Carl Nelson’s Brilliant Review of the Alten “Book”

I hated the damn book and I think “Weak of Truth” is silly

It reminds me of how the Scientologists would buy up all of L. Ron Hubbard bent science-fiction just to show that he's a bestselling author. This whole idea seems the product of some juvenile mind. It would make more sense if Alten were a particularly cogent, persuasive voice for 911 Truth, but he is mediocre at best. So count me in for 911 Truth - count me out on "Weak Of Truth" and supporting Alten's badly written book.

Here is what I wrote about "The Shell Game" on DissidentVoice.org

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I’m fascinated and well-read in 911 Truth and Peak Oil subjects both, but ‘The Shell Game’ is an instantly forgettable formulaic construction of pulp fiction. The tone of the writing is low-calibre. The essential ideas involved in 911 Truth and Peak Oil are not explored well at all. The novel completely fails to warn, educate or prompt the reader’s deeper reflection because the story does not grab the reader like quality writing does.

I think I must be handicapped for having developed an appreciation for the art form of telling a story with depth, intelligence and detail - because, in comparison to well-crafted literature, Alten’s plot and style are little more than script-jottings for a second-rate action film proposal.

Each “chapter” is no more than about 2-3 pages. Short as they are, chapters are even further broken up into widely separated scenes of a few short paragraphs, each one irritatingly written in the present tense (the constant one-dimensional drone of present tense is what makes this pulp read like a template for a cheap movie).

A fragmented, jumbled story-style actually works in literature when each of the segments has enough crafted personality to survive for more than a few milliseconds in the reader’s mind. When crafted properly, the fragments of such a story are pieced together in the reader’s mind like a puzzle being solved - until the denouement when suddenly everything becomes clear. However, Alten abuses this writing style to stultifying extremes. He doesn’t even bother to create a puzzle, instead he produces a kaleidoscopic shattering of broken story shards that fails to live up to its promise as a “window” through which readers may examine the murk of our mysterious recent political history. The fractured style of the novel itself creates a disjointed shell game of story line that buries any hope for clearer perception of the deep politics behind 911 or Peak Oil . I surmise that Alten employed the fragmented style of “The Shell Game” in order to hide his inability to create a sense of authenticity.

“The Shell Game” is touted as a “political thriller” but the novel does not possess any political intelligence - nor wit, nor any superior background knowledge of how the real military industrial complex works, nor of how a shadow government MIGHT have conceivably conducted a false-flag psyop on American soil. But, you know what? The book DOES have excellent cover art. The picture on the cover with the words “The Shell Game” emblazoned over it, is about the most politically intelligent thing in (or on) the novel. One doesn’t need to crack it open to learn much more than what the graphic designer accomplished.

Let’s look at one of “The Shell Game’s” story fragments. At one point, the protagonist, Ace Futrell, takes a plane to Riyadh, SA in order to enter a large bank. He plans to surreptiously insert a CD-ROM containing Promis software into an ordinary desk computer found on the the bank’s main customer service floor.

This Promis software on the CD-ROM will infiltrate the bank’s money centers around the world (and those of other banks too), stealing billions (even trillions) of dollars (from only the bad guys’ accounts, of course) for the express purpose of funding clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels thereby defeating the evil US political establishment, American oil cartels and other bad actors. This is the kind of plot one might find in a cartoon! Especially since none of the prior story dealt with Ace’s ability to program the Promis software to do what he desired it to do.

When Ace gets into the bank in Riyadh, he is greeted by a Saudi bank manager who queries Ace about his business objectives in the country. Ace says that he is engaged ina $2 billion/yr sports memorabilia business and produces one of his company’s latest products - a piece of gum “that will give you the freshest breath in the bank”. He urges the bank manager to try a piece.

“Al-Kuwaiz unwraps it. Hesitates, then pops the yellow rectangle into his mouth. The gum is laced with Burrundanga, a soluble powder better known in Columbia as Zombie Dust. Made from the Borrachera plant, Burrundanga has been called the world’s most dangerous drug as it leaves its victims in a virtual coma, preventing the brain from recording any and all memory until it wears off hours later.”

Make no mistake, there had been no previous reference to Burrundanga poison or Ace’s ability to obtain such a substance! Ace is just somehow able to produce it right there in the story! It’s like Looney Toons cartoons, where Dawg has the uncanny ability to suddenly produce a shotgun from behind his back to blast ol’ Foghorn Leghorn’s beak, sending it spinning around his head. This is just one bloody awful example of bad story construction in Alten’s trashy novel.

“Ace removes the CD-ROM from the John Lennon’s Greatest Hits case, along with the Yankee’s yearbook. Sliding his chair next to Al-Kuwaiz, he feigns reading the yearbook to the comatose manager as his eyes dart to the monitor. Casually, he leans under the desk, opening the computer hard drive’s CD tray. He quickly positions the CD-ROM containing the Promis worm
inside, then closes the drawer.

A command pops up in Arabic, Using the mouse, he double-clicks on the prompter, his heart pounding as the timer bar pops up, signalling that the worm is downloading.

Ace checks his watch: 10:38 a.m. Referring again to the yearbook as if it is the Koran, Ace pretends to point out passages to his Saudi Arabian zombie, silentlyurging the downloading bar to move faster–
–unaware that above his head, mounted in the ceiling behind a mirrored decoration, the bank’s security camera is recording everything.”

Later in the story, billions of dollars start disappearing from villainous huge bank accounts all over the world because of the Promis worm that Ace loaded onto the bank manager’s desktop PC - to benefit clean energy industries, notably E85 corn ethanol!
One thing is for sure: with authors like Alten around, we’ll never run short of corn! and we all know how bloody awful a solution E85 corn ethanol is to our energy problems! How very thoughtful of Alten to pull that already-proven-worthless solution out of his ass for us.

Sorry people, “The Shell Game” is a worthless book, even in it’s formulaic way. Maybe someday a more inspired writer will step up and produce a more worthy piece of historically-based fiction that explores the genuinely interesting and ominous piece of history we have been living through since the year 2000.

Before reading it, I wrote an email to George Kenney of ElectricPolitics.com suggesting that he contact Steve Alten to do an interview. Kenney has done programs covering both 911 and Peak Oil in the past. However, Kenney wrote back saying essentially the same thing - that he had bought a copy of “The Shell Game” and found the writing style “not his cup of tea”. So I hardly think that I am alone in my criticism.

[No you are not Carl, and after reading your great and funny -2 Star review, I can save all that monopoly money I might have spent on “The Shill Game” and put it towards a purchase of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which all my friends are telling me I must read immediately. The Douglas Reed books that the G man (WTCD’s own DougReed ;) has been raving about, and do sound eminently check-outable, are also on my summer reading list.]