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
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!
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!!!
"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."
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.
This is just a kindergarten-level retelling of the whole book. There is nothing that defines a review in this "article".
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.
So the bartender turns to the linguist, and says "Cunning."
John