Digital Fortress

Digital Fortress is probably my favorite book of all time. It is a fast-paced, exciting, and a real page turner of a book. One of the reasons I like the book is because it is a science fiction, and he clearly tells you what is and is not real. In the author’s note at the beginning, he states that all the agencies listed in the book, like the NSA, are real and their duties are the same as they are in the book. It shows that he has done a lot of research on the subject and he knows how to incorporate it well in the book.

Digital Fortress starts off in the house of David and Susan Becker, two newlyweds. Susan wakes up and finds David is gone and he has left a note for her on the table. The note says that David has left town but he will be back as soon as possible in order to go on their scheduled vacation. David did not realize this at the time, but he would not be back for a while.

NSA

The person that sent David on this journey was Susan’s boss, Mr. Strathmore. He was the head of the NSA, and David could not say no to him because he was Susan’s boss. The NSA is a government program which is in control of finding valuable information and presenting it to the president. The way they get this information, though, is by reading others emails. Since people nowadays have been worried that others are spying on them, they have put codes on their emails ranging from a couple letters to a billion. Secretly, inside the NSA, there is a machine called TRANSLTR which knows how to decode these emails. This machine has saved many lives, including stopping a bomb minutes before it blew up. This machine has been able to decode everything, that is, until someone made an unbreakable algorithm. He posted it on the internet so people can see it and he is offering the passcode to the highest bidder. If anyone obtains this, they will practicly rule the world, and the the NSA will not be able to read anyone elses emails. Therefore, the US will not be safe from threats.

Dan Brown

So, while Tankado (the person with the passcode) was in Spain, he unexpectedly died, and he had on him a ring which had the passcode for the algorithm. So, Strathmore sent David Becker to Spain to get the ring and bring it back. Through many events and a lot of scary situations with people following Becker, he finally obtains the ring. While this is happening though, Strathmore turns into the bad guy, and he needs the passcode for other personal reasons. After many mistakes made by the NSA, they are in need of getting the passcode so that all of their information will not be released to the public. This information includes all their past missions, information related to secret things, and much more.So to make a long story short, the passcode is given to the NSA just in time to stop the release of all of the highly secretive files from going on to the internet. Its hard to explain in a short synopsis since there is so much going on, but that is the gist of the story.

Here is a trailer for the movie.

I recommend this book to anyone, because it is truelly a great book. I finished it within a couple days because I could not put it down. I would also recommend any of the other Dan Brown books, because they are the same way.

Many newspapers and articles were very fond of this book as well, including the David Pogue of Macworld Magazine who said: “A techno-thriller is only as thrilling as its realness—and if Dan Brown’s gut-churning story were any realer, it plot turns would hurl you against the wall.” Also, the Providence Sunday Journal said it was “[m]asterful…with a gradual acceleration and intensification of dangers that held my attention from the first page.”


Amazon said that "In most thrillers, "hardware" consists of big guns, airplanes, military vehicles, and weapons that make things explode. Dan Brown has written a thriller for those of us who like our hardware with disc drives and who rate our heroes by big brainpower rather than big firepower." Amazon also said that "You'll find yourself better understanding the political battles over such real-life technologies as the Clipper Chip and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software even though the book looks at the issues through the eyes of fiction."

Sources:

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