| Title | : | Cryptonomicon |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 1152 |
| Publication | : | First published May 1, 1999 |
| Awards | : | Hugo Award Best Novel (2000), Prometheus Hall of Fame Award (2013), Locus Award Best Science Fiction Novel (2000), Arthur C. Clarke Award (2000), Prometheus Award Best Novel (2000) |
All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes—inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe—team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.
Cryptonomicon Reviews
-
Disclaimer: Had Mr. Stephenson been more skillful in his prose/characterization/writing in general, I would not have paid nearly as much attention to the following issues. I read a lot of old dead white guy type literature, and am pretty forgiving so long as it's good. If it isn't, well, this happens. That is all.
Do not be fooled by the static nature of the star count above. If I had my way, it would be a roiling maelstrom of a typhoon crashing into lava, erosion and explosion steaming and spilling into a chemical equilibrium of monstrous proportions. It would be a much more appropriate way of symbolizing that there were parts of this that I loved immensely and others that still cause my vision to go red whenever I think on them for too long. However, as that is not a possibility without my use of GIFs to illustrate my point (Two words: Never. Ever.), you'll have to take my more long-winded approach to the matter.
Mr. Stephenson is the type of character that, if allowed onto a college campus, should be kept safe and locked away in the mathematics department. The physics department is a possibility, and computer science perhaps, maybe even biology, but the decreased removal from reality present in these areas increases the risk that this individual poses. This isn't a man you want teaching a history class or, god forbid, one of literature. Unless the literature class is completely devoted to math fiction (Or is it fanfiction? Not sure about that one), because every so often something gorgeous happens.If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a good. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness.
And that is the closest Mr. Stephenson gets to melding together beautiful prose with stunning mathematical dexterity. If he stuck with that, this review would much more positive, and probably a lot shorter. But, since he didn't, let us continue.
Now, there are multiple categories of anger-invoking pidgeonholing, enough that I feel that pidgeonholing the categories themselves would best convey the point of it all.
First off, Race:Randy figures it all has to do with your state at mind at the time you utter the word. If you’re just trying to abbreviate, it’s not a slur. But if you are fomenting racist hatreds, as Sean Daniel McGee occasionally seems to be not above doing, that’s different.
No. No. No no no no no. Did I stutter? No. It doesn't matter what the utterer's mindset is, period. What matters is the context of the utterance, the horrible history of its usage and the culture that it denigrates. So sorry that the word 'Japanese' is too long and difficult for some people to say/type/convey to another person for long periods of time, but they're going to have to deal with it. Their personal convenience doesn't matter in the slightest.
Second, Religion:In other circumstances, the religious reference would make Randy uncomfortable, but here it seems like the only appropriate thing to say. Think what you will about religious people, they always have something to say at times like this. What would an atheist come up with? Yes, the organisms inhabiting that submarine must have lost their higher neural functions over a prolonged period of time and eventually turned into pieces of rotten meat. So what?
I don't know if this is supposed to be satire, and I don't care. The message is bad enough, as once again, lack of spiritual beliefs is being confused with lack of morality/sympathy/empathy/what have you. Some may not believe this, but the human race is perfectly capable of acting decent and, dare I say it, humane towards its fellow beings, without religion. Amazing, isn't it. Moving on.
Next, Women:
I wish I was joking when I say that there is too much material for me to possibly convey in this review without pushing the limits of absurdity. So I will condense it into some bullet points.
One: There is a popular maxim in this book that holds women to be an effective means to an end of ultimate manly productiveness. Not only that, but women for some reason are completely aware of this, and manipulate men accordingly via controlling the rates of fornication permitted to those with a Y chromosome. Yes, because that's all there is to sex, isn't it. Love is just some barter system of producers and consumers, and any notion of emotional connection or meaning beyond it is a lie propagated by the chemicals seething in your body. Now, the latter half of that last sentence is biologically sound. I would hope that everything that came before it is some kind of ridiculous satire, but if it is, Mr. Stephenson's writing did not seem to think so.
Two: The definition of the words SEXUAL ABUSE and RAPE was expanded to include pursuit of relationships where 'power imbalance' is denoted by differences in economic status and/or physical capabilities in defending oneself. Again, I wish this was satire, but its delivery made it highly unlikely. And even if it was satire, it's not in the least bit funny or ethical to make light of rape culture in such a fashion. If the recent events of Steubenville and its aftermath haven't made that clear, nothing will.
Three: And we couldn't possibly finish off this whole debacle without a good old fashioned Men are from Mars Women are from Venus spiel. In the author's own words, those who put a higher priority "on having every statement uttered in a conversation be literally true" vs "People who put a higher priority on social graces". Then you get the typical longwinded 'it's not you it's me' excuse, and finally:"What I'm saying is that this does set me apart. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept—because everyone's been there—but rather his complete lack of embarrassment."
"Which is still kind of pathetic."
"It was pathetic when they were in high school," Randy says. "Now it's something else. Something very different from pathetic."
"What, then?"
"I don't know. There is no word for it. You'll see."
Hint: The word you're looking for lies on the long scale that ranges from "close-minded" to "bigoted asshole". Take your pick.
Finally, your Miscellaneous:…the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability.
Atheists are not in charge of anything, and in fact are one of the most hated demographics in the US. Look it up. Also, don't you think those who have to build up from scratch would be a little more adaptable than, say, the user manual types who are still squabbling over a particular patch of verses regarding a certain sexuality? A demographic that Mr. Stephenson made repeated efforts to proclaim that he was okay with, coincidentally. The thing about being a 'nice guy', no one's going to give you a cookie for pointing it out. That's not how it works.
In addition, if the phrase 'politically correct' was replaced with 'respects those who are different despite lack of understanding of their cultural heritage', and seen as less of a political theory pertaining to the liberals and more of a methodology of encouraging greater social well-being, the world would be a better place. And there would be less theories like the one in this book running about, which states that the only way to avoid Holocausts is to make sure the victims get proper guerrilla training. Very reminiscent of the current debacle over gun control.
But anyways. tl&dr version: Mr. Stephenson is your typical white male nerd that resides in the US. Smart in his specific field, little bit racist, little bit misogynistic, and screws up any attempt to try and claim otherwise. The prevalence of this attitude would've chopped the stars down to one, but he did write a 900+ book filled with some pretty interesting mathematical acrobatics and WWII business, so that added a star to the final result. -
Pretenses are shabby things that, like papier-mache houses, must be energetically maintained or they will dissolve.
Neal Stephenson has written an overlong novel focusing on the significance of cryptography both in the world today and the time of World War II. He links the two by using multiple family generations. The predecessors inhabit the early cryptographical universe of Turing and others, dealing with cracking German and Japanese cyphers. The latter family representatives are trying to develop a secure cryptography that will support the creation of a global monetary system, based on gold stashed in the Philippines near the end of the war.
Neal Stephenson - from the LA Times
Stephenson provides considerable payload here, providing details of cryptography then and now, and considerable analysis of gold as the basis for economic structures. He also tells us much about how business is done when global actors are creating the information economies of the future.
There is no shortage of action here. But it is at the expense of character development. To the extent that the players have an inner life, it is radically overshadowed by the external events in which they are involved. The female characters are barely explored here, hardly more than window dressing to the experiences of the men, with considerable emphasis on their looks. This was unwelcome.
Still, I enjoyed the book. It is an engaging read, and worth the trip for the information it conveys.
Review first posted - February 17, 2017
Published - May 1999
PS - I received this book as a gift from a rocket-scientist nephew in 1999. I wrote most of the above back then, but it was not posted until 2017.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s
personal,
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Other Stephenson books reviewed
-----2019 -
Fall or, Dodge in Hell
-----2015 -
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.
-----2015 -
SevenEves
-----2011 -
Reamde -
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, is to techno-intellectuals as Bryant-Denny Stadium is to redneck college football fans: it is a monument.
According to Stephenson in this very enjoyable, but lengthy book nerds won the Second World War and are keeping global society free from tyranny nowadays.
Weighing in at 1168 pages, this behemoth saddles up to the literary buffet line alongside
Atlas Shrugged and
War and Peace. How does a book this big get published and how does an author achieve that goal much less make it entertaining, endearing and just plain good to read? By being expertly written by a very talented author, who is also funny, making similes and metaphors that frequently made me smile and sometimes even laugh out loud.
Neal Stephenson comes across like a geeky Jonathon Franzen, blending erudite sci-fi qualities with meticulously crafted characterizations and rolling all into a cocoon of an intricate plot almost as puzzling as the cryptograms that form the foundation of the story. Comprising two related time lines that slowly blend together, Stephenson held my attention, sometimes making it difficult to put the book down.
Like
Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon (with a title that is a nod to Lovecraft) works on multiple levels and establishes parallels between times and generations.
Finally, this is an allegory for the information age and brilliantly illustrates that our treasure is where our data can be found.
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One of the problems when reviewing Cryptonomicon is that you could easily end up writing a short novel just trying to summarize it. Here’s my attempt to boil the story down to its essence.
During World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse is a genius mathematician who is part of the effort to break Japanese and German codes, and his job is to keep them from realizing how successful the Allies have been by faking events that give the enemies reasons other than compromised codes to pin any losses on. Marine Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe had to leave behind the woman he loves in the Philippines when the war broke out in the Pacific and after surviving some brutal island combat, he finds himself assigned to a unit carrying out dangerous and weird missions that seem to have no logical goals.
In the late ‘90s, Waterhouse’s grandson Randy is an amiable computer geek who has just co-founded a small company called Epiphyte that has big plans revolving around the booming Internet in the island nations of southeast Asia. As powerful people with hidden agendas begin showing an interest in Epiphyte’s business plan, Randy hires a company in Manila owned by former Navy SEAL Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe to lay an underwater cable. That’s just a sideline for Doug and his daughter Amy who primarily work as treasure hunters. When they make a startling discovery, it links the personal history of the Waterhouses and the Shaftoes to a lost fortune in Axis gold.
That makes it sound like a beach thriller or airplane read by someone like Clive Cussler, right?
But I didn’t mention all the math. And code breaking. And the development of computers. And economic theories. And geo-politics circa 1999. And how it was ahead of the curve about personal privacy. And it’s about a thousand pages long. And there's some other stuff, too.
Plus, Neal Stephenson doesn’t feel the need to conform to anything close to a traditional three act narrative structure. He’s also often the writing equivalent of Clark W. Griswald in the movie Vacation since he’ll cheerfully divert his readers four short hours to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth.
Sprinkled among all this are appearances by real historical figures like Alan Turing and Douglas MacArthur. So what you get is a book that should be a mess of infodumps and long tangets that ultimately don’t have anything to do with the story. And quite frankly, the ending is kind of a mess, too.
So whenever I read criticism of Neal Stephenson, I shrug and concede that there are many things about the guy that should make me crazy as a reader. However, the really odd thing is that he doesn’t. I’ve pretty much loved every book of his I’ve read despite the fact that I could list his literary sins at length.
What’s great to me about Stephenson is that it’s so obvious that he loves this stuff. When he takes up a whole chapter laying out the mathematics behind code breaking, it’s his enthusiasm for the subject that helps carry my math-challenged ass through. He’s not giving us elaborate histories or explanations because he did the research and wants to show off, he’s doing it because he’s a smart guy who is excited about something so he can’t help but go on at length about it.
The other factor that redeems him for me is his sense of humor. No matter how enthused Stephenson is, it’d still break down in the delivery if he didn’t pepper his books with some hilarious lines. Sometimes even his long digressions are done solely in the interest of delivering the funny like a parody of a business plan that includes gems like this:
“Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly-up and only returned her ninety-nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril--you are dead certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony.”
It’s also easy to overlook how these seeming digressions help build the entire story. When Randy is trying to retrieve some of his grandfather’s papers from an old trunk, he gets embroiled in his family’s attempts to divvy up his grandparent’s belongings. Since the family is made up of academics a whole chapter becomes a description of a mathematical formula based on an x-y grid laid out in a parking lot that allows family members to place items according to both sentimental and economic value while Randy has to try to find a way to diplomatically claim the papers. There’s no real reason for this scene, and it could have been cut entirely or boiled down a few lines about a family squabble. But the whole chapter is funny and tells us a great deal about Randy and his background by putting him in this context. It doesn't accomplish anything else plot wise, but it’s the kind of scene that makes this book what it is.
Even as a fan of the way he works, I still wish Stephenson could tighten some things up. The goals of Epiphyte and Randy shift three or four times over the course of the novel, and the drifting into and out of plots gets very problematic late in the game. It also seems like Stephenson had a hard time determining exactly who the bad guys in the 1999 story should be.
I should also note that although this is billed as a sci-fi novel as well as being nominated for and winning some prizes like the Hugo and the Locus, it really isn’t. There’s one small supernaturalish element that gets it that reputation, but I’d call it historical-fiction if I had to put a genre on it.
Even though this is a book that really shouldn’t work, the great thing about it is that it mostly does, and it’s just so damn clever at times that I can’t help but admire Stephenson.
Related material: The Baroque Cyle is the follow-up/prequel to this that delves even further into the history of the Waterhouse and Shaftoe familes. These are my reviews to the three hardback editions, but those were such kitten squishers that it was also broken up into a longer series of paperbacks.
Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System of the World -
Reading this book was a lot like riding in a car that steadily picks up speed and then stalls out. I wanted to like it a great deal more than I ended up doing.
I would be trucking along, really getting into it, starting to get eager about turning the page and finding out what was going to happen next, and then...some reference to "hairy-legged academic feminists" or the "Ejaculation Control Commission" or "those things women always say to manipulate men" and my enjoyment would come to a screeching halt.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision
here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
Smorgasbook -
My friend Stuart's reading this and I stupidly started spoiling one of the best lines in the book (it pops up as Shaftoe's motto) and he was mildly irritated with me. Fortunately for him, he is vastly smarter than me so while he was quite generously acting annoyed he was probably thinking to himself, "Maybe one day I will spoil math and engineering and the details of Riemann zeta functions for Conrad." Now I'm rereading it out of sympathy and it's even better than I remembered.
Anyway, while I haven't yet approached the implosion that I know is coming toward the end, I am really even more impressed at the catholicity of Stephenson's concerns than I was the first time I read the book. He has insightful things to say about information theory, natch, but also Tolkein, postmodern literary criticism (OK, he's a little reactionary about this, but he's also right), the wisdom of joining the Marines, childrearing, Filipino architecture and urban planning, facial hair (can you tell I love Randy's diatribes about Charlene?), Ronald Reagan, the assassination of Yamamoto and associated dilemmas of cryptanalysis, Papuan eating habits, the 90s networking bubble...
If you don't like writers who have something interesting to say about everything, I don't know why you read. If it bothers you that Neal Stephenson uses his characters as mouthpieces to voice his well-considered opinions on everything from the prospects of economic growth measured against the likelihood of revolution in the Philippines, for example, to the details of Japanese tunneldigging, then you might as well settle in with your Danielle Steele and be done with it. Stephenson knows a lot about everything, and that's unusual and should be treasured. As a stylist, he's no Hemingway. His stories have beginnings and middles but the ends are usually catastrophically bad. So what? He reveals enough about his subjects that you usually leave his books behind with the feeling that your brain is now fused in a slightly different way. And good for Neal Stephenson, and good for us. -
I am FINIIIIIISHED! I thought it didn't have an ending! I thought Neal Stephenson kept sneaking to my house and inserting more pages in the back while I was asleep! I thought he would never be appeased until I begged him to stop with a deck of cards, morse code and a wide variety of pleading looks!
This is a massive boy book. A MASSIVE boy book. It's got overwhelmingly male characters, and they do really boy things, like coding, and shooting things, and drawing logarithmic graphs about the last time they masturbated. I kept being surprised that I could open this book and it didn't immediately smell overpoweringly of old canvas and sweat. And I say this in the most endearing way, generally speaking - the characters in this book have no idea, none at all!, that I am not One Of Them, so I got to romp about with the best of them, messing about with submarines and mid-nineties hacker politics.
I should probably tell you at this point, that two of my favourite things as a mid-teenager were vintage pen-and-paper codebreaking and rambly adventure stories, so I was in my element. This book is very exclusive in many ways and I am sure that in any other context I would get the rabbit in headlights look of someone who knows they're about to be accused of being a fake geek and who doesn't know *quiiite* enough what they're talking about to put those (wholly ridiculous) accusations to rest - but as it was, for most of the time I was reading this, it was me and my comfy chair and my knitting and the printed word of Neal Stephenson, and I could slot myself into that narrow band of intended audience and roam around at my leisure. This book is a boy book, and while I was reading it, I was a boy. Which is a cack-handed way of saying that I am a nerd and I don't get to talk about polyalphabetic ciphers you break with frequency analysis and a pad of graph paper very often, and Cryptonomicon made me feel as much at home as I could possibly have wished for. Which is nice.
It's also a cack-handed way of saying I feel, in some way, like I shouldn't have felt at home? It was so chock-full of Tech Men and Soldier Men and Men Who Do Things Despite Slash For Their Womenfolk, that I genuinely felt like I was empathising on the wrong side of the divide at some points. Like I was having to sneak in and pretend I had a metaphorical moustache. Very odd. Ladies of Goodreads, is that a thing you understand? Men of Goodreads, when you read something very female led, like say Jane Eyre, or Rebecca, or whatever it is you emancipated chaps read these days, how do you feel? I've rarely felt that this strongly (*cough*Gorky Park) it was very odd. At any rate I am interested by how/how strongly this manifests itself in other people.
Back to the book! It's an info-dump; there is almost more info-dump than plot. Some of it I knew already and that was comforting, some of it really fired me up for playing with numbers a bit more. While I've been reading this book, I've been occasionally meeting a friend who's teaching me the basics-and-then-some of statistics, and I get the same feeling from that of channeling my enthusiasm into something practical, something that someone else is excited about as well. I liked the info-dump.
It starts off really slowly. There is basically no plot for probably the first two-fifths; certainly the first third. It is full of inside references and totally devoid of beginning, middle or end. If this bothers you, don't read it. It bothered me, for a while - that's why I put it down and came back a few months later. Or that's one of the reasons. The other reason is that it's NINE HUNDRED PAGES LONG AND NEAL STEPHENSON IS STILL TALKING.
In the end, I put it aside often, but always came back. There are very few books I can say that about, and of the others they were almost entirely written by Frenchmen. This book is not like those books. If you ask me, it's worth having a go at, and if you get 60 pages in and go cross-eyed at the tiny font, don't worry. You won't have missed much, and it's a nice place to come back to. I might even read it again, but it probably won't be for a while. A long while. -
2015 reread: In World War II, Bobby Shaftoe is a Marine, and Lawrence Waterhouse is a cryptographer. In the present, Randy Waterhouse is part of a tech start-up in the Phillipines. How are the two threads linked, other than by the mysterious Enoch Root?
Okay, so this kitten squisher is a lot more complicated that but after 1200+ reviews, it's hard to come up with teasers some days.
As noted above, this was not my first time reading Cryptonomicon. I first read it when it was published, way back in the bygone days before the world moved on. When it popped up for $1.99 on one of my cheap-o emails, I snapped it up.
This mammoth tome is classified as science fiction but could easily be looked at as historical fiction since the sf element is minuscule. Neal Stephenson weaves together multiple plot threads, three during World War II and one in the present day, and produces a fine tapestry of a novel.
On one hand, you have Randy Waterhouse, part of the Epiphyte corporation, a start-up dedicated to creating a data haven in the Phillipines. On the other, you have the converging tales of a Marine named Bobby Shaftoe, a cryptographer named Lawrence Waterhouse, and Goto Dengo, a Japanese engineer. As diverse as the elements are, Stephen manages to bring everything together. Eventually.
I was an apple-cheeked young lad when I first read this, back when the internet was still new to most of us. Now, as a curmudgeon 15 years older, I still enjoyed reading it quite a bit. Despite my usual intolerance for digressions, and this book has many, I found it hard to put down for long. The bits of history, cryptography, and the proper way to eat Captain Crunch all held my attention.
In the years between my first read and this one, I'd forgotten how hilarious this book can be at times. Lawrence Waterhouse is a bit like Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory, only less likely to have the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis if he were a real person.
Funny how some things never change, though. My gripes the first time through were my gripes this time. While I enjoyed the journey, the writing could have been tightened up a bit. I felt like Stephenson was driving around looking for a free parking space when there was already one pretty close to the door. Also, a part near the ending, which I will not spoil here, came out of left field and felt tacked on, unnecessary, and kind of stupid. Also, I maintain that Stephenson hasn't written a great ending since Zodiac. Other than that, I thought the book was pretty great. Four out of five stars. -
Cryptonomicon.
A >1000 page tech info-dump comfort read. Yes, comfort read,
I think this is my fourth read of this wonderful novel and it just keeps on giving. I'm still picking up new subtleties, offhand comments that I missed, imagery that was lost on me on the last time through. There is a reason why this is one of my favourite novels and why Stephenson is my favourite author.
Cryptonomicon is the story of money, value and information. Lawrence Waterhouse, a math genius, works alongside Alan Turing at Bletchley Park and responsible for misinformation and broadening the bell-curve. Alan cracked the codes, but how do we not let the enemy know we have broke the codes? Along comes Corporal Bobby Shaftoe and Detachment 2702 to ram battleships into Sweden, plant fake listening outposts and search for morphine at every chance.
In the late 1990s Randy Waterhouse, Lawrence's grandson, is setting up a tech business with an old buddy in the aims of setting up a data haven in a fictional asian sultanate. They get embroiled with some dodgy characters and make a business deal with Bobby Shaftoe's son and granddaughter. Underwater salvage.
There is much overlap here, with WWII events directly impacting on those 1990s events. It's dense, erudite, full of what many would call "too much information", but any decent nerd will bask and revel in. It's not a book you read for a while, it's a book you live in for a month. You'll be thinking about it at the bus stop. It will sometimes stop you in your tracks hours after reading.
“Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: "What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?"
Shaftoe doesn't have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night's eleventh nighmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!
"Just kill the one with the sword first."
"Ah," Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe's direction. "Smarrrt--you target them because they're the officers, right?"
"No, fuckhead!" Shaftoe yells. "You kill 'em because they've got fucking swords! You ever had anyone running at you waving a fucking sword?”
This book is a treasure. It is pure fun and escapism into a crude, adventurous world of maths, espionage and hidden messages. My 1999 edition with bible-thin paper is battered, folded, yellowed and as floppy as you'll feel when you finish it. -
I'm shocked by the critical acclaim this book received in the sci-fi category but I suppose even a turd can float. Two stars is really pushing it. Maybe a star for the number of laughs I got per 100 pages. This is the work of a technically inept egomaniac. He does have some technical background (he drops Unix hints and anagrams the name of a supposed deity who dies and then later comes back w/ no explanation??) However, it's not enough “savoir faire” for any of the content to make sense. It might sound dangerous to some but just plain stupid to computer geeks such as myself. It's obvious that this is not his first book by the way that the author is allowed to recklessly abandon the main plot (or any of the 4 sporadic narratives) for 70-100 page tangents. If he hired a first yr EE student to clarify some basic principles, snipped about 500 pages and got some ritalin, this book might be tolerable. Like many technical books or movies, I was utterly disappointed.
Why did I continue? First, it was a gift and I would feel ungrateful if I didn't give it a fair chance. Secondly, there are many alternating plots that the reader would naturally be led to believe that the lives of these men parallel each other in a different time and place. If you like mysteries, you can almost imagine how these people are related. This would have made the book entirely more interesting. But then nothing. I finished the book and whipped it across the room. Later, I skimmed the last half of this 900+ PAGE SLEEPER to see if there was an overlooked morsel of evidence that made all these separate lives connected which would have made all of the silent pain and suffering from that book worth something. Nothing. Exactly what I got from the book: nothing. -
"Over and over again we see the pattern of the Titanomachia repeated—the old gods are thrown down, chaos returns, but out of the chaos, the same patterns reemerge.”
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
I didn't like it as much as
Anathem or
Snow Crash, but like those two Stephenson novels Cryptonomicon has a large cult following, and was on the bleeding edge of a lot of ideas only starting to bubble up in 1999.
Stephenson's prose can go from poetic to obnoxious pretty fast and the tone of this novel was sometimes kinda ridiculous, but ignoring a couple big things that I generally rolled my eyes at -- I loved the novel. It moved, was moving, and came together very well at the end.
Think of this novel like a REALLY good war thriller (
Red Storm Rising) that runs with three or four distinct story lines and about a dozen characters that jumps to another storyline every 6-1o pages. So even when a storyline was dragging a bit, soon I was flipped into another zone that I enjoyed a bunch. It is also a fantastic historical war novel, focused on cryptography during WWII. So, it kept reminding me of other historical novels of WWII. It seeemed a bit like Wouk's
The Winds of War (except this book was strictly focused on areas mostly ignored by Wouk). Finally, it was a well-paced gernational/family novel (see Roots or The Godfather).
Anyway, it is a good book to read during the 2017-2018 boom (and perhaps bust) of cryptocurrency, since the 1997 portion of this novel deals A LOT with the establishment of a cryptocurrency (NOT a blockchain encrypted currency). Supposedly Paypal's founder Peter Thiel used to require his employees to read Cryptonomicon. It might be a myth, but if so, it is a good one. -
Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming says, that any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Including Common Lisp, added Robert Morris)
Lisp, to qoute L. Peter Deutsch, can make you realise that software could be close to executable mathematics.
Cryptonomicon is surprisingly similar to the previous paragraph, both as an analogy to the book, and for the useless use of computer-based qoute, just for the sake of it.
To start with, this book is way.... too.... long.
Just way too long. No real way of getting around it.
Cryptonomicon fails to carry its own weight, even if it didn't have so much of it.
It *is* a page-turner, which is good, seeing as it has so much of those, but more because there is very little actual content. Rather than drawing you in, it lets you drift over; instead of using the breadth of scope to mean something, it really doesn't.
The 2 WWII parts are more of a time-line rather than a story, and the third part, the actual story, is very weak, and no real connections other than some obvious ones, that is, don't expect any last minute golden thread that will tie it all.
There is a lot of fanfare around and in the book, and there's a whole lot of research thrown in for good measure, but there isn't much of a point, where you surface out of a 10 page description that is painstakingly detailed, with as much story in it, as if you took a break and went to read an encyclopaedia. Other such detailed descriptions include a 5 pager about the cars going in or out, a pornographic description of cereal eating, each of those gives the reader no added value other than to be impressed by the writer's way around words, which a good editor would've red-marked away had this been a debut piece.
Characteristics is shoddy, which is amazing for such a large novel. With 1100+ pages in paperback, some character development is expected, but characters here rarely act, and mostly react, being moved from place to place by the circumstances and the background characters that appear and disappear, without any excuse than the sake of pushing the plot forward, toward a very dull and, strangely enough, rushed, ending, which is not ever partially a conclusion and is an ending simply because the book ends there, leaving many threads hanging in mid-air. The only glimpses the author allows us into the mind of the characters is when a mathematical, military, or technological problem is in need of being solved. Other than that, there is a lot of inner monologue, but hardly any glimpses into the actual "inner" parts, resulting in characters moving from one state of mind to another with little to no reasoning.
This is a book that haven't decided whether it wants to be "techy" or about technology, resulting in parts "for the layman" and parts that demand some knowledge in computer tech to understand.
This is a book that attempts to tell us a lot, which is basically how good is the author in finding yet another meaningless, but semantically cool, metaphor.
This is a book that might've been, minus about 400-500 redundant pages and plus about 100 pages to close the remaining threads, a fun, intelligent read. At current state, its a smart-alek, overly self-important, and hardly elegant. -
Raz, keď zo mňa bude 130-ročná starenka, príde za mnou nádejná lokálna influencerka spraviť menší rozhovor: "Aby si mladí viac vážili, teta," zahučí mi do ucha, "čo všetko pre nás vaša generácia obetovala."
"Jáj moja," spľasnem rukami a dám sa do spomínania a keď už deckám porozprávam všetko o tom, ako som pašovala knihy cez tretiu svetovú a kde som sa schovávala pri prvom celosvetovom výpadku Internetu, nazrie lokálna influencerka nenápadne do poznámok. "A teta," odkašle si, "ešte nám povedzte, ako to bolo v tom dvetisícdvadsiatom roku."
Prestanem štrikovať a zamyslene nakrčím obočie. "Dvadsiaty, dvadsiaty...to mi nič nehovorí, srdiečko."
"Ale veď teta," zatvári sa influencerka trochu netrpezlivo, "ten pamätný dvadsiaty rok..."
"Jaaaaj," rozleje sa mi zrazu po tvári bezzubý úsmev. "Dvetisícdvatsiaty! Už viem!"
Influencerka s maskérkou si vydýchnu a ja sa opäť dám do štrikovania." Dvetisícdvadsiaty," zopakujem s pohľadom upreným kamsi do diaľky. "To bol ten rok, kedy som objavila Neala Stephensona." -
Neil Stevenson, at the time of writing this novel, is a visionary who predicted end-to-end encryption, in which payment for housing and communal services from anywhere in the world is our routine. In 1999 - a year before the millennium, twelve years before the big date, twenty-three before "here and now". And it turned out to be much closer to reality than the Chiropractor's pizza car from Avalanche or the nanotechnology of the Diamond Age.
Every creator has one decade in which he creates the best of what he is potentially capable of, for Stevenson these are the nineties: "Avalanche", "Diamond Age", "Mercury", "Cryptonomicon" - every book is a masterpiece. Among other things, the novel has become one of the peaks of postmodernism, then this essentially feuilleton era is rolling down.
At the same time, an adventurous action movie with war, fights, treasure hunts, amorous adventures of heroes, and complex multi-layered multifaceted intellectual prose. Strikingly modern in terms of the Internet, information security, the culture of cancellation and the absurd hyper-tolerance of today's society.
Стать мостом
Через год, вместо того чтобы идти в банк и говорить с человеком, вы просто запустите эту программу из любого места в мире.
Нил Стивенсон поры написания этого романа провидец, предсказавший сквозное шифрование, в режиме которого оплата ЖКХ или покупка билетов в кино из любого места в мире наша обыденность. В 1999 - за год до миллениума, за двенадцать лет до биг-даты, за двадцать три до "здесь и сейчас". И это оказалось куда ближе к реальности, чем пиццамобиль Хиропрактика из "Лавины" или нанотехнологии "Алмазного века".
Вещь из лучшей поры писателя. Если верно, что у всякого творца выпадает одно десятилетие, в которое он создает лучшее из того, на что потенциально способен, то для Стивенсона это девяностые: "Лавина", "Алмазный век", "Ртуть", "Криптономикон" - всякая книга шедевр. Кроме прочего, роман стал одним из пиков постмодернизма, после которого ничего столь же сложного и одновременно увлекательного в жанровых рамках не создано. Дальше эта фельетонная по сути эпоха закатывается.
"Криптономикон" одновременно авантюрный боевик с войной, драками, поисками сокровищ, амурными похождениями героев, и сложная многослойная многоплановая интеллектуальная проза. Поразительно современная в том, что касается интернета, безопасности информации, культуры отмены и абсурдной сверхтолерантности сегодняшнего западного общества.
Действие романа разворачивается в двух временных пластах: Вторая Мировая и условно наши дни, в немыслимом количестве пространственных локаций от полюса до экватора. В фокусе внимания нечто тайное, загадочное, скрытое, и весьма ценное. Что-то, что необходимо найти самому, как можно лучше спрятав от противника. В материальном выражении и для наглядности это золото, серебро, антиквариат - да целые коробки, набитые деньгами. Но главный предмет интереса все-таки абстрактная информация, владеющий которой, как известно, владеет миром.
Герои вне Системы. Назвать их борцами с ней, я бы не рискнула, но им удивительным образом удается демонстрировать отсутствие вовлеченности в требующее хождения строем правое дело, под знамена которого мобилизованы. Мозаичная, фрагментарная структура повествования до конца не позволяет составить сколько-нибудь связной картины. Большинство вопросов так и остаются открытыми. Множество сюжетных линий не то, что обрываются, но уходят в никуда, истончаются до полного исчезновения. Что, странным образом, не вызывает у читателя отторжения: парабола радуги или моста, обеспечивающая максимум в центре и спад к периферии (интереса, внимания, желания досконально во всем разобраться).
Ключевым элементом повествования становится шифр "Понтифик", кроме прочих значений, имеющий буквальный перевод "строитель мостов". И таки да. Стивенсон строит мосты от всего ко всему, а параболическая структура книги заодно уж связывает ее с другим постмодернистским шедевром, "Радугой тяготения" Пинчона.. Два главных героя "Криптономикона": Уотерхаус и Бобби Шафто, словно бы персонификации двух сторон личности Слотропа - предельно стимулированный интеллект, используемый для решения изначально нерешаемых задач, и особое свойство попадать в безнадежные ситуации, из которых, тем не менее, удается выйти с положительным балансом.
Оба романа подвергают серьезной ревизии уровень отвращения, который готов воспринять читатель, далеко выходя за рамки стандартов девиантности. В обоих за жанровым микстом из военного, шпионского, любовного, этнического романов, необычайно высокий уровень наукоемкости. Оба демонстрируют поразительный интерес к прикладной и академической лингвистике. Семантика, структурные связи, проблемы языкознания во всех возможных вариантах. Стоит также упомянуть фигуру Вечного Жида, играющего важную роль в общей космогонии. У Пинчона это Пиг Бодин, у Стивенсона Енох Роот.
Резюмируя: крутейшая книга. Безумно интересная, невероятно динамичная, пронизана тонкой иронией - никогда не бывает смешно до уровня уахаха, но понимающая улыбка к концу чтения даже мимические мускулы лица наособицу закрепляет (это не для красного словца, сейчас вспомнила остров Йглм и щеки сами собой сложились в привычную конфигурацию, от которой немного даже больно, как с непривычки от физической нагрузки).
А теперь для имеющих уши есть аудиокнига, которой роскошное чтение Игоря Князева придает дополнительного (на случай, если кому не хватало) блеска и обаяния. -
Aspire for fluency in geek speak? Is "Big Bang Theory" your idea of reality TV? Then I recommend this Moby Dick of nerd novels. Jay Clayton in his book
Charles Dickens in Cyberspace calls this book the “ultimate geek novel” (pg. 204-211) and draws attention to the “literary-scientific-engineering-military-industrial-intelligence alliance” that produced discoveries in two eras separated by fifty years, World War II and the Internet age. That's a good concise summary of the book.
Stephenson writes with a fascinating droll humor that lets the reader forgive him for explaining cryptography and mathematical problems in excruciating detail. This book offers an insight into the world view seen through the eyes of a genius. Everything that might be a beautiful sight or interesting view to others will appear to be an example of hidden intervals or patterns to the mind of a genius.
This is a turn of the century (20th to 21st) book that strives to pattern itself after a 19th Century novel in that the author uses hundreds of words in those locations where a dozen words would be adequate to carry the plot forward. However, the writing is so entertaining that the reader wishes that even more words would have been used. Stephenson repeatedly branches out on multiple subjects in independent essays that could easily be lifted from the book and used with slight editing for a standup comedy routine. However, the comedy routines would probably go over best in a college town where some physicists or mathematicians are present in the audience.
My tech-geek friends read this book over ten years ago, and they all recommended it to me. It wasn't available in audio format at the time, and I didn't want to invest the time required to read a book this big (928 pages, 42 hours audio). So I never got around to reading it. Then about a year ago it became available on Audible.com. So as usual, I've made it through a famous book about ten years after it's been read by everyone else.
I highly recommend readers of this book refer to the
Wikipedia article on this book. It explains which characters are fictional and which are historical, and it helps explain the nature of the various story lines within the book.
I can see how this book was even better when read at the height of the dot-com and fiber optic cable bubble. Techie geekie things were newer then, and it appeared that we were entering the utopian age of Aquarius that would lead to perpetual prosperity. Does anyone remember the promises made that the new information age would be free of recessions and business cycles? Since ten years have elapsed since it was published, the reader can detect some signs of the book's age by noticing that there are no smart phones, iPads or iPods (it was the zenith of the CD Walkman era). Windows NT was new then. It was pre 9-11 so the emphasis in the book is on the inconvenience of customs inspections over that of security checks prior to getting on board.
Most of the book can pass as plausible historical fiction. But there are a few Stephensonian inventions that definitely belong in a science fiction novel. Below are some of the imaginative examples:
Qwghlmian -- is a fictional language that allegedly hails from some fictional British islands in the North Sea. It has 16 consonants and no vowels making it nearly impossible to pronounce. To complicate things further, there are two mutually non-comprehendible dialects of the language, Inner Qwghlimian and Outer Qwghlimian. Confusing the mid-glottal with the frontal glottal can, in one instance, completely change the meaning a sentence.
Rocket propelled submarine -- This book has the WWII era Germans advancing in submarine technology parallel with their development of jet engines in airplanes. Supposedly this quiet and new generation of hydrogen peroxide propelled submarines could stay below water for days.
RAM made from plumbing -- A character in this book constructs a digital computer with addressable random access memory (RAM), and it was made from plumbing parts and other primitive stuff. It happens during WWII which was the pre-transistor era, thus he used drain pipes filled with mercury with electrical level sensors that created the binary signals necessary for a functioning digital computer. (If a computer like that were made today, EPA would declare it to be a Federal Superfund Site for toxic cleanup.)
Some quotations I found interesting:
A comparison of atheists and church attendees:
"… the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor…. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation…. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability."
A paraphrase of the fine print on a typical investment prospectus:
"Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document. Please dispose of it as you would any piece of high-level radioactive waste and then arrange with a qualified surgeon to amputate your arms at the elbows and gouge your eyes from their sockets. This warning is necessary because once, a hundred years ago, a little old lady in Kentucky put a hundred dollars into a dry goods company which went belly-up and only returned her ninety-nine dollars. Ever since then the government has been on our asses. If you ignore this warning, read on at your peril — you are dead certain to lose everything you've got and live out your final decades beating back waves of termites in a Mississippi Delta leper colony.
Still reading? Great. Now that we've scared off the lightweights, let's get down to business."
The difference between physicists and engineers:
"There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no … sense. … The engineers love … their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists … want to think they understand everything."
Link to Darwin8u's notes:
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/38897... -
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.
On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the
Locus Sci-Fi award. That’s 35 books, 6 of which I’d previously read, leaving 29 titles by 14 authors who were new to me.
While working through this reading list I got married, went on my honeymoon, switched career and became a father. As such these stories became imprinted on my memory as the soundtrack to the happiest period in my life (so far).
Cryptonomicon is a difficult book for me to review.
In many ways it’s amazing – so why not the give it the fifth star?
In many ways it’s infuriating – so how did it get the first four stars?
Simple answer? It’s too long!
Crypto clocks in between 900-1100 pages, depending on which copy you get – and the story is a rambling beast, full of whimsical tangents, studious digressions, chatty dialogue and endearing anecdotes.
It’s an absolute pleasure to read – I find
Stephenson’s writing a joy – but it goes in so many directions at once that it’s too often becalmed in the midst of the telling; any sense of forward momentum is diluted by the all-encompassing approach. Often you’re not sure which way is forward!
For me, this book is the perfect example of the ethos that…
“The journey is more important than the destination.”
I learned from this book. I learned about cryptography, maths, military tactics, history, engineering, business tactics, phreaking, currency, mining, academia, etc. But I also learned how to kick-back and enjoy the journey of a book – to stop waiting for the next plot development point to come along like clockwork.
Months after reading
Crypto I came back to
Stephenson’s
Baroque Cycle, the sequel/prequel trilogy to
Crypto and I loved it! To enjoy a book properly, I need to be in the right headspace – I need to know what I’m getting into and adjust my expectations accordingly. I didn’t have the right hat on for
Crypto – so I really enjoyed it, but still kept having little tantrums that it wasn’t doing what I felt it should. My experience with
Crypto helped me develop the right mindset to fully enjoy
The Baroque Cycle, and if I didn’t have so many other books on my list, I’d be tempted to go back to
Crypto a second time and see if I can now appreciate it more on the second go-around.
This is the book I was mid-way through when I got married. Some people sit up nervously on the night before their wedding – I just read a couple of chapters of
Crypto and sparked out. I read this on the flight for my honeymoon (between rounds of mushy newly-wed kisses). I finished it around the pool and on the beach.
In much the same way that
Blue Mars will forever be linked with the birth of my son,
Cryptonomicon will always bring to mind, for me, wedding bells and a feeling of glorious happiness.
Bobby Shaftoe, Randy Waterhouse, Lawrence Waterhouse and Enoch Root are all excellent characters – and the affection I feel for each of them is further enhanced by their association in my mind with the love I feel for my darling, bookworm wife.
P.S. Don't mention the lizard.
P.P.S. My only gripe with this book - and it's not even a gripe so much as an observation: Is this actually sci-fi? At all? No? Good. Just so we're all in agreement then. -
Arrgh! I don't remember a book that I both liked and didn't like this much!
Alright, a quick intro snipped from Amazon:
"Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, cryptanalyst extraordinaire, and gung ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first.... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed.... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."
All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties. "
Whew!
Stephenson takes 918 pages to spin his yarn and in the end I enjoyed most of the ride but I wondered what was the point. After 918 pages, that's not a good thing.
Pros:
1) It's a long book. If you like to settle down to a long book, this will do.
2) There is a strong pro-libertarian theme running throughout.
3) Some of his writing is quite good, entertaining, thoughtful, fun, thought provoking, well done.
4) He puts out some ideas that are really sharp. His discussion on Athena between Root and Randy got my little hamster wheels turning inside my head. He does this a few times.
5) Math. Not much but he uses actual math. And it fits with the story.
6) Cryptography. He uses actual cryptography and it also fits with the story.
Cons:
1) It's a freaking long book. If you like your books to be in the 200 - 300 page range, give this one a pass.
2) It just... ends. All the characters suddenly lose all the depth and charm Stephenson had imbued them with and it just stops. I think he should embarrassed that 900 pages weren't enough to end this in a satisfactory manner.
3) Was there a character not obsessed with sex? No? Right, right, I come from a Puritan background where I was beaten for having impure thoughts, but still, sex was a constant theme for just about every single character. It got really tiresome.
4) Potty mouths. The lot of them.
5) Sometimes his writing just sucked. Flat out bad. I wondered if he eschewed an editor.
6) Bobby Shaftoe's death. At the start of the scene where he dies, I thought "This would be the worst possible place to have him die after all the crap he went through" and, of course, he dies. Lamely.
So do I recommend this book? No, not really. It has some stellar moments, mired in dross. If you still want to read it, well, caveat lector. -
Look, this isn’t really a novel.
Huh.
Is there an echo in here?
I was thinking it had been several years since I last read a Neal Stephenson novel, but it turns out to be just under a year. I borrowed Cryptonomicon from a friend’s mother, because it’s truly not on that I’m a mathematician by training yet haven’t read the most mathematical Stephenson work. I put off reading it for a few weeks, because I knew that it would take a while. This past week was probably not the best week to read it—then again, would there have been a best week? I got lots of programming done on my website while avoiding this book, though.
This book is ostensibly about codes and code-breaking. I’d liken it to The Imitation Game, except I also have managed to skip that one somehow—and anyway, Alan Turing and Bletchley Park feature much less prominently here. Rather, Cryptonomicon follows a fictional friend of Turing’s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, who is a genius codebreaker. Waterhouse serves in the American armed forces during World War II, where he breaks codes (duh) and gets involved in other unlikely shenanigans. Stephenson develops this plot in parallel with one set in the present day (which is to say, 1999, which is, gosh, 18 years ago now). Lawrence’s grandson, Randy, ends up interacting with the descendants of many of the other characters from Lawrence’s story, as he and a friend try to set up a data haven off the coast of the Philippines.
That’s ostensibly the plot, but like I said, this isn’t really a novel and the story isn’t really a story. It’s more of a loose narrative framework around which Stephenson erects pages-long diatribes on coding, computer science, mathematics, and other very nerdy stuff. It is much like his later efforts of
Anathem and Seveneves, which are more about the philosophy of mathematics and how humanity might adapt to life in space, respectively, although of the three novels this one might have something most recognizable as a plot.
I’m not afraid to admit to skimming large portions of this novel. It’s not necessary to … experience … every word of Cryptonomicon to follow it. The connections among the characters are fairly heavy-handed, with Stephenson giving the reader plenty of opportunities to notice a familiar name, symbol, or meme showing up in a different place and time. Additionally, I can tolerate the fairly frequent tangents Stephenson has his characters go off on to explain one mathematical or cryptological concept or other; I’m less tolerant of how this spills over into the descriptions of simplest actions. Randy can’t possibly open his car door, no—this occasions nothing less than three meaty paragraphs on the manufacture of his car and the way the angle of the car door makes Randy think about a line of Perl code he wrote back in his university days. Perl, by the way, is a script people often use on UNIX….
Seriously, this book is not a well-edited, well-paced, well-plotted adventure. It’s Neal Stephenson making shit up about guys named Lawrence and Randy so he can tell you all the cool computer things he knows.
And to his credit, he manages to often be entertaining while doing so. For the most part, I enjoyed the segments that follow Lawrence. The role of code-breaking in World War II, and its concurrent stimulation of the invention of electronic computing, is an interesting subject that is often overlooked in historical treatments of that time. In addition to explaining how certain code systems worked and how the Allies broke these codes, Stephenson also takes the time to show us, rather than merely tell us, how encrypted communications were essential to the war effort. Moreover, he also points out the difficulty of breaking codes in wartime: you don’t want the enemy to know their codes are broken, because then they will change to a different code. So you have to throw them off the scent, so to speak, and create fake reasons for why you knew what the enemy was going to do. I don’t know how accurate this is to actual activities during the war, but it’s a fun corollary thought experiment to the whole activity of intercepting and reading enemy messages.
There’s also a fair amount of humour in here. I liked the highly fictionalized, summarized communiques between Bischoff and Donitz. I liked the portrayal of Colonel Comstock’s preparations for a meeting with Lawrence, girding himself and his team as if they were about to go into an actual battle.
Similarly, although I was less enamoured of the present-day plot and characters, I still like the general ideas. Stephenson was ahead of the curve when it came to talking about cryptocurrencies and even data havens. These ideas seem almost saturated, old hat here in 2017—but I imagine that in 1999, when the Web was still kind of a space for hackers and academics and military types, it was all cutting edge. Stephenson makes a strong case that there are different types of heroism, and that having a strong technical background can be just as valuable as being able to fight or being educated in a scholarly field like law.
I just wish that I didn’t have to wade through so much dull or outright dumb stuff to get to the good bits of this book.
This is the third book in a row I’m dragging for having a rubbish depiction of women. Honestly, people, it isn’t hard, but let’s go over the basics again so we stop screwing this up.
Maybe you should have women as main characters? There are very few named women characters in this book. Most of them exist as sexual and romantic interests for the men, who are the main characters.
Maybe your women should exist for reasons other than sexytimes? Amy Shaftoe is the closest we get to a female main character in this book. She is not a viewpoint character. She does not have an appreciable arc. She has an illusion of agency, but this is largely undermined by her purpose to exist as a manic pixie dreamgirl for Randy. Stephenson seems to confuse “strong female character” with “does lots of physical stuff/wears a leather jacket/I must imply that she might be a lesbian at least five times”.
Maybe you should stop being creepy? Cryptonomicon is super male-gazey in about every sense of the term. The narrator constantly mentions how much Lawrence or Randy need to masturbate, have sex, or otherwise ejaculate before they can “focus”. The male characters from both time periods make sexist remarks, talk about women, look at and objectify women, etc., in ways that are boorish and chauvinistic and stereotypical. There are more examples of this than I can count or possibly mention here. At one point, Randy and Avi are discussing a lawsuit directed at their fledgling company. Avi compares the lawsuit with a mating ritual, saying that their company is a “desirable female” and the lawsuit bringer wants to mate with them, and this is his way of posturing. Later in the novel, Randy spends a few pages mulling over how some women are “just wired” to want to be submissive to men, and that’s why Charlene ended up leaving him, because of course as a computer god, his brain can’t possibly be wired to understand little things like social cues. (It’s actually amazing, in a way, how Stephenson can manage to perpetuate stereotypes against both women and male nerds at the same time.)
It’s gross, is what it is. In any other book it would be bad enough. What really bothers me about its presence in Cryptonomicon is how it compounds, and has perhaps even influenced, given its age and status in the genre now, the portrayal of technologically-adept/minded folks (call them nerds, geeks, hackers, whatever). Young women interested in cryptography deserve to read a story about cryptography without constantly seeing the few female characters in the book objectified or reduced down to “biologically, women want to submit and have sex!” Young men shouldn’t see this kind of behaviour rationalized or played for laughs; they shouldn’t receive the message that nerds are somehow “programmed” to be socially awkward and therefore it’s OK to be creepy and male gazey all the time.
So Cryptonomicon is a book with a bunch of good bits too few and scattered among less good or downright weird and gross bits that I didn’t much appreciate. The mathematical, code-breaking parts of this book are good—really good. But, I mean, I kind of wish I had access to an abridged version with just those parts? Because wading through the, say, 80% of the book that isn’t those parts is just not worth the effort.
Honestly, so far the best depiction of mathematics in fiction I’ve come across is
The Housekeeper and the Professor, which doesn’t only depict math but also humanizes it intensely. (And before you ask, no, I haven’t read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime but I certainly plan to steal—uh, borrow—a copy lying around school one of these days.) Cryptonomicon tries to be a math nerd’s wet dream, but Stephenson’s insistence on mentioning his male characters’ wet dreams just doesn’t work for me.
-
One day I went out shopping for a book. My list of unread, prepurchased titles sat neatly in a stack by my disused fire-place and none of them set me alive with anticipation. I don't know what I wanted really, but I had a vague idea that there was a black book with numbers on the front that was a New York Times bestseller, and I quite fancied something clever related to code breaking or numbers. So I hopped on the subway, rode into Union Square and strolled over to B&N on 17th street and found what I was looking for on a Paperback Favourites table. I read the description, and the first few pages and decided it was good and worthy of purchase. That book was Cryponomicon.
I read the first chapter or so back home on my bed, with tea and toast, and I decided the writing style was tricky, and hard to get used to in terms of rhythm, but I quite liked this tough as nails army guy in the first chapter so I stuck with it.
Stephenson has a sprawling, divergent, off on a tangent way of writing, but there is such pleasure in every aspect of the subjects he explores, and his narrative ambles back over to the central plot points enough that you never feel annoyed or frustrated. If anything you feel a sense of gratitude for his skill and for his curiosity, and the manner in which he imparts complex ideas.
Of all the authors I've ever read, I feel most strongly about Neal Stephenson because he has genuinely enriched my life and broadened my understanding and appreciation for history and ideas.
One of the best scenes in this book follows the story of a Japanese man whose boat is blown up. His comrades are eaten by sharks and he endures hell before the end of his story. It is so vivid and alive and such a wonderful piece of writing. He took a character who could have been a foot-note in the story if he chose it to be so, and made something beautiful. That's why this is a truly great book. -
Neal Stephenson likes to throw weird shit together and see if it sticks. The more recent his book, the more likely it is to resemble a schizophrenic's curio cabinet. Your average
Phillip Pullman will add a little wacky trepanning to his fantasy trilogy for that refined edge of esoteria.
Meanwhile, Stephenson will have an exiled member of Italian royalty who works in 'demolition real estate' and knows Escrima thanks to an intense trepanning session with Horace Walpole, Duke Orford. Which I believe is an accurate summary of the next William Gibson book.
One man's premise is another man's plot.
I liked it better when Stephenson used the bizarre as a spice to flavor a driven, exciting story. Though spices may make a dish delectable, they aren't palatable on their own; you need some meat. I guess what I'm saying is: who the fuck wrote
Snowcrash and when will he write something else? -
This is my third Neal Stephenson book. You could say I'm a fan of his work. You would be correct in such a statement. But, this is not for everybody. His writing style is dense and there is a great deal of information being presented to you. More so than the intricate nature of the information is the fact that, sometimes, the author will take you down a bizarre side track that will actually make you sit there and think about what you just read. If this doesn't seem like something you'd enjoy-then skip out on Neal Stephenson. This is a large book and if you're not down to go through some really fascinating ideas that may have not much to do with the plot, then I'd not even bother.
Now for the rest of you that don't mind utterly bizarre side tracks and very high end ideas that actually require you to think (how solitaire can be used an encryption algorithm) and form concepts in your mind-then you will love this dense work. What is it about?
There are two time frames where the story takes place, one being during World War II and the other in "modern" (1990's?) times. The cryptography WW II story has to do with the famous minds of Dr. Turning and Dr. Waterhouse who broke the German and Japanese codes. It then becomes a story about the founding of the NSA and in the modern timeline it is a story about building a "Crypt" to store information that governments can't break into. How does this all flow together?
The lynchpins are the families who keep appearing- the Shaftoes, the Waterhouses, the Goto's, etc. The story jumps back and forth between World War II and current. The families have changed in that the current generation are the grandchildren of the ones described in World War II. More than that I will not say. It's hard to explain such an amazing plot and I shouldn't. Discover it for yourself.
The Marine Shaftoe, the Japanese Army Goto Dengo and the priest Enoch Root are the best characters in here..but there is a lot in here.. just a taste includes Nazi German U-boat commanders, hidden gold, angry Filipino rebels, Japanese Army units, U.S. Marines, Douglas MacArthur, a scary venture capitalist known as the Dentist, an unbreakable cypher as well as various and sundry different side tangents (the equation for optimum masturbation was funny)-well you're starting to see why Neal Stephenson can be a Love or Hate thing. Me? I love this.
One of the more unique books and minds out there. Finishing one of his books feels like the end of a day in undergrad- having studied multiple subjects and beginning to grasp that they might all fit together after all. If this seems too tedious then yes skip this book. If this seems fun-then do what I did and take your time and read this savoring every new thought you come up with. NS has a very dry wit and it shows. I truly enjoyed this book and am now a Neal Stephenson fan for life. I appreciate intelligent books and this certainly qualifies.
-
*Re-reading this book, started early January 2009
Note: This review is from my blog, circa 2005.
I finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson about a week ago. It took me over a month to finish, not because it wasn't great and exciting, but because it was 937 fucking pages long!
I have to say that Neal Stephenson is one of the most interesting and unique authors I have come across in some time now. The book had three main characters/story lines, and each of them had it's own strongly independent voice, yet strung together with a unifying, sardonic edge. I don't think I'll bother much with plot summary, as it was very complex and spanned the course of at least 60 years and about 10 different countries. What I really loved about it was that the three main storylines that all seem so separate at first, come together over the course of the novel through family ties, etc, but are unknown to the modern characters because of war time secrecy, among other things. I have never studied WWII in much depth, but this book brought it all to life extremely vividly and from perspectives I have never read about before. Although this book was in the science fiction section (probably because of the author's other novels) it is definitely more of a history novel. For instance, it had real historical figures as characters, such as Alan Turing in close relation to one of the main characters. Not only is it interesting from a historical war-time perspective, it is also extremely nerdy in its math and cryptographic details...not to mention computer programming and the history of how the modern computer came to be invented as a result of WWII cryptologists needing to break codes. Although the majority of the characters are fictional, I do think that most of the historical elements are well preserved and not too overly exaggerated. However, I am no expert.
Basically, I couldn't put this book down, in spite of its weight. ;) The story was compelling, the characters multi-dimensional and interesting, and the locations and events intriguing.
Also, in the original hard back edition that I got from the library, there are a large number of typographical/grammatical errors that many have speculated to be a hidden code! Not that anybody has broken it...I'd give my left toe to know what Mr. Stephenson is hiding in that book. -
3.5 Stars
I loved the beginning of this story filled with codes, mathematics and other nerdy ideas. Neal Stephenson is quickly become a favourite author with his quipped smart narratives. That being said, this one was too darn long. If this had been shorter, it would likely be an absolute favourite. -
This book took me over a month to read, with a couple of short books sandwiched in between. It is not a good sign for me when I need to take two breaks to finish a book. However, this is not a book that I can dismiss regardless of whether I like it. I have several friends who love Cryptonomicon to bits and they are smart, discerning readers. I remember when I finished reading Twilight I was kind of glad that I didn't think it was very good. Had I found it to be an amazing classic I would have no credibility left among my peers. With Cryptonomicon the problem is the opposite, I am kind of disappointed that even though I like some of it, on the whole I don't particularly care for it. Still, better to be accused of being a philistine than to write a dishonest review just to be up with the Joneses eh?
Cryptonomicon is a hard book to synopsize, I feel nonplussed just thinking about how to describe the basic plot in a few sentences (so I won’t). The novel is set in two timelines 1942 and the present (or the 90s, the “present day” at the time the book was written). There are several narrative strands that gradually intertwine toward a single ending. The book is also hard to categorise, part historical fiction, part thriller, some element of cyberpunk, a bit of romance and (thankfully) a substantial amount of comedy.
This novel seems to be more character driven than the other Stephenson books that I read*. The central characters are quite well developed and are generally interesting and likable but unfortunately I could not invest in their adventures. I think this has more to do with the plot they are embroiled in rather than any deficiency in their development. The structure of the book is quite complex and there does not seem to be much in the way of momentum in the pacing, it also seems to be somewhat incohesive. The frequent switches in narrative strands made it difficult for me to remember what each character is up to the previous time they appear.
On the positive side the book is often very funny, the main saving grace as far as I am concerned. Lines like this just crack me up“You know what this is? It’s one of those men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus things.” “I have not heard of this phrase but I understand immediately what you are saying.” “It’s one of those American books where once you’ve heard the title you don’t even need to read it,” Randy says.
I laughed out loud quite a few times while reading the book. On the whole I find it to be well written, with some wonderful turns of phrase, another factor that prevent me from giving up on it. Some of the cryptography and hacking scenes are also fascinating.
Of the four Neal Stephenson books that I have read Cryptonomicon is the hardest to get into, and even by the end of the book I still wasn't really into it. It is clearly too good to dismiss out of hand and I always admire Neal Stephenson for aiming his writing toward an intelligent readership; I am not sure I can claim to be a proud member of his target demographic but kudos to him for respecting his readers. Regrettably this book turned out to be one of those "good but not for me" books. I wouldn't like to dissuade anyone from reading it, but I can't honestly recommend it either. If you are interested but doubt I suggest you read a few more reviews and decide for yourself whether it seems likely to appeal to you. I suspect you never know until you actually try it though.
*In order of preference:
Snow Crash,
Anathem,
The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. -
DNF @ pg 300.
What a relief it is to have packed this one in!
(IDK why so few readers haven't given it 1*, but now I'm afraid to.)
I'm not super concerned with plot. I'm kinda of the belief for example that DFW basically almost never told a story. Infinite Jest is a bunch of snapshots on a timeline back and forth in which next to nothing happens: he creates expansive moments and unpacks how the characters feel, and the fascinating progression of these layers of detail or flowing explanations is what makes his teeny tiny drops of plot acceptable. It's rare that an author trades so much of one crucial element of fiction for hi-concept and gets away with it.
Gravity's Rainbow- what would you call that? Overplotted, maybe? Each page is dense with layers and layers of resonance of history and mythology and fact. The fun is in trying to stay afloat of the story with Pynchon shunting you off at every possible corner. It's rare that an author trades so much of one crucial element of fiction for hi-concept and gets away with it.
So what is Stephenson doing? He doesn't really have a plot, he doesn't really care if I understand his info-dumps, he's not really slowing moments down and unpacking them like DFW, nor is he creating layers of density like Pynchon. He's just listing shit and spewing facts and showing off. Any snotty teenager with too much time on his hands and a bunch of textbooks by his side could shit out this kind of prose.
I enjoyed the Diamond Age muchly, but the Diamond Age was filled with enthusiasm for a future technology, built an imaginary world and had a plot, and where it faltered- and it did so a lot- were the digressions. Cryptonomicon is a kind of all-digression attempt at showboating where the reader is disdained all over upon while Stephenson tries to outdo Heller and Pynchon.
But this is just what happens when a text doesn't resonate with you and you don't know why. A writer will have to break or adhere to whatever rules necessary in order to develop their authentic style, and that will please or displease whoever. Anyone who enjoyed this book could likely tell me all the above too, but they'd add "And that's why it's great!" This is what does my nut in about lengthy book review threads in general- if a text doesn't resonate with me, it isn't really mine or the writer's fault, it's just a mismatch. He and I can no more tell you why I wasn't grabbed than you could tell me why you were. But no one really did anything wrong. So let's read on :) -
Neal Stephenson performed his usual wizardry in "Cryptonomicon", a very long book that is a sequel to "The Baroque Cycle", which was in fact written later. ("Cryptonomicon" was published in 1999, where the three volumes of "The Baroque Cycle" came out in 2003 and 2004).
"Cryptonomicon" is ostensibly a historical novel. But the genre is really magical realism, although the elements of magic are subtly interwoven into the usually realistic plot. Stephenson creates his special and unique stew of multi-culturalism, deadpan humor, geeky technological details, and multiple times, places, and eccentric characters, along with lots of interesting tangents. As usual with Stephenson's work, the various characters, plotlines, locations, and timelines intersect more and more until they converge. He orchestrates all of this brilliantly and keeps the reader constantly entertained and interested.
The novel takes place in a variety of locations, and most of the characters travel around the world. Many of the locales, although not all of them, are in the Pacific Rim. The locations include various place in the U.S., including the Midwest, Seattle, and San Francisco, Manila, and various other points in the Philippines, Stockholm, London, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Hawaii, New Caledonia, New Guinea, Shanghai; Qwghlm (a fictional Celtic-flavored island, apparently pronounced like "Tagum"); Bletchley Park, the British top secret World War II facility for cryptography and cryptoanalysis; Brisbane, Australia; Kinakuta (a fictional island sultanate in the South Pacific which only figures in the 1990's timeline, although there are tie-ins to World War II); and Japan.
The book interweaves two main timelines. One takes place in World War II, the other in the late 1990's. The book also picks up the tale of two families central to "The Baroque Cycle," the Shaftoes and the Waterhouses. As in "The Baroque Cycle", the Shaftoes are the people of action, and the Waterhouses are the intellectuals.
Note: I'm giving the only (minor) spoiler in this review here. The mysterious(and apparently ubiquitous) Enoch Root also makes his (re) appearance in both timelines. (He appeared and disappeared during "The Baroque Cycle" as well).
The book is quite long--1130 pages--so while listening to the audiobook I often followed along in the eBook version as well in Adobe Digital Editions.
The WW II timeline mainly focuses on the stories of three major characters--Marine Corpsman Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, American cryptoanalyst and mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, and Japanese soldier and engineer Goto Dengo. Of course, in typical Neal Stephenson fashion, all of their lives intersect, as do the two timelines. Shaftoe is a brave and conscientious soldier, a charismatic leader, more of a physical man than a verbal one. He lacks formal education, but has plenty of moxie and street smarts. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say that Sergeant Shaftoe ends up travelling all around the world in his quest to return to Manila. Goto Dengo, a Japanese man who meets Bobby Shaftoe in Shanghai, also spends time in the Philippines, (via New Guinea, like Shaftoe) and once again encounters Shaftoe in Manila. Goto Dengo probably endures more hardship and pain than almost anyone else in the book. Stephenson presents the suffering of war unflinchingly, but in a way that does not make the book less interesting.
There are a few famous historical personalities that show up in the World War II timeline.
Lawrence Waterhouse meets Alan Turing, the famous British cryptoanalyst, at Princeton University before the war, and continues his interaction with him later.
Also, General Douglas Macarthur puts in a (rather comical) appearance in the Philippines.
In the 1990's timeline, the focus is on Randall (Randy) Waterhouse, a Unix geek who is part of a technology startup, Epiphyte (2) on the West coast. Epiphyte (2) plans to start a data crypt in the South Pacific primarily for use in the Philippines. Randy is the grandson of Lawrence Waterhouse. He is primarily interested in computer programming, but becomes progressively more involved in computer cryptosystems. So he ends up travelling a parallel path to that of his grandfather, Lawrence Waterhouse. Randy meets Douglas Macarthur Shaftoe, son of Bobby Shaftoe and America (Amy) Shaftoe, Doug's daughter and Bobby Shaftoe's granddaughter, on multiple business trips to the Philippines. Doug and Amy run Semper Marine, a diving business with a boat named Glory IV after Doug's mother and Amy's grandmother. Semper does some work for Epiphyte. Randy travels far and wide in the course of the book, taking multiple trips for business and personal reasons. Randy survives quite a few major setbacks and run ins with enemies. (I'll skip the spoilers). Of course there is also a huge cast of characters in this timeline, including the dramatis personae of Epiphyte (2), and lots of other colorful people.
Stephenson somehow manages to keep us interested and entertained through a seemingly endless series of plot twists, surprises, people, and locations. That's quite a feat in a book this size. And I always learn about all kinds of interesting things reading his books. For example, I learned a lot about secret codes used during World War II and about modern computer cryptosystems.
Of course, reading a novel of this size and complexity is a challenge. But in this case, it's well worth the effort. -
My four-star rating will likely puzzle those friends of mine who have had to listen to me piss and moan about this novel for the past six months. My progress as a reader was, shall we say, embarrassingly slow. (In Stephenson's defense, I tended to put his novel aside after every 200 or so pages and read other things; the book actually moves pretty swiftly considering its size.) But the four-star rating is sincere: I did enjoy this very much, for the most part, and I intend to at last read
Snow Crash and maybe even finish The Diamond Age, which I abandoned sometime back in the late nineties.
Though this novel is set in the past (and in a present that is quaintly a decade old now), it's by definition a science fiction novel: Ideas and things over people. This one's about a specific process of change in science, and not so much about people save as means of displaying certain ideas at work or in development. (There are some characters who almost achieve a fully rounded quality--Goto Dengo!--but that's not really all that surprising given a thousand pages of storytelling, is it?) So most of this is Stephenson fictionalizing scenes about the development of the information age, essentially saying, "Isn't this incredibly cool?" And it almost always is cool.
And funny.
Stephenson's voice has a kneejerk hyperbolic quality to it that works on a glib, superficial level. His gift for over-the-top metaphor is pretty much consistently astounding and amusing. Even if that same quality of voice never for a moment involves the reader of the reality of this world and it's people. No, the prose is all about braininess and exhibitionistic flaunting of research, ad nauseam, and so what? That's as good a reason to read as any, and this is almost always a good time.
While I never quite felt any of the characters were exactly well-developed outside of their erections and ability to compute, say, the proximate coordinates of a cherished family heirloom, the combined group of characters here give us the most fully fleshed out portrayal of geekitude in literature. Seriously, this is an unparalleled examination of what it is to be a geeky guy in the late twentieth--the love of data and things and problem-solving; the sheer befuddlement in the face of women and their irrational ways; the needlessly-complicated-and-by-the-way-accidentally-insightful manner of apprehending the world that defines several generations of bespectacled men. (It begins in this novel with Waterhouse and Turing and so on and ending with Randy but encompassing even characters such as Shaftoe, who while ostensibly more of a typical man and an a!c!t!i!o!n! hero, is still pretty much free from quaint qualities such as empathy, so women remain mysterious beings who control the world by virtue of their ability to literally screw with men. Sex is a power before which every Stephenson character loses his shit.) (That this is true of most people in the real world doesn't make its universality in a novel an okay thing.)
Of course, the above doesn't much matter in what is essentially a comic novel. Stephenson makes noises about more serious topics (stopping the evilness of war, a potent disgust about the horrors we visit on our fellow humans, etc), but this is just a long caper/heist novel--long on capering and short on import.
But fun! I just wish it hadn't been quite so damned long. -
Cryptonomicon is one of those plotty books, where things happen and then other things happen, which isn't really a knock: some of the best books ever are plotty. Lookin' at you,
Count of Monte Cristo. But when you write a book about a bunch of stuff happening, it succeeds based on whether all the things that happen feel like part of a whole - whether all the threads come together. At their best, these books are giant jigsaw puzzles: a successful one is a masterpiece of planning ahead, and authors like Dumas or
Hugo take your breath away when you realize how carefully they've set you up.
And Cryptonomicon pulls off that plottiness. Stephenson throws a lot of balls in the air; the story spans sixty years, from World War II to the late 90s, and rounds the globe, from some made-up country near England to the Phillipines, with plenty of stops in between. It's an impressive feat, and I can't poke a single hole in it. Nice work, Neal!
I mean, look, while insight into human nature isn't necessarily necessary in a plotty book, it helps to have some. Dumas and Hugo are wrestling with fate and evil and control; they're asking big questions. You're not gonna learn a whole lot about human nature from Cryptonomicon. There are some cool characters, like uber-Marine Bobby Shaftoe, but basically these are just people who do things.
And it has to be said that Stephenson has little to no grasp on how women operate. He seems to like women - this isn't a misogynist book - I'm just not sure he's met very many of them.
Which kinda ties into why I didn't totally love it all. It's impressively put together, but it's...well, I was reminded of
David Foster Wallace very often: same conversational tone, same exceptional technical intelligence - but Stephenson is - how do I say this? - he's just not very cool. Which I know, you're like "Wait, you're comparing someone's coolness unfavorably to DFW? He wasn't cool!" But he was! He wouldn't have said so, but he totally was cool.
Maybe I can say it like this: DFW was a geek; Stephenson is a nerd.
So this is a nerd epic. It succeeds at what it wants to be. I enjoyed it. I didn't love it. -
I mean, FINE, okay, this is one of the most engrossing books I've ever read. I don't really mean "best" or "best-written", necessarily. I mean, it's a messy sprawling epic that's almost too clever by half and full of hilarious characters and history just-so tweaked to accommodate them and also pure unadulterated geekiness. So it's not really for everyone but boy did I lap it up and then eat my huge slices of humble pie for everyone in my life that's been bugging me to read it for about four years.
I do have a couple small tiny niggling complaints, and one of them was the massively inbred dynastic mindfuck that was the generational split between mid-century and modern. I mean, are there only five families on the planet that had any effect whatsoever on the latter half of the 20th century? Neal Stephenson seems to think so! It's clever, I mean, in an Aureliano Buendia, Great Men History sort of way to see the same quirks and traits and consequences of history revealing themselves in the microcosm of a few generations of a few families. But I didn't necessarily need to be hit over the head with it, NEAL.
That said, though, I can't think of a family I'd rather find myself marooned in the seas of literature with than the Waterhouses or the Shaftoes, so.
Also I had a love/hate relationship with the lectures that Stephenson felt was his god-given right to slam smack in the middle of a scene because he just feels like you HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THIS NOW and you do, so I struggled against enjoying the lectures because I'm a nerd and I like learning things and hating the lectures because I love fiction and I hate great big long swathes of explanatory text slammed into a character's mouth. It's all very Giles.
But I mean, if you know the book you know these are sort of tiny complaints in the face of the awesomeness of Stephenson's humor and imagination, his passion for these, let's call them archetypes of humanity that he's wrapped around history and technology and ideas. In a way, it's what I always hated about Rand that somehow works brilliantly when Stephenson does it. Huh.
