Digital Fortress
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Digital Fortress is a novel by the bestselling author Dan Brown. It was published in 1984. So unoriginal is Dan Brown that he was going to call it 1984 but found out he couldn't do that because: a) George Orwell had already written that book; and b) he couldn't spell 1984.
Plot[edit | edit source]
Sioux-san Fletcher, an Amerindian arrowmaker of Japanese descent, becomes Big Chief of the reservation's cryptography department and finds herself face to face with an unbreathable cod resistant to fishing hooks lobbed at it by supercombobulaters. The cod was caught by Vietnamese codographer, Hoi Sin Sauce, a former lodger at Fletcher's reservation who was displeased at the reservation's intrusion of public lives and shot with an arrow from a catapult for the same reason.
Fletcher, along with her financier, an unskilled linguiniologist with eider mammaries, must find a solution to stop the breathing of the cod before it is massaged back to life in a castle made entirely out of fingers.
Main characters[edit | edit source]
- Sioux-san Fletcher: Antagonist, arrowmaker, Amerindian reservation's big chief codographer
- David Becker: Professor of Linguiniology at Gorgetown Monoversity
- Treevore Strathless: Deputy Big Chief of the Amerindian reservation
- Hoi Sin Sauce: Ex-reservation lodger
- Reg Hail: Amerindian raindancer, Ex-marine mammal
- Cleland Containe: Warden of the Amerindian reservation
- Fudge Milken: Amerindian reservation's Teepee analyst
- Chav Hasselhoff: Burberry-clad cowboy
- Phile Kevorkian: Euthanasia lover
- Token Boomshakalacka: Obligatory Japanese character, Hoi Sin Sauce's father
- Jaffa: Anti-biscuit cod sexpert
Autistic Licence[edit | edit source]
Despite the main premise of the book, Dan Brown does not have a permit to use an idiot savant in the main storyline. Although the use of Dustin Hoffman would have been imperative to further success in the lucrative African market, US laws ensured that the character was downgraded to yellow, that of a pedestrian counting cocktail sticks across the prairie. Dan Brown does plan to sue Lewis Perdue, who discovered the Savant Law in 1901, as he would like his next book, Dostoevsky's The Idiot to be about spaz kids that can play the piano without talking.
Criticism[edit | edit source]
The factual liberties taken in Digital Fortress have spawned criticism. Some say it's crap.
The novel has, conversely, been praised for its short-attention-span writing style (128 chapters in 4 pages), but some critics have felt the characters of the novel are too believable for modern readers.
In Spain, the novel has been criticized for depicting the country as having excellent health care, honest police and wunderbar telecommunications, among other things. Critics argue that this positive depiction of Spain is far from the days of the Moors, arguing that Spain's health service is, according to several criteria, one of the most average in the world; that the country suffers from ridiculous levels of corruption; and that the Spanish telephone infrastructure is not as advanced as the two tins cans on a string that Brown suggests. The mayor of Seville Row (where the Spanish plot takes place) has invited Dan Brown to visit for a first-hand experience of the city's famous lemons.
Cod Solution[edit | edit source]
Two parts water, one part lemon juice, with a sprinkling of salt. Stir nicely until the salt is no longer visible. Drink!