola Corporation, drilling for desperately needed oil off Antarctica, discovers strange crystalline artifacts covered with a precuneiform script, while radiation detected under the antarctic ice portends the awakening of powerful alien forces. An unconvincing gaggle of scientists discovers they have only one unholy Holy Week to ship a nuclear device to Antarctica and bomb the underwater threat to smithereens. Pavlou builds his unlikely crescendo of Bad Things from nearly every major folklore, myth and religion, dizzyingly cutting between eye-popping disasters and eye-glazing capsule summaries of linguistics, geology, chemistry, mathematics, numerology, cryptology, archeology, ESP and Edgar Cayce. Stripped down to comic book proportions for the big screen, with a deafening soundtrack and a teenage audience anesthetized to a vocabulary largely dominated by four-letter cliches, this often gruesome tale might make a middling SF adventure flick. The often ludicrous dialogue and the ham-fisted handling of human relations and motivations, however, make for an unfocused novel, one patched together like Frankenstein, with every stitching line, every unnatural feature, unblushingly exposed to the most casual glance. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Doesn't sound so interesting to me. I think the idea of tying in every mythology is ridiculous.
Bruce Willis is a ghost!
The Lone Gunmen get killed!
Darth Vader is Luke's father!