Slashdot Mirror
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.
How they can put spoilers in a "review".
A linguist, a geologist, a physicist and an engineer
go into a bar and the bartender says...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
It's perfectly possible to review a book w/out giving away the ending. Way to ensure that I won't be grabbing the book anytime soon.
Thanks.
[o]_O
I'm sorry, but this sounds really, really, really bad.
Vatican vs Atlantis would have been a better name, probably. And with a story line like that (and with the new name) it should have been a computer game, not a book. Don't you hate the entertainment industry? They can fuck up even the best ideas!
I passed the Turing test.
Ok, so I realize it carried a spoiler warning. And I realize that it would be a rare occurence indeed for mankind to be wiped out at the end of a book, but was it necessary to sum up the ending entirely? Maybe a "of course it all works out in the end." would have worked. Not that I'll ever get around to reading the book anyway.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
It was THE biggest, baddest spoiler possible. You have done the author a disservice; no point in reading the book now.
include $sig;
1;
This is probably the worst review I ever read. Just retelling the story and then basically say "I liked this book". Not a word about what was good, bad or why this book is better than others.
Please, try to REVIEW instead of give a synopsis of the story.
He spoils the whole freaking story! Edit or remove this "review", please!
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Hint: Reviews aren't supposed to have spoilers - a review is primarily to tell you whether or not you'd be interested in reading the book.
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.
This reads like Bart Simpson cribbing Treasure Island from the cover. You spoilered the conclusion (in a plot based book!), you didn't talk about characterisation, style, pacing, about comparable novels, you just blabbed out the plot. Were you making sound effects with your mouth while you wrote this?
I give this review a 1, and - SPOILER ALERT!- it sucks major ass. The only way this could be worse if if (when?) Taco dupes it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I picked up a copy a few weeks back. The story is good, and the background is interesting, although i do think the author has spent far more time than is healthy pouring over 'chariot of the gods'. In short if you like this kind of book its entertaining , if you dont, this book wont change your mind, its no great work of literature , but itsnt badly written.
I found it passed the time on the bus to work quite nicely.
"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree"
Sure, it's just a plot device, but it's silly for the reviewer to portray this as hard, well-researched sci-fi. A mass extinction every 12,000 would be pretty obvious in the fossil record.
Nice review. I'd like to submit my review the book (and eventual movie) "Planet of the Apes". Here goes... A spaceship crash lands on a planet after a big space-storm thing. Something has gone horribly wrong. The astronauts escape (and some of them die) and see other people running. They follow them and find out that this planet is ruled by apes. There is some harrowing stuff and lots of adventure. In the end though, the remaining astronaut discovers that he is on earth! The apes of the planet have taken over. I recommend this as the best book I've ever read. Granted, it's the only book I've ever read. Plus, you'll never believe the shocking ending.
Ah, I remember relieving myself on you in Chapter 8....
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
The author of the book is a screenwriter, so the reviewer was just trying to follow Hollywood's lead with trailers.
But seriously, from what little else we are told about the book, I'm pretty sure the reviewer is doing us all a favour. This sounds like a truly horrid book. Of course I'm not surprised the reviewer liked it. He's got to be, what, 12?
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.
Sure, this sounds really plausible... an Antartic based human society 12,000 years ago (wasn't this during the last ice age? When the south polar region would have been even more inhospitable then it is now?). And they developed such incredibly advanced technology as to construct AI nanobots, yet somehow never bothered to spread to other, warmer continents or leave any archeological trace of their existence behind?
Even with out that sun/gravity pulse stuff the review makes this book sound completely ridiculous to me. Sorry, I prefer my SF with at least a small dose of reality or plausibility.
I never thought I'd say it, but BRING BACK KATZ!
You did not read the article closely.
Warning -- spoilers within.
What the big print giveth - the fine print taketh away...
---
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Which one of you would be willing to wear this duck? So the geologist says ...
Since you've spoiled the ending and all the plot twists, there's no reason for me to read the book. This makes your review a waste of everyone's time. Please don't make this mistake again.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
The Crying Game: It's not a woman!!!
Matrix: Neo's world is a computer simulation!!!
The Usual Suspects: Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Soze!!!
The Sixth Sence: Bruce Willis is already Dead!!!
Presumed Innocent: The Wife did it!!!
Sightings: Water kills the aliens!!!
Soylent Green: Soylent Green is People!!!
The Wizard of Oz: It was all a Dream!!!
In the case of this review, I think the reviewer actually paid timothy. Not that that hasn't happened before...
Wow, this sounds like the worst book ever. I'm kind of glad you gave the ending away so that no one will be tempted to read it.
"Yahoo News has the story. He's best remembered for the book review of Decipher by Stel Pavlou. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon."
More like the frickin' cliff notes.
At any rate, it sounds like utter crap to me. If the Atlantans had this solution all working, why didn't they use it. And why would they Atlantis be under Antartica? I guess if I cared to answer these questions I'd reat the book. Which I don't. So I won't read it.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
And where else are you going to get fresh penguin-sicles?
I once went to a website, not sure which now, which printed a notice saying spoilers condtained below this message. The spoilers themselves would then be printed in the same color as the background to the webpage. Instructions notified you that if you wanted to read the spoilers, just highlight the text. If you did not, just go on your merry way.
Slashdot should really do something like this. As I was reading the review, my interest really picked up. Man, I should go check this book out, I thought. Then bam, the whole end revealed in the last two sentences. Well, not much suspense in the book anymore, might as well skip it.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
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.
This is just a kindergarten-level retelling of the whole book. There is nothing that defines a review in this "article".
Take a deep breath and listen to me. Timothy didn't write the review, Javed Ikbal did. Timothy is the /. editor who posted it. While you might like to see the editors here actually read something before they post it, you'll be much happier if you just realize, like most of us did long ago, that it's just not going to happen.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. - Robert Anson Heinlein
Fucking useless. The /. editors must be happy with their positions as they are, because they're certainly not going to have any brighter of a future with submissions like this.
How on earth can you actually let a book review through that gives away the entire ending? And you want people to subscribe to this sort of thing? What worse is their consistant lack of reaction or apology.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
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.
I rarely fail to finish a book (well fiction, anyway), but I wasn't too sure about this at one point. A qualified 6/10 from me.
Thinking about it the only books I can remember deliberately abandoning are :
1) The first Thomas Covenenant (blecch!)
2) Paradiso Street Station (just didn't ever engage my interest)
3) Chasm City (got bored)
4) Anything by Dickens
One of the books I'm currently reading is Dawnthief, which started well but I'm halfway through and it's got a bit flat, but I'll probably persevere.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
That was hardly a review, just a few sentences of praise followed by a lengthy plot summary.
Sure, the plot sounds interesting, but how does the guy write? WHAT did you find so deep about it? Did you like the author's writing style? How did he convey emotion, depict setting, build tension, describe the characters? Is it dense prose? Technical? Abstract? For a lot of people, these elements are as important as a complex plot.
All you did was give away the ending for most people without really explaining what was great about the book. The level of detail in your summary was totally unnecessary; you've actually done a tremendous disservice to anyone who might want to read this book. And since your intended audience is people who HAVEN'T read the book yet, a "Warning -- spoilers within" label doesn't automatically give you carte blanche to sloppily regurgitate the entire plot.
This would have been a great submission -- if we were talking about a high school newspaper.
Jesus, Slashdot editors, raise your standards a little. And take some remedial English / Journalism courses.
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.
In other news:
Soylent Green is People! Peeeeeeeople!
demi
Well, not much suspense in the book anymore, might as well skip it.
That's too bad, but you could always buy it for a friend who doesn't know the ending yet.