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Digital Fortress
The premise
The first page ("Prologue") is enough to draw you right in. A Japanese man in Seville, Spain, is dying, and in his last act he attempts to communicate with fellow tourists. We immediately wonder, What is he trying to say? How does this relate to the premise of the book?
Flipping the page literally flips across the Atlantic Ocean, to the National Security Agency (NSA) and to beautiful, intelligent Susan Fletcher, head cryptographer at the NSA. She is involved with a university language professor named David Becker--a man who will figure deeply into the story.
A mysterious phone call sends David to Spain and a phone call from Susan's boss, Commander Strathmore, brings her to NSA headquarters. It's there that she learns of a potentially fatal threat to the NSA's codebreaking supercomputer, TRANSLTR--an unbreakable encryption. Strathmore briefs her that a disgruntled former employee, Ensei Tankado, has threatened to release this encryption scheme to the highest bidder. If Tankado does so, the NSA will be crippled--a fact proven by the revelation that TRANSLTR normally spends minutes decoding a message, but has spent more than half a day trying to break Tankado's algorithm.
Tankado isn't stupid--Strathmore says he has an accomplice who will release the code in the event that something happens to Tankado. Unfortunately, Tankado is the Japanese man who has died in Seville...and thus the NSA is running out of time to locate Tankado's pass key to break the encryption before his accomplice can release it to the world.
Meanwhile, Becker is still in Spain, under orders--from Strathmore, it turns out--to do just that. He realizes that Tankado's ring is the "key" to the mystery, and thus he begins a frantic search that leads him from a French-Canadian writer in the clinic, to a fat German tourist and his red-haired "escort," to a punk rock bar on the outskirts of town. Did I mention he's being followed by a deaf assassin the whole time?
What I likedAs I mentioned, Digital Fortress has all the elements that I was looking for. It had just the right amount of main characters, and everyone had a proper place in the book and in the story. I'm appreciative of the tidbits of technical information here and there--mentions of PGP, NSA history, and other such morsels were well placed.
There was also a smattering of sexual energy (although no real "sex scenes") and humor here and there. Who said computer geeks can't have a good time?!
I'm also a fan of subplots in books, that magically mesh together near the climax. Dan Brown deserves praise in this regard: minor characters who initially make you question their presence are brought nicely into the fold and given purpose.
In any book like this, little puzzles and questions come up as a matter of course. The reader is challenged to solve them just as the characters are. In this book, there are many such puzzles: What does the inscription on the ring mean? Who is Tankado working with, and how? What is the pass-code for the encryption scheme? Why is David Becker being hunted down? I delighted in trying to come up with answers to these questions as I read the book, and was pleasantly surprised to see I was wrong in many respects.
What I didn't likeIn any mystery or thriller, the idea is to keep the reader guessing as long as possible, through plot twists, diverging plot lines that reconnect later, and the like. Brown does a fairly good job here, but this is where the book has its weakest points. For example, it is revealed early on that Tankado and the dead Japanese man in Spain are the same person. While this is perhaps unavoidable to push the plot along, I found it strange to have this happen so quickly. Later in the book, the author flips back and forth between who could be Tankado's accomplice, and who has committed a murder in Crypto. This flip-flopping is done poorly and leaves the reader thinking, "I already have my mind made up and you're not doing very well dangling red herrings." I had the bad guy pegged a couple of chapters before it was revealed, although I will admit that I was surprised at a particular turn of events afterwards.
Although this book was published in the late '90s, the technology aspects are still relevant--but this book gets some technical facts incorrect, or at least a bit off. However, they're fairly minor and don't detract from the book too much.
Some plot points are just too far fetched to be believable. For example, Susan's fiance, David Becker, tries to outrun a taxi--driven by the deaf assassin--while on a motorbike. The professional assassin fires several shots at Becker and misses every time, even though the bike is significantly slower than the taxi and the shots hit the bike body itself on several occasions.
Finally, some of the people in the NSA seem too stupid to be working there. In an effort to not give away spoilers, I can't be too much more specific than that, but suffice it to say that the "solution" is something that a high school science student wouldn't have much trouble figuring out.
Final thoughtsI tore into this book with high expectations. I finished the book with mixed feelings. As I look back on it, I can't help but feel that there was a lot of untapped potential and some glaring mistakes that could have been avoided. But I'm also pleased to have read what I consider a fairly good book, one that has served to heighten my interest in the genre, and made me even more ready to read The DaVinci Code.
Of course, it wouldn't be fair to compare this book to any of Dan Brown's later works. An author matures as he or she writes more books, and thus I'm certain that many of my quibbles would have been ironed out in future books. I'll have to find that out when I read DaVinci.
While it might seem that I had more bad to say about the book than good, I'd say that the reverse is actually true--the "good" goes all through the book, but there isn't really a way to quantify it.
I'd wholeheartedly recommend this novel to anyone who has an interest in technological thrillers, spy novels, or thrillers in general. It's a very accessible and enjoyable read, and I'm glad I bought it.
You can purchase Digital Fortress from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
nothing to say :P
-- loser
Wheres WOPR? Here's some suspense for you a computer has to play tic-tac-toe against itself and learn the game has no winner before it gets the 10-character passcode to launch all US ICBM's, effectively destroying the world. Throw in a young Ferris Bueller and Stephanie from Short Circuit and you've got yourself a novel.
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap_haxxxor.html :|
Ct: Its over Johnny, its over
Jr: nothing is over nothing you just don't turn it off, it wasn't my war you asked me I didn't ask you and I did what I had to do to win but somebody wouldn't let us win and I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport protesting me spittin' callin' me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap who are they to protest me huh? Who are they? Unless theve been me and been there and know what the hell theyre yellin' about.
Ct: it's a bad time for everyone Rambo, its all in the past now
Jr: for you, for me civilian life is nothing in the field we had a code of honor you watch my back ill watch yours back here that's nothing
Ct: you're the last of an elite group don't end it like this
Jr: back there I can fly a gunship, I can drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I cant even hold a job parking cars!!! Huh icant jees oh god I had a firend he was in airforce I had all these guys who were my friends back here there was nuthin'man back than this fucking car this red 58 Chevy convertible, he was talikn about his car, and he said we were going to cruise til the tires fall off we were in this bar in Saigon and this kid comes up and this kid carring this shoe shine box shine pleases shine and I said no and he kept askin and joey he said yeah and I went to get couple of beers and the box is wired and he opened up the box and fuckin blew his body all over the place and hes laying there and hes fuckin screaming and theres pieces of him all over me and I can t pull him off you know , my friend its all over me , its got blood and everything and im trying to hold him together and im put him together and he keeps coming out and nobody will help nobody helped me saying I wanna go home I wanna go home, I wanna go home and hes just calling my name Johnny I wanna drive my chevy . but why I cant find your fuckin legs I cant find the legs I cant find his legs
Clickable link for the lazy
Why is it that some people are so devoid of a sense of humor? Naturally, I'm referring to John Ashcroft's latest fairy tales. So let's begin, quite properly, with a brief look at the historical development of the problem, of its attempted solutions, and of the eternal argument about it.
Isn't it true that I was sincerely appalled when I first learned that his apparatchiks want to subvert time-tested societal norms? If that's not true, tell me why not. His premise (that we ought to worship execrable wackos as folk heroes) is his morality disguised as pretended neutrality. Ashcroft uses this disguised morality to support his belief systems, thereby making his argument self-refuting. He just keeps on saying, "I don't give a [expletive deleted] about you. I just want to leach integrity and honor from our souls." It seems to me that, as others have stated long before me, "we might be able to explain away many of Ashcroft's gloomy, intransigent lamentations as being merely the effect of bad drugs." Although Ashcroft has repeatedly denied charges of attempting to make classism socially acceptable, anarchism doesn't work. So why does Ashcroft cling to it? There aren't enough hours in the day to fully answer that question, but consider this: It is immature and stupid of Ashcroft to lead to the destruction of the human race. It would be mature and intelligent, however, to ratchet up our level of understanding, and that's why I say that he is careless with data, makes all sorts of causal interpretations of things without any real justification, has a way of combining disparate ideas that don't seem to hang together, seems to show a sort of pride in his own biases, gets into all sorts of imprudent speculation, and then makes no effort to test out his speculations -- and that's just the short list!
It has been said that Ashcroft has shown no compunction in committing character assassinations or engaging in full-scale vendettas. That makes sense to me. I believe it's true. But it indisputably implies that I find that I am embarrassed. Embarrassed that some people don't realize that Ashcroft does not tolerate any view that differs from his own. Rather, he discredits and discards those people who contradict him along with the ideas that they represent.
He says he's going to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious possessions one day. Is he out of his officious mind? The answer is fairly obvious when you consider that it has long been obvious to attentive observers that his magic-bullet explanations are dangerous to my health. But did you know that Ashcroft's blind faith in factionalism leads him only to corruption? Ashcroft doesn't want you to know that, because most illaudable, slatternly rascals think, "credo, quia absurdum" when they hear him say that the kids on the playground are happy to surrender to the school bully. And that's why I'm writing this letter; this is my manifesto, if you will, on how to contribute to the intellectual and spiritual health of the body politic. There's no way I can do that alone, and there's no way I can do it without first stating that the next time he decides to force me to fall into the traps set for me by his understrappers, he should think to himself, cui bono? -- who benefits? Why don't more people complain when they see Ashcroft obstruct various things? It's because Ashcroft has mastered the art of tricking people with images and myths. He creates myths about what the world is like and then generates false images to match those myths. This proves to me, at least, that Ashcroft must sense his own irremediable inferiority. That's why he is so desperate to infiltrate the media with the express purpose of disseminating blockish information; it's the only way for him to distinguish himself from the herd. It would be a lot nicer, however, if Ashcroft also realized that after hearing about his reprehensible attempts to numb the public to the Comstockism and injustice in mainstream politics, I was saddened. I was saddened that he has lowered himself to this level. He pre
that's what hash does.
Er, unless you don't listen to Snoop...
Sha-zizzle!