Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

[zanfur]

Remember the guy who wrote The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown? He also wrote a book called Digital Fortress, which is a thriller about crypto. Spoilers ahead, but it was a shitty book anyway, so don't read it.

It stank. I mean, the story was okay -- it was actually pretty good. But everything, and I mean damn near everything he said about crypto is

Comments

[the_agent]

I read "Angels & Demons" from Dan Brown. Terrible book about an anti-Catholic antimatter plot implemented by the Illuminati.

The thing is, I can't be arsed to research anything about stuff I write as fiction, so I can see where Brown may be coming from. I mean, from where I stand, writers are allowed to muck with anything they want to, though they should expect some flak from those who work or play in the fields they're portraying.

Technically, the writer's defense may be: if we don't say it's "real-life", we have no obligation to paint you a picture of today's technology, even if tomorrow's technology would have no better chance of solving mathematically impossible scenarios.

Thinking about it now...good Lord. If we truly knew what we wrote about, all we could write is what we already know, and the idea of fiction would be wasted. It's not for rehashing what we know, that's for textbook writers.

Not to say that by going "well, it's fiction" makes all trespasses go away, since there's a certain level of removal from "present-day" that is generally expected if a novel wants to stretch reality a bit, but authors should have some liberties.

Let's just hope his publicist didn't play it off as "technically accurate".

[zanfur]

The thing that REALLY got my goat was that he thanked two anonymous NSA officials for giving him the information, and that the head of the NSA has a blurb about how it's so accurate, and if the public only knew they'd be so scared, blah blah blah. It was definitely portrayed as technically accurate. His website, incidentally, has a blurb claiming that his research is impeccable. He's definitely portraying his works as technically accurate.

I recently read Angels and Demons, myself. It was much better than this book, although quite inaccurate on the whole "creating antimatter" bit. According to the blurb at the front of the book, labelled at the top of the page with the single word "FACT" in all caps, CERN had just made this feasible. I also recently read Deception Point, also by Dan Brown, about a NASA "we found evidence of aliens" scheme, which is horribly inaccurate about what's survivable at the polar caps (I'm sorry, but if you fall in the water, even if you manage to get out you're dead).

The only book of his that I can't immediately poke holes into is The DaVinci Code. I wonder if he did more research into that one. That one was really quite good.

Anyway, yeah. I agree that fiction can bend things a little. Issue is, this isn't a little -- it's so far off that he really should have been using different words. It's like he decided to redefine what radio is. Sure, it's fiction -- but when you talk about radios, your readers expect the same radios they see around them and in their cars.

[the_agent]

There was an article that I read not too long ago about common mistakes when writing science fiction.

One had to do with having to redefine everything.

The remedy was simply stated. "Some things are going to last a while. If they're drinking coffee in your story, just call it coffee."

[the_agent]

You know, it'd be weird, but not implausible, if the government were instructing its own three-letter agents to endorse privately-authored books that scare the public.

Pretty low-budget, easy to staff, easy to separate from.