Link by Walt Becker





I was at the used bookstore desperate for some cheap bus reading, but I wasn’t finding anything. In desperation I spotted the neon orange cover of Link, which from the picture of a skeletal hand a quick reading of the back I assumed would be a silly little paleoanthropology thriller, probably about Neanderthals, because they were a hot topic a few years back.

Turns out I should have judged a little more by the cover. I didn’t notice that the hand on the cover only had four fingers and no opposable thumb. That’s because the missing link in human evolution was… an extraterrestrial!

Link is the kind of silly, cliché ridden thriller that you can tell was pitched to the publisher as “It’s X (a successful thriller) meets Y (a currently popular media property)!”  For example, I’m thinking of pitching a couple books myself. One would be The Hunt for Red October meets Lord of the Rings and the other The Da Vinci Code meets American Idol. If the publishers are able to resist those pitches I’ll just add “by way of The Matrix” on to the end of both of them and I’ll be well on way to getting that million dollar advance. Link was pitched as Raiders of the Lost Ark meets The X-Files. I have no inside information to confirm this, but that’s obviously what happened.

In the African country of Mali, Scully Samantha, a beautiful (is there any other kind of professional woman in bad thrillers?) paleoanthropologist, is digging near an extinct volcano when she finds a very unusual skeleton in volcanic sediment. It’s anthropoid, but tall with a large head. Any doubt of the origin of the specimen is removed when artifacts are found nearby, artifacts made of metal that can’t be made on earth. Rather than announce her discoveries to the world and become rich and famous overnight Samantha decides to keep them a secret and bring her ex-lover Fox Mulder Indiana Jones Jack Austin to the dig. Jack is a doctor of archeology, but he’s generally reviled by other archeologists because he believes that ancient man received educational and engineering assistance from extraterrestrials, and that there were technologically sophisticated human civilizations that were destroyed by cataclysms before recorded human history. But faced with the unknown Samantha decides Jack is the only person who can help.

After a series of very unlikely events involving the nearby Hovito Dogon tribe (famous for allegedly having advanced astronomical information about the star Sirius), Jack and Samantha find another half to one of the artifacts they found with the alien skeleton. Once the two halves are united a hologram appears point to a spot in Bolivia. Jack recognizes the spot as the ruins of the Inca city of Tiahuanaco. Through a series of incredibly unlikely deductions Jack figures out that if that on the equinox a certain gateway will make a “shadow marker” that will lead to something important. It’s only four days until the equinox and they’ll have to wait a year if they miss it, but luckily Samantha’s new boyfriend is Belloq Dorn, a super-rich industrialist. Is Dorn evil? You bet. He’s a South African who made his money gunrunning and his main henchman is named Baines.

Dorn is able to get them and a bunch of high tech equipment to Tiahuanaco just in time for the equinox, but really, the whole time limit is moronic. With an almanac and good surveying equipment you could figure out where a shadow would fall any day of the year. In any case, the shadow marks the Well of Souls a huge underground complex that somehow no one has ever found before, and in the complex our heroes find all the answers to how and why aliens intervened in human development. They also find The Ark of the Covenant The Source, an alien artifact of unimaginable power. But the CIA and the Bolivian drug cartels are moving on the site, and Dorn’s motives are not completely altruistic…

I don’t mind stories that use paranormal elements for a jumping off point in a good thriller, but Link is internally illogical and preachy. Author Becker actually believes all this ancient astronaut crap, as he reveals in an after word, and he uses his characters to try to indoctrinate us in the basics of those theories. In the process Becker proves that there is no field of science he understands. Some examples:

- Becker’s beliefs are based largely on Fingerprints of the Gods by Grahame Hancock, which claims the Sphinx was built 10,000 years ago, based on one study that suggested the monument showed signs of water erosion. Assuming the erosion could only have come from regular rainfall, which hasn’t been present on the Giza plane any time in the last 7000 years, Hancock goes on to make a series of bizarre unsupported assertions about the astrological significance of the Sphinx, leading him to the conclusion that the Sphinx was built by a forgotten civilization destroyed by an unknown cataclysm. The problem with this theory is that we know that the Sphinx has been exposed to wind erosion for at least the last 4000 years; easily long enough to destroy any evidence of earlier water erosion. If there appears to be water erosion now, it must be relatively recent! While the apparent water erosion is interesting, it has nothing to do with the Sphinx being excessively old.

- Throughout the book Becker has Jack quote various legend "the ancients" had that could refer to alien beings (called "the Shining Ones" by Jack), grafting Erich Von Daniken's ancient astronaut beliefs on to Hancock's ideas. The problem is that ancient people weren't all of one mind when it came to religion and myths. You can cherry pick various books on the subject of ancient religions for whatever elements you need. But if all these groups were describing the same thing you have to explain the extreme divergence in descriptions, not just ignore it. Also, Becker seems to have a little trouble with the concept of "ancient," quoting sources from 4000 years old to relatively recent sources as little as 500 years old as if they were all written at the same time by the same people.

- On pg. 179 Jack observes that the doorway they find at Tiahuanaco is 150 inches by 75 inches. This is significant, he says, because that’s Phi, or the golden ratio, a concept he says ancient man couldn’t have known. Becker makes his character look like a moron, because Phi is a ratio of ~1.618, while 150/75 is 2. One side being twice the size of another is not really that advanced a mathematical concept.

- On pgs. 336-342 Jack and Samantha discuss the “proof” that evolution never occurred. (The most zealous believers in this "lost civilization" aren't happy to just try to prove history wrong… everything science has achieved in the last 400 years has to be proven wrong.) Jack repeats the old saw about how evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that in a closed system entropy can never decrease. What Becker leaves out is the “in a closed system” part. The earth, of course, is not a closed system, we’re constantly receiving energy from the sun. Becker even includes the example of our bodies aging to demonstrate the Second Law, yet how would Becker explain a tree growing from an acorn in terms of the Second law, or a baby becoming an adult? Systems can become more organized over time, so long as energy continues to be added to the system.

On pg. 337 Jack brings up the coelacanth as more evidence that evolution is wrong. The survival of the coelacanth to modern times is fascinating, but has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution doesn’t require old species to die off. If a species continues to out compete other species in a certain environment, the species can survive indefinitely. Also Becker is apparently under the misapprehension that the modern coelacanth is identical to the species known in the fossil record. Not at all. The modern species is far larger than any fossil coelacanth, and there is evidence that it lives in a different environment than the extinct species. If anything, that’s proof that evolution happens. The species changed over time in response to changing conditions.

- The idea that “the Shining Ones” only have four fingers and no opposable digits is pretty stupid. That configuration would make it difficult for them to manipulate simple tools. It seems especially unlikely when Jack and Samantha find a hand-sized cube in the alien ruins. How could the aliens ever lift it without using two hands? Life must have been very frustrating for these aliens.

Link is not a very good book. The writing is rudimentary, like so many bad thrillers written with more of an eye on the eventual Hollywood screenplay deal than the reader's enjoyment. The ending is also a cop-out. Just avoid Link.

I'm about to start The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. That should be a few months of fun reading.

Posted: Sun - June 27, 2004 at      

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