Okay, some of you may remember that I was going to do a post on some books when I experienced some technical difficulties. Here goes a second attempt.
I've finished Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown, who also wrote The Da Vinci Code - which is a book I haven't read. And, well, A&D was all right, but I didn't find it particularly amazing.
The basic plot was 'Mysterious murder in CERN leads Hero Guy on a trail to the Vatican where he also runs into the Illuminati'. Okay, fair enough. But it just came out kind of bleh. There were always things that had me kind of wincing and jolting me out of my suspension of disbelief.
First up was the astounding ignorance people seemed to have about CERN, like it was some kind of top-secret organisation. Though perhaps ordinary people aren't geeky and know about massive particle accelerators. Also at CERN, someone (the guy who had just been murdered, in fact) had managed to synthesise large amounts of antimatter. Specifically, as far as I could tell, he'd managed to isolate a huge number of positrons. (I say 'huge', because there were, like, nanograms of these things. They're the antimatter version of electrons - that should give you some idea of just how tiny these particles are). Now, this is a reasonable gimme. But I'm not entirely sure the author knew what he was dealing with.
For one thing, a scientist was proudly complaining that he had 'created matter out of nothing' as he'd created a bunch of particle-antiparticle pairs. Now, while what he actually did is impressive, he didn't create matter out of nothing, he created matter out of soddingly huge amounts of energy from a thirty-kilometre particle accelerator. E=mc^2, and all that.
Later on, another (living) scientist, claimed the antimatter would be 'chemically identical to hydrogen'. In fact, a sea of positrons were being contained in a magnetic field (at least he got the metallic appearance right). This is not hydrogen, or even antihydrogen. Antihydrogen would be characterised by its cheerful disregard of magnetic containment and things going boom around it. Not once was any kind of deal made about the massive positive charge this stuff would have - neutrally charged things would stick to it, even with the magnetic field in the way. Given that a major plot point was that this stuff got hidden in the Vatican and people couldn't find it, that's something of a stuffup.
But that's a relatively minor gripe, for all that it kept annoying me. No, my real gripe was the Illuminati. Now, maybe I've been overinfluenced by Illuminatus! but these Illuminati were piss-poor. Only the Illuminati in the Tomb Raider movie were less impressive. Apparently, they were founded in the 1600s by Galileo, an association of rabid atheists who wanted to bring down the Catholic Church. (In an unrelated gripe, somehow the Catholic Church is responsible for the Bible Belt in the USA. Now there's a conspiracy for ya.)
For fuck's sake, if I want to read about Illuminati, I want to read about the scheming manipulators from before time began who have always pulled the strings. I want to hear about the foul rites the Templars performed before the skull Baphomet, I want to hear about how the Order of Hermes were subsumed giving the Illuminati magical powers, I want to hear about the nameless blasphemies committed in the name of The Being That Picks People Up And Sometimes Puts Them Down Somewhere Else... actually, just hearing about Adam Weishaupt (If I've got the spelling right) and even fucking Bavaria would be nice. Not this namby-pamby stuff where 'Satanist' gets used as a buzzword. (IIRC, dialogue something like "They were Satanists." "Satanists?" "Not exactly.")
So, all up, it was better than Ice Station. But that should be no surprise - my comparisons with Ice Station often include rubbing one's face in red-hot gravel or genital mutilation with rusty cutlery. But my recommendation is, essentially, that it'd pass the time.
On the other hand, I highly recommend Weapons of Choice, by John Birmingham (yes, the He Died With A Felafel In His Hand guy). It's an alternate history - a multinational carrier group is moving in to an Indonesian crisis in 2021. Tagging along is a research vessel one of the group's cruisers had been babysitting and was unable to get another escort. It creates a wormhole, chucking the majority of the group through to 1942.
Most of the transported ships arrive in a clump more-or-less right on top of the US Naval expedition to Midway. While the crews are all unconscious from the Transit shock, one of the 1942 ships happens across a task force member... from the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.
Mayhem ensues, and the Axis aren't left out of the fun. The Japanese get to capture one of the Indonesian navy vessels that was transported, and loot another that appeared halfway into a mountain in New Guinea.
Birmingham does a great job of portraying the culture shock of the eighty-year gap between the travellers and the locals. And it's boggling how far we've come since 1942... as someone points out, they don't even know what DNA is. Not to mention the way non-whites and women are treated in the Allied countries. And then there's the question of the German, Italian, Japanese and even Russian members of the task force.
I'm looking forward to further installments of this series. The concept is nothing new, perhaps, but the execution is sterling. I don't have any moments of disbelief like I did with A&D. Even when HRH Harry Windsor, Captain, SAS, gets involved.
And it is rather amusing the couple of references to 'space lizards invading' that get worked in. The man's read his WWII alternate history as well as his normal stuff, I see.
And for those who have skimmed through this entire thing: Read Weapons of Choice by John Birmingham. Read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown only if bored.
I'm ending this transmission.
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