He has found the answers to two questions that humans have spent centuries pondering: Where do we come from, and where are we going? What he has uncovered, he thinks, will "shatter" the foundations of modern religion, and possibly bring about its end. He's underselling the discovery, of course this isn't a sneak preview but an advance warning. He has called them all together to inform them of a discovery he's planning to announce in the coming days – one that, in his words, "will affect the world's faithful in a profound way." The first name the reader encounters belongs to that of American inventor and futurist Edmond Kirsch – think Elon Musk meets Ray Kurzweil – who, at the novel's outset is meeting with leaders from three of the world's major religions at a mountaintop sanctuary in Catalonia. There aren't a lot of holds that are barred. He describes the novel as "quite aggressive" and "very frank and candid.
"Anybody who reads this book is going to know exactly how I feel," says Brown, 53, on the phone from his home in New Hampshire. His new novel, Origin, which will be published around the world on Tuesday, will probably satisfy those same readers who adore Brown's work, and will most likely annoy the non-believers who still can't understand why he's one of the world's most popular authors. It became one of the bestselling novels of all time, with tens of millions of readers taking as gospel the every word of "Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconography" Robert Langdon, while critics attacked Brown's book as historically inaccurate, or blasphemous, or just not very good. Such provocations should come as no surprise, really Brown has been a thorn in the side of organized religion – and, specifically, the Catholic Church – ever since his novel The Da Vinci Code, which turned the search for the Holy Grail and Jesus Christ's possible descendants into an over-the-top, can't-put-it-down conspiracy-laden thriller, was published in 2003. Same with Poseidon and the tides – all of the gods in the ancient pantheons fall to science, mainly because the questions that these gods answered were answered by science." Thor, the hammer-wielding Norse god of thunder and lightning? "Science figures out, 'Oh, wait a minute, that's just static electricity in the atmosphere,' and Thor is banished. He runs through a list of once-mighty almightys and the moment they lost their influence. "It's my belief that if you look at the historical timeline," he says, "it's naive for us to think that our current gods will survive." If proof is required, says the megaselling novelist, all one has to do is look back at the world's bygone deities.
According to Dan Brown, God's days are numbered.
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