Da Vinci Code the book
I have recently had the opportunity to read two extremely bad books.
First, about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Let me start off with saying that every (and I am not exaggerating, absolutely every) time that the book included a technical detail that I was familiar with, the book got it wrong. Things like Lenardo da Vinci being familiar with the transcriptions of Egyptian hyerogliphics (in reality, the Ancient Egyptian writing system was not decyphered until the 19th century). A postage stamp-sized solar cell powering a hard drive (in reality, such a cell could not supply enough power; a flash memory chip would be feasible though). A modern secret society using Renaissance-era glorified bike locks to hide its secrets (in reality, the “cryptex” could be defeated in ten minutes with a Dremel tool). Tracking a man by a GPS transceiver as he walks thought the Louvre museum (GPS is line-of-sight to the satellite; if you are inside a building, it won’t work unless you are standing right next to a window). A modern cryptographer studying transposition cyphers in university (in reality, such schemes are considered so deeply obsolete that modern cryptology books don’t even mention them).
And how did something like
The agent nodded. “Very advanced surveillance. […] A lot of this gear is as sophisticated as our own equipment. Miniature microphones, photoelectric recharging cells, high-capacity RAM chips. He’s even got some of those new nano drives.”
Collet was impressed.
make it past the editor?
Hell, the main point of the book — that before the Catholic Church and Nicean creed everyone had worshipped the Sacred Female — is … ludicrous. Perhaps Dan Brown is unfamiliar with Zeus, Jupiter, Apollo, or the fact that pagan Roman emperors were deified? And perhaps he is unfamiliar with the status of Virgin Mary — who in Catholic theology has essentially become a goddess equal to her son?
Still, if you, like Dan Brown, set out to write a truly bad book, it is not enough to sprinkle glaring inaccuracies and obvious non-sequitors on every page. You must also treat your audience like 6-year old children (by repeating your book’s point every ten pages). You must make sure that all your characters are clichéd stereotypes (incompetent French cops, traditional English aristocrats, zealous Spanish priests and the like). Oh, and don’t bother developing them. Make sure to use a standard set of exotic locales. Make sure to explain every mystery in excruciating detail — you don’t want your readers to think. Make sure that your book reveals a “secret” that your readers won’t care much about, overhype it, and drag out the revelation for far too many boring pages.
You must make sure that your writing, your words, your imagery are all no better than a school student’s English homework assignment.
It unfortunate that such a fascinating topic (early Church history, Gnostic theology, and the various scriptures that didn’t make it into the Nicean Bible) was popularized — and misrepresented — by such an awful book.