Monday, September 20, 2004
"Deception Point" by Dan Brown
During Philosophy, I was again zoning out and not listening. I was crouching over my book behind Mr. Manaois, my head bent over it, reading...or pretending to read.
ML: What do you call... Can I ask you--
For some reason, I lifted my head and looked straight at him. I had no idea who he was talking to or what he was talking about. But he was looking at me and must have seen the blank look, which might have looked somewhat surlish, that was on my face.
ML: Ah...let's call someone else this time. O, Mr. Salvosa, what do you call that small part you put at the start of a book?
Heh. I guess the bashing he got during consultation last Friday from us creative writing majors. I'd told him then that I was not a walking dictionary. I can just imagine those words running through his mind when he saw the look on my face, warning him to backtrack on what he was about to ask me. Though he still did call on a creative writing major.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just finished reading the Dan Brown book, Deception Point, about twenty minutes ago. I got it as a birthday gift from Cerz and Yumi.
If you don't want any spoilers about the book, stop right here!!!
I admit that at first, I expected it to be boring. I mean, I've heard about Dan Brown a long time ago, what with his bestselling Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I'm a Roman Catholic by technicality, but I'm not very devout, and I didn't really want to read some book about the church, which was what I thought both books were about. So I never read the books.
When I got Deception Point, I wasn't sure whether I would like the book or not. But I found out some days before that the previous books weren't religious books at all. They were thrillers. So, I decided to give the book a chance.
To summarize my feelings about it using the classic Naomi Pitargue statement, I think it's goooooooooood!
The story's both a political and a scientific one. It's set in the United States, not long before the presidential election. The two candidates (or at least the ones mentioned in the book) are the current president, President Zach Herney, and a senator, Senator Sedgewick Sexton. Senator Sexton is currently the one topping the election polls because of his platform: to do something about the overbudgeting of NASA.
NASA is one of the pet projects of President Herney, who has always admired the way the space station is exploring the universe for still unknown truths. But, unfortunately, NASA is constantly highly overspending on projects with no satisfactory returns, such as the search for extraterrestrial life. Senator Sexton found out about this, through his assistant, Gabrielle, with whom he had an affair. He decided to use this as his platform by inciting the people's outrage over the government's generous allocation of the taxpayers' money to the NASA when the schools were inadequate because of lack of budget. He also wanted to move NASA to the private sector. Secretly, too, Senator Sexton is accepting illegal campaign funding from the private sector who wants access in space by promising them that he will pass a bill that commercializes space.
So it looked like President Herney was sure to lose. Coincidentally, he had been virtually incommunicado for some time now, and nobody, including most of his staff new what was going on with him, and they were afraid that he was planning to pull out of the presidential race. Then, one day (the entire book was two days), he asked an intelligence-gister (I'm not sure but from what I understood, she summarizes intelligence reports into 1-2 pages to be submitted to the president or something), Rachel Sexton, who just happened to be the estranged daughter of Senator Sexton, to meet him, against the advice of Rachel's NRO boss, William Pickering. Then, without telling her why or where she would go, the President sent her with a pilot, who flew her to the North Pole, I think the Milne Ice Shelf. There, she met the commander of NASA with his team, as well as four civillian scientists, and discovered what was going on and why the president had gone underground for some time.
Apparently, NASA's PODS (something that detect anomalies on earth) had detected something buried about 300 feet underneath the ice shelf. They suspected it was a meteorite, a fragment from the Jungersoll meteorite that had crashed into the earth sometime within the early 1700s. When they drilled into the ice and got samples, they discovered fossilized creatures on the rock. A bug. Which made the creature an extraterrestrial creature. This discovery was the most momentous discovery NASA could ever have and it would do a lot to help President Herney's ratings in the polls, proving that his support of NASA was justified.
President Herney decided to keep it all hush-hush for awhile until they determine the meteorite's authenticity. He sent the four civilian scientists there to determine the authenticity of the find and document it so that they wouldn't be considered biased when the discovery is released. There's Michael Tolland, a famous oceanographer and TV personality, Dr. Norah Mangor, some really smart scientist, Dr. Wailee Ming--I forgot what he is--and Dr. Corky Marlinson. Rachel Sexton was sent to learn about the discovery and be able to inform the president's disillusioned staff why their president seemed to have forgotten about the election. Since she was his opponent's daughter, her words would have even more credibility.
And so it happened. But just when they had sent the documented video of Tolland to White House, the civillians discovered something. There were evidence of bioluminescence plankton in the spot where the meteorite had been extracted. This is important because they had believed and had stated in the video that the ice shelf, with the meteorite and the fossilized bug in it, was sealed to all outside elements. If the public got wind of it, they would think NASA lied to them, and what else could they have lied about? They also discovered that the extraction site contained saltwater ice, which contradicted earlier reports.
So, Dr. Mangor, Dr. Marlinson, Tolland and Sexton went to take GPR pictures (I'm not sure what that is) of the extraction site. To their shock, they discovered a picture of Dr. Ming floating in the extraction site...he had earlier discovered the plankton glowing in the site and had fallen into, with the help of mysterious special operation people who had reason to want to prevent anyone to investigate the extraction site. They also discovered a second shaft right below where the meteorite had been leading to the ocean (or sea?) right underneath the ice shelf. That was when they realized that someone had gone in a submarine underneath the ice shelf, and with the use of a payload, had drilled a hole underneath the ice shelf, inserted the meteorite inside, and had let the ocean water fill the drilled hole with water until it froze again. Someone had wanted the meteorite to appear as if it had been buried in the ice shelf for three hundred years, making it look as if it had been a fragment of the Jungersoll meteorite.
They weren't able to go back to the NASA base to share this discovery because the same special operation soldiers who had pushed Dr. Ming into the extraction site ambushed them. Dr. Mangor was killed, but the other three escaped using some sort of glider that dragged them, with the use of the very fierce Arctic wind, away from their attackers. But they ended up falling into the ocean, again with the help of the special ops, where the Delta Force, the special ops, assumed they would eventually die of exposure.
But they were found by some coast guard ship and resuscitated. When they finally recovered from their near freezing, they tried to contact the president to inform him of the discovery right before the press conference that would inform the world of the meteorite and destroy Senator Sexton's poll rating. But the senior adviser of the president, Marjorie Tench, intercepted the call, heard Rachel's story, and thinking Rachel had backed out at the last minute and was trying to sabotage the president, refused to give the phone to the president and hung up. So, the press conference went underway.
Rachel decided to contact William Pickering, her boss, and tell him what happened. When Pickering heard about what happened, he asked whether there was any chance the meteorite was fake because it was the only logical reason why someone would bother planting the meteorite in the ice shelf, when the only thing important was the fossils in it. But Dr. Marlinson and Tolland insisted that it couldn't be because the fusion crust (the burned outercore), the chrondules and the nickel content of the rock could only be found on a meteorite. Plus the fossillized bug, which looked like gigantic lice, couldn't be found on earth because it's exoskeleton would not allow it to grow to such a size because of gravity.
But as they journeyed back to civilization, their theories began to disintegrate.
1) they realized that the fusion crust could have been artificially produced by some new invention that only NRO knew about...an invention that produced high quantity of hydrogen, which was found in larger than usual amount in the fusion crust of the meteorite sample.
2) the gigantic lice could have come from very deep parts of the ocean that couldn't be reached by humans, where there was less gravity to keep them from growing large.
3) the chrondules could have been created in the same high pressured depth of the ocean where the lice could have come from.
4) the nickel content wasn't exactly on the midway range that was normal for meteorites. It was just "close" to the midway range.
To make what is now a very long story short, they discovered that the meteorite and the fossilized bug were a fake. Rachel suspected that the NASA had made it up to boost their credibility and help President Herney win the election. She and the others went to great extent to get back to Washington and inform the world of the mistake.
But the Delta Force's controller had discovered that the three were alive. The unknown controller then ordered the Delta Force to find them and kill them for real this time so that they could not tell anyone of their discovery.
There's so much more and many more subplots, but this is already long, and I'm tired. Anyway, it turned out that it was William Pickering who masterminded it for "the sake of national security" so that they could keep the NASA from becoming privatized and commercialized by corporations who would have billions to gain from such. He tried to kill Rachel, Tolland and Dr. Marlinson, but in the end, he died, and the three were rescued.
As for Senator Sexton, when Pickering was trying to kill the three, including Sexton's daughter, Rachel managed to fax the evidence to the senator. The senator, despite the news that someone was trying to kill his daughter and despite a call from Pickering telling him that Rachel would be in serious danger if the evidence ever got out, found it an opportunity to bring down President Herney. What was more, he thought that Rachel's probable death would probably help give him sympathy votes from the public (sick dad huh?).
But Gabrielle, his assistant, who had discovered Senator Sexton's illegal dealings with the private space corporations, and who had been sickened by Sexton's plans to use the evidence and her daughter to win votes, managed to switch the evidence with the evidence of the illegal dealings as well as their affair, which would ruin the senator.
There. I know the last several paragraphs have been shortened considerably, but it's almost 10, and I want to sign out.
# Lyn found a missing piece @ 8:41 PM 
Comments:
deception point was ok. very predictable story. I thought "angels and demons" was his best work, but i'm guessing you're staying away from books with religious plotlines.
you might want to try "Digital Fortress" then. pretty fun read.
Without Wax
fish
you might want to try "Digital Fortress" then. pretty fun read.
Without Wax
fish
naka ng lups! sinulat talaga yung summary. dapat nga angels and demons yung ibibigay namen kaso wala na sa national. pati na yung da vinci code. kaya ayun..
"ma, i'm in national buying a book for edlyn."
haha. waw. you tink it is good.
"ma, i'm in national buying a book for edlyn."
haha. waw. you tink it is good.
# posted by 
: 8:35 AM
: 8:35 AM
Hmm, actually, i'm thinking of reading the da vinci code :) i thought before it was a religious nonfiction book, but i found out it and angels and demons are thrillers... i might like it :)
yeah, the deception point was kind of predictable...i guessed who the bad guy was before it was mentioned, but i found it pretty good, especially since it made stuff you learn in school more interesting... It made it easier for me to understand some of the concepts we were taught in science :)
by the way, who's fishball?
Post a Comment
yeah, the deception point was kind of predictable...i guessed who the bad guy was before it was mentioned, but i found it pretty good, especially since it made stuff you learn in school more interesting... It made it easier for me to understand some of the concepts we were taught in science :)
by the way, who's fishball?
