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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.
Now that's good fiction.
I read this book about a year ago, and i have to admit it was definitely addicting in the beginning, but after about the halfway point the auther i think tries to outsmart himself with too many plot twists and other such tricks to mislead the reader. Overall a good read, and i'd recommend it, but the newer books such as The Davinci Code are much cleaner and a better overall read. On the other hand the author, while making a few glaring errors, does a fairly decent job of dumbing down all the tech for the average reader to understand while still getting the gist correct, which is a nice change :)
drunk chemists
It was exactly what I was looking for
No it wasn't. You were looking for The DaVinci Code. Remember now?
Helpin' out,
Letter
Another good book is Angels and Demons. It has the same main character as The Da Vinci code, but it comes before, and seems to be a much better book.
Anything in parenthesis may (not) be ignored.
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The cover blurbs mislead the reader into thinking it's the next book by the best-selling author, when in reality it was written before the best-sellers and dug up to cash in on Brown's popularity.
magically flips across the Atlantic Ocean, almost like a scene change in a movie, but it's amazing how well this movie technique translated into a novel.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Digital Fortress was a very fast read. Much like The Da Vinci Code, it's a well-paced, by-the-books thriller that fans of the genre will find entertaining. But, the technical mistakes are so glaringly bad, that I just spent most of the book being annoyed. I thought a book with cryptography as a plot point would be interesting and maybe even challenging, but there's nothing about cryptography anywhere. There's only a giant brute-force-and-ignorance hammer, no real problem solving. It really surprised me how off he was with some of the plot points and technical aspects since TDVC was so well researched. If you liked TDVC, skip DF
got biv?
I read The Da Vinci Code like a lot of people then went back and read the rest of his works in reverse chronological order. I am fairly confident in saying that Mr. Brown has improved as an author markedly with each new publication. I would also argue that he has finally hit his stride with the 'Code because all previous books suck.
That said, I am eargerly awaiting his next work, it should be a pretty good read.
Speak truth to power.
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.
This is a good summation of how I felt about DaVinci Code. Great premise, middling implementation.
Doesn't sound like the author really understands cryptography or cryptology. It's the people that do the important work of breaking a code, not the uber machine that just automates the process once the system's been broken.
TZ
In the DaVinci code, Brown resolves his puzzles/riddles within 2 pages. It drove me nuts to have all of my boggles nicely wrapped up in a nice tidy bow within 30 seconds. Sometimes I can't stand authors who pander to those without an attention span or to those who only pick up the book and read only two pages at a time.
I read the DaVinci code and enjoyed it for it's creativity and it's suspense. I read the first few pages of Angels & Deamons and threw it away. Why? Because they're exactly the same. They start out exactly the same way. Ergh.
So, I saw Digital Fortress and figured I'd give Dan Brown another chance. I've always loved techno-thrillers and I thought this might not dissappoint. BBZZZZZT!
What a lame piece of crap! Anyone at least marginally knowledgeable about computers and cryptology and security will want to slap Dan for the inconsistencies and falsities littered throughout the book.
And the code at the back is really lame. Booo hiss!
Stay away from it if you like good literature.
Go get "Hackers" or "At Large" or any other of the good books if you want to actually like the book.
I read it last month. I keep most of the books I read when I'm done. I threw this one out. It wasn't a bad read, but I agree with the reviewer that in the end it just wasn't satisfying.
One concept the book deals with that I thought was good was the belief by many intelligence pros that they need to "protect" the citizens from things that cannot be spoken. Hogwash. I'm sure the NSA does valuable work but when they start to trample the Constitution it's time to say ENOUGH. The fouders of the U.S. thought the people should always distrust the government and retain the means to change it if and when it became opressive or tyrannical. If the government accrues too much power to control information and the ability to track what every single person does and says and buys every moment of every waking day then it becomes impossible for the people to exercise that power. It is truly Big Brother-esque.
The book did a good job of exploring both sides of that debate. The guy who wrote the Digital Fortress algorithm was someone who didn't believe that governments should have the right to spy on its own citizens without at least telling them that it was doing so. Central to the plot was an extortion scheme in which the perpetrator, Tankada, wanted only one thing: For the gogernment to come out and publicly admit that it could, in fact, decrypt and read everything that was being sent via encrypted email.
The book still sucked.
I was dissapointed by The Da Vinci Code which I read last year. Brown is pretty much a hack writer and seems to be more interested in a whiz-bang plot than developing anything deeper or more interesting. His characters are flat and don't really develop - the hero of Da Vinci Code is Indiana Jones without the bravery. The research behind the book seems very much like a bunch of vaguely-related conspiracy theories that the author read about and decided to write a pot-boiler around.
For a much more interesting book that uses similar material to go a lot further, try Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Eco uses the background of holy grail consipracists to weave a tale rich in detailed historical research, amusing characters and that is layered with meaning. You get the what-is-going-to-happen plot and structural and metaphorical complexity. I suspect that Brown may have read Foucault's Pendulum before he wrote Da Vinci Code, because some of the similarities are noticeable.
Summary: Da Vinci Code is a fun enough airport novel. I enjoyed reading it but in the end didn't feel I'd gained anything for having read it.
Sailing over the event horizon
He realizes that Tankado's ring is the "key" to the mystery,
NSA Chief: Aha! The ring is mine! Now our supercomputer with the clever acronym can decode this vitally important document! (hands document to flunky) What does it say?
NSA Underling: (Turns ring and presses buttons on blinkenlights panel.) It says..."Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
NSA Chief: Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son-of-a-bitch! Here, try it again! (hands new document to flunky.)
NSA Underling: (repeats procedure) It says..."All your base-"
NSA Chief: (pulls gun from holster and shoots his underling.)
NSA Underling: AIEEEEEE! (Underling expires.)
NSA Chief: (Shakes fist to heavens.) Curse you, fat German tourist and his red-haired "escort"!!! Cuuurrrse yoooouuu!!!!
Did anyone else get the correct number long before the fictional protagonists did...and wonder why, if these people were so smart, they didn't know the difference between the two bombs? I mean, all the NSA people I know are uber-trivia nerds and would've nailed that number in ten seconds, tops. It made an otherwise interesting book hopelessly simplistic imnsho.
I was able to suspend my disbelief at an "unbreakable code" not bothering any of the cryptologists. And I was able to swallow, for the sake of the plot, some external person able to write a file of encrypted text that would (somehow) infect the code-breaking machine with a virus.
I was was even able to overlook the author's mistaken description of what "public key" asymmetric cryptography was. (He obviously missed the whole point of it when he failed to mention that it's useful because you don't have to have a secret channel to transmit your key to the other party!)
However, when they talked of using "Streaming Quicktime" to send video messages across the world, that's when I could no longer suspend my disbelief. Nobody in the world would use "Streaming Quicktime" for a remote video feed.
Best Buy can have you arrested
A few months back I read the DaVinci Code. I was impressed enough with the research the author did that my girlfriend went and got me Deception Point, and I got myself Digital Fortress. I read the both of them, and having now read 3 Dan Brown books I feel I can make a few generalizations:
:) )
(Spoiler warning!)
His plots and characters are paper thin. These books are the literary equivalent of your standard hollywood blockbuster movie (and by this I mean Independence Day, not LOTR).
The main villain is always the guy closest to the character, a boss, confidant, etc. Motivation can be sexual, power, take your pick.
The books are written so as to be ported directly to the big screen. You can almost see scene transitions between paragraphs. One of books chapters actually ended with "camera pan left, fade to black" (just kidding!
The research for Digital Fortress was not as good as for DaVinci - we had the usual confusion between data and executable code (gee, you'd think government cryptogurus would know not to execute code contained within a suspect file), as well as exploding supercomputers, the ability to bypass every single security control by a clueless manager that should NOT be touching said supercomputer, etc. There's an actual 7 layer firewall somewhere that graphically displays the 7 walls, hacker attacks, and even displays each layer falling and the attackers getting closer and closer to the core of the system! Sure it's all explained away in some way or another, but it really makes no sense once you step back from it.
The plot for Deception Point was overly contrived and is designed as an excuse for shooting and chasing people around over a two hour movie, and does not stand up to the inspection of the reading pace of a book.
Now, don't get me wrong. I loved the books, they were fun, and even if the suspension of disbelief was a bit thin in some spots I would not hesitate to recommend any of them to almost anyone - it's just that Burger King is also tasty every once in a while, and seeing stuff blow up on screen while people chase each other is cool too.
-Jack Ash
Yes, the book is based on a pivotal plot point that is ludicrous. The plot revolves around a new encryption scheme that will render the NSA's super-secret weapon (a brute force crack machine that will decrypt anything within minutes) useless. The source code to this new encryption algorithm has been posted to the Internet and downloaded by crypto types worldwide. The catch -- it's encrypted with itself. The book is about the race for the key that can decrypt the algorithm so the source is accessible and can be used to create truly unbreakable encryption.
Well, the cryptography head comes up with a plan (repeatedly called "brilliant" in the book) to get the key first, modify the source to include a back-door so the NSA can read everything while the public thinks the code is unbreakable, re-encrypt the modified source and replace the version that's been posted to the web. Then they leak the key and the whole world starts using "Digital Fortress".
Does Brown really think that you can replace a file on the web that's been downloaded by thousands and that all the downloaded copies will be updated as well? He seems to -- he only explores the possibility that Tankado might have reviewed the code and found the changes, and quickly dismisses it. He doesn't even consider that most of the people would decrypt the version they already have, let alone consider that someone might compare the source between the version currently available and the one downloaded before the key was released.
The modifications to the source would be posted to Slashdot within 5 minutes of the key being released. But Brown believes no one would ever catch on, and this master plan drives the entire novel. It's utter drivel.
That's the only way I could describe the novel. I read the whole thing, cover to cover, in about five hours time, finishing at about 2AM. I couldn't put it down.
I have a habit of reading books several times over, but I could not get through this book the second time. Once I was over the suspense and action I found that almost half the book was stupid, implausible, fictional, inaccurate, unbelieveable, and contrary to all logic. Example: A Google search for "Rotating Cleartext" (which was one of the major parts of the supposedly unbreakable encryption) turned up exactly two results; both of them were about the book itself.
The major failure, though, was the idea that a supercomputer--even a really really fast one--could crack an unknown algorithm by brute force. The idea of applying key guessing to a unknown encryption type is rediculous and impossible.
If you tried it for a long enough time you could probably decode it into an entirely different message, for the same reason monkeys could produce the full works of Shakespeare. And then if you know the algorithm, key guessing by definition will always work, although it may take centuries (not hours, as the book claims). There are more technical inaccuracies that I noticed and that others noticed (especially the final firewall scene). That said, the book was a fun read for a couple of hours, and I might have some fun later illustrating exactly where the book got it wrong (Answer: A lot of places).
The Cheese Stands Alone.
I second the view that Digital Fortress is a lame piece of crap. Dan Brown did not do even the most basic research before writing Digital Fortress. Bruce Schneier's book Applied Cryptography has been around a long time. Even if you don't understand the C code and the mathematics, you can get a pretty good picture of why some algorithms are unbreakable, in practice. But Brown does not seem to have read anything about cryptography. He simply waves his hands and writes "quantum computing". He might as well have written "magic happens".
Now what would have been interesting would be to speculate that the NSA actually did have quantum computing. Then the interesting plot theme would be how do you keep something like that secret. But such plot complexity is not for Dan Brown.
As other Slashdotters have noted, Brown's characters are cardboard and his writing is poor. So while one might forgive someone for technical mistakes if the plot and writing were good, the combination of mediocre writing and technical howlers is pretty obnoxious.
If you want a writer who is not a specialist in computer science but gets the details right and even provides interesting insight, try Peter Watts the author of Starfish and Maelstrom.
Watts is a Phd marine biologist, so he's definitely a bright guy. So perhaps he's in a different league than Dan Brown. Watts has definitely done his research and it shows in his interesting observations about neural nets.
Watts' characters are complex and his plots are interesting, if dark. (OK, so I should probably submit a book review - Watts' has a new book coming out this year and I'll do it when the book appears, since Watts' is under appreciated)
Dan Brown has that wonderful knack that some authors have of making one feel like an "insider" or privy to information that "outsiders" don't have. With "Da Vinci Code" we were part of the secrets of the Louvre, many ancient bits of occult religious lore, and that most intriguing of all Catholic institutions Opus Dei. In "Angels and Demons" (my preferred book of the three) we're in on the hidden treasures of the Vatican library and the Illuminati--source of centuries of speculation. With "Digital Fortress" he takes us inside the NSA.
He also entertains us by piling thrill upon thrill, twist upon turn, surprise upon surprise. I thought he did the best job of this with "Angels and Demons," which I felt I had to put down occasionally just to catch my breath. I wasn't as captivated by "Da Vinci" because I was already familiar with the central suprise of the book, and it didn't shock me. With "Digital Fortress," I guessed the meaning of the pivotal code pages before any of the supposed cryptography geniuses, scientists, and other NSA gurus did. Since I don't regard myself as all that brilliant, my guess is that any educated reader would do the same.
Still, I'll always follow an author who gives me that "inside track" feeling. Clancy was that way in several of his earlier novels, and I'll probably pick up anything new that Dan Brown has to offer.
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
It was interesting to read Code's immediate predecessor, called "Angels and Demons", because it was almost like a trial run of the plot for "Code". It had almost all of the same elements - the same symbology professor, the female tagalong who happens to be an expert at all the right things and at the same time ignorant of everything the main character knows so he can "educate" her (and the reader) about it, the rogue killer, a tour of the unseen reaches a historic venue, a trip into the secret laboratories of big science and a lot of preaching about how Christianity has been twisted by the Roman Catholic Church to ensure its own preservation. Not a bad book with some good stuff in it, but not as polished.
Then I picked up "Digital Fortress". Hmm. Let's see:
- Cryptic but incredibly important message from a dying keeper of a "Big Secret" transmitted in the prologue? Check.
- Nerdy main character thrown rudely into a mad life or death scramble to prevent something Really Bad (tm) from happening? Check.
- Female character who happens to be an expert at the right things at the right time but otherwise doesn't do much to help? Check.
- Knowledgeable, respected person who seems to be a friend but really is an Adversary? Check.
- Big mean killer? Check.
- Distorted picture of How Things Really Are Done? Check. [ In this case the NSA stands in for the church... must have relized the Vatican was a better target after writing this book. ]
Overall, very unsatisfying execution of a mildly interesting premise. Since all 3 of Dan Brown's books that I've read share the same basic plot, I'm done reading his stuff.Someone tell me if he has anything out that doesn't follow this formula. This is why I stopped reading Tom Clancy novels ages ago.