BKANGDEM.RVW   20000223

"Angels and Demons", Dan Brown, 2000, 0-671-02735-2, U$24.95/C$36.95
%A   Dan Brown dan@danbrown.com www.danbrown.com
%C   1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY   10020
%D   2000
%G   0-671-02735-2
%I   Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster
%O   U$24.95/C$36.95 212-373-8500 212-698-7541 www.simonsays.com
%P   448 p.
%T   "Angels and Demons"

Dan:

Thanks again for the advance copy of your second book.  I *did* enjoy
it, a lot, and I'm also glad to see that your science (and math :-)
has improved quite a bit: important if you are going to continue with
techno-thrillers.  You tend to telegraph your "surprise twists" well
in advance, but the imagination and creativity in your plot is very
promising indeed.  Work on the endings, though.  That one is, if you
will pardon the expression, anticlimactic.

In this book you are not only on a more stable technical footing, but
I was interested to see that you've included a lot of what might be
termed "technical trivia."  In this regard the book has a great deal
in common with the recent "Acts of the Apostles" (cf. BKACTAPO.RVW) by
John F. X. Sundman, which is getting a lot of the same type of
Internet activity as "The Blair Witch Project."  In fact, he uses a
lot of the same elements that you do, although, in my opinion, you do
a much better job.

The technical material in this book covers a broader range than was
used in "Digital Fortress" (cf. BKDGTLFT.RVW), and you seem to be
using it in a much more realistic way.  The stuff on particle physics
and particle accelerators is good, and the biology fits in nicely.  I
can fully appreciate the references to American scientific
parochialism and it's a very nice touch indeed.  Even your
aerodynamics (and aquadynamics) is well done: although I wouldn't want
to bet my life on it, others have, and survived.  But I should point
out one or two things ...

First, let's take the particle physics.  You seem to both get and miss
the point that particles have to be charged in order to be controlled
by magnetic fields.  As your antimatter particles are being created,
they are being deflected before becoming charged by having the
"electrons" stripped off.  The electron stripping is a nice touch
(electron "clouds" being much larger than the nucleus, and therefore
possibly more subject to collision), but the process would very
quickly produce a lot of very hot, very highly charged xenon gas,
since the antimatter electrons would be annihilating normal electrons,
releasing energy, and creating xenon ions.  Your antimatter would also
be extremely highly charged.  Essentially, you would be ending up with
a bunch of antimatter protons (in one case 1.5 times ten to the twenty
third power of them), all furiously repelling each other. 
Congratulations: you have just created the world's largest static
charge.  Simply moving the thing would probably cause lightning
storms.

In regard to finding confidential information on Web pages, it is true
that a lot of people, using automated tools, don't realize how much
data they are putting on pages.  However, the content does have to be
on the page: it isn't likely that someone would forget that they put
their home phone number on the page, and you don't have to know Tim
Berners-Lee to get the page source.

You note that the antimatter bomb could not be detected, since it
could be created without any metallic parts.  I'm not so sure about
that, but I am sure that metal detectors usually work by measuring
magnetic fields.  The bomb would have to have one whale of a magnetic
field.  It'd be pretty tough to get it through airports.

Cell phones, regardless of encryption, have to be trackable simply in
order to place the call.  Also, cell phone locations can always be
pinpointed pretty accurately, and the European GSM system is possibly
better in this regard than the American PCS.  A video camera, even a
narrow band security camera, would have to be putting out a pretty
good signal, and so should be able to be traced.

And, although it's vital to the plot, I have to tell you that
helicopters have a severely limited ceiling, certainly much lower than
you would want for safety.  Also, nothing flies up anywhere near as
fast as they fly horizontally, not even helicopters.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2000   BKANGDEM.RVW   20000223