Book # 12: Digital Fortress

Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown

I love to read. I'm the person who reads every post in a museum simply to absorb the information. Reading is a surefire way to build vocabulary, and- as an aspiring writer- to build writing technique. While there's a lot to be said for scholarly texts and non-fiction books, sometimes I just need to plow through a book for the sake of plowing through a book. If you want to call them "guilty pleasures", so be it. I wouldn't call it mindless reading; the desire to read the occasional sensationalized page-turner, in my opinion, just means I want to be entertained for a time. Non-fiction can get dry (anyone who says their lives have been NON-STOP entertaining are full of it...despite my travels, sitting here typing a book review does not constitute excitement.). Some works of fiction- including MANY classics- can seem outdated and fail to grasp the reader. Cryptic texts, similarly, fail to entertain me, particularly if I am meant to deconstruct the work. As a result, a Dan Brown read is a welcome break.

Dan Brown, for those unfamiliar with his work, is the author of The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, among others. The stories have become formulaic by this point, but are well-known to be page-turners. Having read the aforementioned #1 best-sellers, as well as Deception Point- an earlier work that pre-dates Robert Langdon- I decided to go back to Brown's first endeavor in this style of writing, Digital Fortress. It's hard to imagine anyone has not read either of Brown's best-known novels, so here's a rough shot at describing the process for those who- for whatever reason- haven't picked any of them up...
Like Guinness, Dan Brown is good for what ails you. If you read/drink.

Digital Fortress, like Brown's other works, are quickly-paced, and feature jumps from one storyline to another at random, chapter by chapter. In this particular book, there are three or four storylines all going on at once (much like television's 24), which means that just as you're getting attached to one storyline, the chapter abruptly ends, and switches over to a new storyline for the next chapter. This works in many ways, not the least of which is the modern need to break things up into little pieces, so as to not grow monotonous. While it can get disorienting at first, this approach works very quickly, as there is always one focal point of the book. In this case, unbreakable computer text and codes divide people into two camps: the NSA- who have created a machine which can break any code in rapid time- and a rogue ex-employee whose dying action was to release a code which this machine cannot break.

Now, that alone doesn't grab me as a particularly pressing premise. However, the result of this encryption is that a virus has been infecting the NSA's database and with it, the online security of the U.S. government. That's something I can imagine. Throw in some back-stabbing and rogue agents and whatnot, and it's a fairly interesting story. Susan Fletcher- the story's main character- has more than a few things rattling in her brain, including a fiance who's gone missing and a co-worker she believes may be in cahoots with the villian of the novel. In any event, Fletcher does enough to entertain and keep the story flowing.

However, there are certain downsides to the plot of this story (again, from the perspective of someone who wants to be entertained). The first of these is that the machine does all of the work. The first two-thirds of the book constantly check back to "the machine" and how long it has been working on cracking the encryption code. Standing around waiting for a machine to do something? Not exciting. The second of these downsides is that it all seems so laughably outlandish. Brown's flair for the spectacularly dramatic has modest-by-comparison roots in Digital Fortress (as opposed to say, a pending anti-matter explosion above the Vatican). While it makes for entertaining reading, the absurdity is a take-off from what begins as very believable roots; I can totally grasp the NSA and computer hacking and all of that. It's when an international chase for a ring turns into a killing spree that I start to re-think the authenticity of Brown's early claims. That's a shame, really, because Brown goes to a lot of trouble to come up with a solid premise based on fact, scientific, cultural, or artistic.
How the times have changed...

The third and most uncontrollable downside to Digital Fortress is that it was published in 1998. Technology moves at such a ridiculously fast rate these days that some of the computer details are grossly outdated. While super-genius compter technicians still start from the ground up, so to speak, advances have made certain elements of this book obsolete. Let's collectively note that this is not Brown's fault. However, much like the movie The Net, it hasn't aged well at all, and requires a bit of back knowledge of what was going on in the world of computers in 1998 (think AOL). In any event, this at least is a source of some amusement, as I could only think of Encarta through certain chapters.
All kidding aside, even the tagline is shockingly old-sounding.

Overall, a well-intended first effort. Like many rookie efforts, Brown shows a glimpse of what's to come, while coming short of reaching the potential of an international block-buster of a story. Perhaps if I had gotten on the train at its origin, I would appreciate its destination a bit more. However, knowing and acknowledging that, it is clear in this first attempt at a gripping novel that Dan Brown is definitely on to something entertaining and gripping. And really, in the grand scheme of things, that is sometimes precisely what I'm looking for.