Dan Brown's Inferno
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 12:56 pm
Well ok - I know it's not exactly high end stuff but I finished it a week or so ago and yes - I admit it - I thought it was fun. Browns trick with his Langdon series [and it's a clever one] is to go to a major tourist destination - Rome, Paris, Washington etc - and write an adventure/mystery story that pulls in all the major tourist sights that it is likely you have been to, and weave a plot around them. Thus in Inferno, the narrative is set in 3 centers, Florence, Vennice and Isanbul, and takes in the main visiting spots of each. Thus if you are fortunate enough to have been to the places involved [I have been to two of Inferno's settings and am now hankering to go to the third] you are treated to a sort of 'deja-vu' trip around the holiday you enjoyed whatever many years before. In these circumstances the somewhat fascile nature of the plotlines [not to mention the pretty bad writing] almost fades to insignificance and there is much enjoyment to be had.
One point - as always Brown begins his work with a preamble stating that the science, art works and organisations in the story are for real even though the story itself might not be. Well, yes - I suppose up to a point; there have been a few criticisms of this claim tied to previous such statements in his books - but I would like to explore the one made in Inferno just a little deeper.
Without giving too much away the suggestion is made in the book that there is a strong following among population experts for the idea that the virtual exponential growth of population size seen over the course of the 20thC. is totally unsustainable. Malthusian theory states, they say, that under circumstances such as we are currently experiencing re the increase in human numbers that not only will some factor 'kick-in' to reduce population size, but in all likelyhood that factor will be 'catastrophic' in nature rathar than effecting a controlled reduction in numbers. In Dan Browns world this catastrophic reduction will be such as to threaten the very survival of the species as a whole; ie If we don't get our numbers under wraps - and fast - it's game over! Can antone tell me - is this view-point 'for real' amongst population scientists as Brown would have us believe - or is he just hamming it up for the audience as he has been wont to do before?
One point - as always Brown begins his work with a preamble stating that the science, art works and organisations in the story are for real even though the story itself might not be. Well, yes - I suppose up to a point; there have been a few criticisms of this claim tied to previous such statements in his books - but I would like to explore the one made in Inferno just a little deeper.
Without giving too much away the suggestion is made in the book that there is a strong following among population experts for the idea that the virtual exponential growth of population size seen over the course of the 20thC. is totally unsustainable. Malthusian theory states, they say, that under circumstances such as we are currently experiencing re the increase in human numbers that not only will some factor 'kick-in' to reduce population size, but in all likelyhood that factor will be 'catastrophic' in nature rathar than effecting a controlled reduction in numbers. In Dan Browns world this catastrophic reduction will be such as to threaten the very survival of the species as a whole; ie If we don't get our numbers under wraps - and fast - it's game over! Can antone tell me - is this view-point 'for real' amongst population scientists as Brown would have us believe - or is he just hamming it up for the audience as he has been wont to do before?
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