TSUAD: All the Crap before the Book Actually Starts
Cover: My copy is generic at best. The original is much better.
Inside Cover: "Don't miss Dan Brown's electrifying thriller DECEPTION POINT" blah blah buy from our shitty paperback publishing company blah blah. More on that book much later.
Next Few Pages:
- Book reviewers wetting their pants over how great Dan Brown's books are (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Deception Point). I know it's standard practice to put praise on the OUTSIDE of the book in question, but nestled in with reviews of his other books? Isn't that like putting a trailer for a movie right before you show the actual film?
- List of Dan Brown's books: the three previously mentioned and Digital Fortress.
- Title page. Standard.
- Copyright page, 2000. First paperback edition by this company July 2001. Standard "this book is a work of fiction" spiel, which I find hilariously befitting.
- "Dear Reader" thank you for helping me make millions off of another book of mine bullshit
- Dedication: "For Blythe...", whom Wikipedia tells me is his wife (it also tells me he hangs upside down by his feet when he gets writer's block). Notice how her name redirects automatically to the "Dan Brown" page. I'm no feminazi, but I find that rather insulting.
"FACT" Page: A bunch of garbage. Highlights:
- "[Antimatter] releases energy with 100 percent efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5 percent efficient)." Under vacuum conditions the various muon and electron neutrino particle-antiparticle pairs carry off ~50% of the available annihilation energy following a [proton-antiproton] reaction.
- "[Antimatter] ignites when it comes in contact with absolutely anything... even air." Ignites, huh?
- "A single gram of antimatter contains the energy of a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb - the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima." Wikipedia tells me a kilogram of antimatter reacting with a kilogram of matter would yield roughly 47 megatons; scaled linearly, a gram of each would yield about 47 kilotons. If you're just talking about the amount of energy coming from the ANTIMATTER and ignore the matter, the numbers are within an order of magnitude. Wikipedia also tells me the size of the bomb was more like 12 kilotons.
- "Until recently antimatter has been created only in very small amounts (a few atoms at a time). But CERN has now broken ground on its new Antiproton Decelerator - an advanced antimatter production facility that promises to create antimatter in much larger quantities." The main goal of the Antiproton Decelerator is just that - to decelerate antiprotons to speeds better suited to studying them. While I suppose it produces larger quantities of antimatter than before, the effect is secondary.
These extremely sloppy calculations and quarter-truths suggest my favorite theme of the novel: Dan Brown spent maybe twenty minutes online researching these topics, then ploughed ahead like an overeager Weimaraner in a china shop full of truthiness, lapping up whatever he spilled and shitting out this book.
Author's Note: "References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture in Rome are entirely factual (as are their exact locations). They can still be seen today. The brotherhood of the Illuminati is also factual." Yeah, in the same way that the Lesbian Lovers' Dinner Club is factual.
Maps of Modern Rome and Vatican City: I actually forgot these were here. If I had known I would have been flipping back and forth the whole book like I do with Wheel of Time. Knowing nothing about the layouts of either, I'm not sure of their accuracy and don't really care enough to research it.
That took way the fuck too long. Fortunately after the first quarter of the book there is less bullshit science and more easily summed-up plot.
Also: I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't know how spoily this summation will end up being. If Ron Howard's script has as much to do with the book as the Jumanji movie did with its book it will be a major improvement.