Cryptonomicon

published	August 1st 2001 by Goldmann
first published	1999
binding	Hardcover
isbn	3442545293 (isbn13: 9783442545292)
ebook
pages	1180
literary awards	2000 Locus Awards Winner (SF)
description	Dank Snow Crash genießt Neal Stephenson Kultstatus unter Science-Fiction-Fans und Technologie-Freaks. Das Buch hat die konventionellen Vorste...more [close] Dank Snow Crash genießt Neal Stephenson Kultstatus unter Science-Fiction-Fans und Technologie-Freaks. Das Buch hat die konventionellen Vorstellungen der High-Tech-Zukunft derart neu definiert, dass es zu einer sich selbst bewahrheitenden Voraussage wurde. Wenn dieser Cyberpunk-Klassiker groß war, dann ist Cryptonomicon riesig, enorm, gewaltig -- nicht nur aufgrund seines schieren Umfangs (circa 900 Seiten), sondern auch in seinem Reiz. Es ist der zeitgemäße, lesenswerte Nachfolger von Die Enden der Parabel und der Illuminatus-Trilogie. Darüber hinaus ist es auch das erste Buch einer geplanten Serie. Cryptonomicon zoomt durch die ganze Welt und rast verschwörerisch zwischen zwei Zeiten hin und her -- dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und der Gegenwart. Die zwei Helden aus den 40er-Jahren sind der glänzende Mathematiker Lawrence Waterhouse, ein außerordentlicher Kryptoanalytiker, und der übereifrige, morphiumsüchtige Bobby Shaftoe von den US-Marines. Sie gehören zum Sonderkommando 2702, einer Alliiertengruppe, die versucht, die Kommunikationskodes der Achsenmächte zu knacken. Gleichzeitig ist sie bemüht zu verhindern, dass der Feind dahinter kommt, dass ihre eigenen Kodes bereits geknackt sind. Unter dem Strich besteht ihre Aufgabe aus einer Täuschung nach der anderen. Dr. Alan Turing, der ebenfalls zum Sonderkommando 2702 gehört, erklärt Waterhouse die seltsame Arbeitsweise der Einheit: "Wenn wir einen Konvoi versenken wollen, schicken wir erst ein Beobachtungsflugzeug hinaus... Das Observieren ist natürlich nicht seine eigentliche Aufgabe -- wir wissen schon längst, wo sich der Konvoi befindet. Seine eigentliche Aufgabe besteht darin, selbst beobachtet zu werden... wenn wir dann kommen, um sie zu versenken, schöpfen die Deutschen keinen Verdacht." Diese ganze Geheimnistuerei spiegelt sich in der Gegenwartshandlung wider, in der sich die Enkel der Weltkriegshelden -- der unnachahmliche Programmierfreak Randy Waterhouse und die schöne und starke Amy Shaftoe -- zusammentun, um in Südostasien eine Offshore-Datenoase zu schaffen und nach Möglichkeit auch den Verbleib von Gold aufzudecken, das für die Schatulle der Nazis bestimmt war. Um den paranoiden Ton der Geschichte abzurunden, taucht der mysteriöse Enoch Root, einer der Topangehörigen des Sonderkommandos 2702 und der Societas Eruditorium, mit einem nicht dechiffrierbaren Verschlüsselungskonzept aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg auf, um die Protagonisten von 1990 mit verschwörerischen Verbindungen zu verwirren. Cryptonomicon ist von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite Neal Stephenson vom Feinsten: knapp in der Handlung, aber erschöpfend präzise im Detail. Jede Seite enthält eine Mathematikaufgabe, einen zitierbaren Insider-Witz, eine faszinierende Idee oder ein Stückchen beißender Prosa. Cryptonomicon ist zudem voll gepackt mit wahrhaft seltsamen Figuren -- irren Technologie- und Kryptofreaks und mehr Kryptologie, als man jemals brauchen wird -- vom gegenwärtigen Computerjargon einmal ganz abgesehen. Vorsicht: Wenn Sie dieses Buch in einem Zug lesen, könnten Sie einer Informationsüberlastung (und dem Hungertod) zum Opfer fallen. --Therese Littleton [close]
date added	03-28-07 edit book

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David rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

06/24/08

Read in June, 2008

So, today, I'm going to be talking about Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.

Some information you might want to know before hand: this book was published in 1999, almost ten years ago. This was a fair bit before the time of blogs and, really, even before the time of popular internet usage the way we think of it today. This was back in the days when the gray blocks of Windows ‘95 had only just been updated to the gray blocks of Windows ‘98. A time when e-mail was still considered fairly im...more

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Michael rated it:

(review of isbn 0380788624)

05/27/08

bookshelves: contemporary_fiction, sf-fantasy-horror

Read in May, 2008

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 ...more 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....less

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Russell rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

10/16/07

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 communic...more

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Erez rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

07/24/08

bookshelves: own-it

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: no-one in particular

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, j...more 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. ...less

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Nick rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

08/20/08

Read in August, 2008

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Brooke rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

10/02/07

Read in January, 2005

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 u...more 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....less

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Kris rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

04/20/08

bookshelves: my-favorite-books

This book is part thriller and part historical novel. The narrative switches each chapter between current time (circa 1995) and WWII. There are 2 main families we follow, the Shaftoes and the Waterhouses, and their lives are interwoven, both in the past and in the modern-day sections. Stephenson does a great job of switching back and forth between the families, and between times, and we see how the modern generation of each family is a product of their ancestors. Some may find the transition bet...more This book is part thriller and part historical novel. The narrative switches each chapter between current time (circa 1995) and WWII. There are 2 main families we follow, the Shaftoes and the Waterhouses, and their lives are interwoven, both in the past and in the modern-day sections. Stephenson does a great job of switching back and forth between the families, and between times, and we see how the modern generation of each family is a product of their ancestors. Some may find the transition between stories a bit jarring or hard to follow at first, but once the characters become more fleshed out, it's really quite fun to see how Stephenson ties it all together.

But, the book is really about codes and code-breaking, with a little bit of computer hacking. It's an exciting story incorporating Nazis, geeks (both modern day and historical), gold and high-finance in a fast-paced (for the most part) book. Even the "dry" historical sections where we see the birth of computing are told through the eyes of those involved, so one can feel the excitement of discovery.

While the book is long (~900 pages) it is very readable and the characters are all quite interesting. If there is a nit to pick, it's the propensity of Stepehnson to ramble on (in some detail) about minor incidents and characters. Most of these sections do nothing to move the plot forward, but, in their defense, they do add color and ambience to the story. However, I think the book would be just as enjoyable (and not turn away so many readers) if the editor had been a bit more ruthless with the scissors.

The characters are for the most part fairly well-developed, especially as related to the story. We are privy to their thoughts and attitudes, all of which are unique and interesting - for example, Bobby Shaftoe - the Haiku-composing, heroin-addicted Marine.

One of the things I enjoy most about the book (besides the cool code-breaking/computer stuff!) is Stephenson's wry sense of humor that he injects in many characters/scenes. The reaction of one character during the raid on Pearl Harbor is a great example of this, as is a section where this same character meets the woman who will become his wife. These sections are found throughout the book, and help to make the story lines even more enjoyable.

The biggest disappointment was the ending - first, because I didn't want the story to end, and secondly because it all ends rather abruptly. It seems as if the author realized he had to end the book, and so wrapped things up as quickly as possible. I was left feeling a little cheated. But, not enough to make me dislike the book! The rest of the book is as good a read as I've had in years, and its inventiveness and characters make up for any shortcomings.
...less

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Conrad rated it:

(review of isbn 0380788624)

12/15/07

bookshelves: fiction, owned

Read in January, 2008

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.

Anyw...more 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....less

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Taka rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

01/15/08

bookshelves: japan_jul07-present, post-modern_lit

Read in January, 2008

Luv'd it, luv'd it, luv'd it--

This massive novel (1130 pages) encompasses everything from finance, cryptography, WWII, treasure hunting, and everything in between that's fun and exciting. Neal Stephenson has definitely become my favorite contemporary writer along with David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. Though by comparison, his style is less literary and ornate, and his humor just a little bit less sophisticated than David Foster Wallace's (but still laugh-out-loud funny at times), h...more Luv'd it, luv'd it, luv'd it--

This massive novel (1130 pages) encompasses everything from finance, cryptography, WWII, treasure hunting, and everything in between that's fun and exciting. Neal Stephenson has definitely become my favorite contemporary writer along with David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. Though by comparison, his style is less literary and ornate, and his humor just a little bit less sophisticated than David Foster Wallace's (but still laugh-out-loud funny at times), his technical knowledge and penchant for packing in a plethora of adventures and actions definitely more than compensate for his comparative shortcomings.

To be extremely anal, I do have a few cavils to make w/r/t Neal Stephenson's cultural/linguistic realism in Cryptonomicon, and by no means they are intended to be serious literary criticisms, for, after all, it is a work of fiction, and any criticism leveled at its lack of realism seems beside the point. Any postmodern work of fiction, however, seems to be bound by, and accountable to, a higher and convoluted standard of realism where minor details are concerned, and so, here it is:

1) Goto Dengo. Dengo is not really a Japanese first name. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

2) One Thousand Stitch Headband. It was actually not a headband, but a bellyband. It'd be a very difficult thing to thread a thousand stitches on a headband, really.

3)hari-kari. This phrase appears toward the end when Bobby Shaftoe bumps into Goto Dengo in Manila, and I'm sure what the author (or Bobby Shaftoe) meant was: Hara-Kiri, which literally means "Stomach-Cutting," a.k.a. seppuku

4) Hai. In military, "hai" is a bit informal, and though soldiers could've said it, "Ha!" would have been more accurate.

And other than these piffling grievances, Cryptonomicon is a blast to read. Neal Stephenson's breadth of technical knowledge is breathtaking (no pun intended): cryptography, data storage security, math, UNIX, van Eck Phreaking, and mining on top of WWII history in the Atlantic, Europe, and the Pacific. It is quite astonishing, actually.

Personally, his portrayal of the Shaftoes (and in particular Bobby Shaftoe) was brilliant, and they are now my favorite fictional characters. It's difficult to say everything good and positive about this book exhaustively, and I'm just going to stop babbling right here and let you read it for yourself.

A sheer blast of a read.

...less

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Michelle rated it:

(review of isbn 0380788624)

05/29/08

bookshelves: 1001_books, sci-fi

Read in May, 2008

it took me a month to get through this book. amazing, considering my usual speed with the written word, but quite true. this behemoth refused to be devoured in my usual hours-at-a-time fashion, nope. more like very high quality cheesecake, in that it's so rich you can only take a few bites before you need to assimilate.

part of the story is about a WWII GI, who happens to be so gung-ho and talented at both completing difficult missions successfully and staying alive at their completion tha...more it took me a month to get through this book. amazing, considering my usual speed with the written word, but quite true. this behemoth refused to be devoured in my usual hours-at-a-time fashion, nope. more like very high quality cheesecake, in that it's so rich you can only take a few bites before you need to assimilate.

part of the story is about a WWII GI, who happens to be so gung-ho and talented at both completing difficult missions successfully and staying alive at their completion that he gets the dubious honor of being assigned to a squad so top-secret he has no idea what he's doing there. part of the story is about a brilliant but oblivious mathematician (clearly an asperger's syndrome kind of guy) who becomes a codebreaker during the same war. and part of the story is about the computer-programmer grandson of the latter and his infatuation with the tough-as-nails granddaughter of the former. part of it is about codes (both for war messages and for computer programs) and part of it is about war (both physical and digital). all of which makes it sound very dry when it's anything but.

Stephenson's typical doses of randomly-applied hilarity are out in full force here. he does an incredible job of painting the world through the individual voices of his characters...and quite often, those guys are thinking very odd things about very odd situations. the hefty book could have been trimmed by, say, 30% if it left out these random observations, sometimes comical, other times simply beautiful examples of what letters can do in the hands of a gifted wordsmith, but then we'd miss out on things like:

"a red dragonfly hovers above the backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. there sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass."

no, i'm not recommending it to everybody. it's long and meandering and insanely technical in many places. but yes, i am gushing about it. it's lovely....less

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Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

03/31/08

Read in September, 2006

Reading Neal Stephenson's The Cryptonomicon was, simply, a divine reading experience - must have been the most fun reading a book I've had in a long time. Stephenson always has this skill of taking several different story threads, seemingly completely unrelated to each other, and then combining them together in ways that are completely novel, and yet at the same time make complete sense when you look at them in retrospect. This skill is especially notable in Cryptonomicon, because the stories st...more Reading Neal Stephenson's The Cryptonomicon was, simply, a divine reading experience - must have been the most fun reading a book I've had in a long time. Stephenson always has this skill of taking several different story threads, seemingly completely unrelated to each other, and then combining them together in ways that are completely novel, and yet at the same time make complete sense when you look at them in retrospect. This skill is especially notable in Cryptonomicon, because the stories start out separated not only in place, but in time, as well: we start with a US Marine, Bobby Shaftoe, fighting World War II in Shanghai; Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a slightly-autistic American math wizard who attends Princeton and is a contemporary of Alan Turing; and Randy Waterhouse, a hacker and computer geek engaging in a new e-business endeavour at the end of the 20th Century. The ways in which these storylines dovetail themselves is an amazing feat of plotting - I couldn't help but think that reading this would be akin to watching Haydn compose a piece of music.

As far as the plots are concerned, I don't want to give away too much to anyone that might eventually want to read the book. Let's just say that, like Stephenson's other books, this one can safely be said to have it all: hacking, cryptography, Nazis, gold, Nazi gold, action, suspense, computers, sex, comedy, haiku, oddly-named Welsh stereotypes... all that and yet I've barely scratched the surface.

One of the reasons I think Stephenson's work is so wonderful is that, although he's a science fiction writer, he never forgets that the 'fiction' should be primary to the story, and that the science in the story should serve the fiction elements. At the same time, though, he manages to balance this with science that is completely believable and well thought-out; the only other writer that I can think of that can make the process of reaching scientific conclusions that thrilling is Robert J Sawyer, which definitely puts Stephenson in august company.

I'm seriously considering lifting my current book-buying embargo to pick up Quicksilver, the next part of Stephenson's epic. I don't know what it is that would cause an author to write an 1,100 page novel, and then think "what I really need to do now is discuss those same ideas without the limitations of a single novel", but this is one time that I am really glad that he did....less

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Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

10/11/07

Read in February, 2003

I stake the claim that this novel is the "Catch 22" of the new millennium. Smacking of Heller and borrowing somewhat from Pynchon, this novel also stakes new ground and weaves an engaging yet intricate plot. There are also many asides which encompass basic cryptographic theory, History and mechanics of modern finance and economics, Hacking methods including "Van Eck Phreaking" and EMP pulses, Music Theory, and speculations upon the future and impact information will have.

...more I stake the claim that this novel is the "Catch 22" of the new millennium. Smacking of Heller and borrowing somewhat from Pynchon, this novel also stakes new ground and weaves an engaging yet intricate plot. There are also many asides which encompass basic cryptographic theory, History and mechanics of modern finance and economics, Hacking methods including "Van Eck Phreaking" and EMP pulses, Music Theory, and speculations upon the future and impact information will have.

The novel weaves together 3 plots. 1 being the story of Bobby Shaftoe, a tough and guts marine during WWII who is assigned to be a security officer for the OSA, a forerunner of the CIA who handled US involvement with cryptography. The second plot is that of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a nerdy un-socialized individual whose innate skill at mathematics and pattern recognition landed him a job as a cryptographer during WWII for the OSA and jointly with Brittain's MI6, their counterpart to the OSA. The third plot is of Randy Waterhouse, Lawrence's grandson who with his business partner are trying to construct a worldwide vault of information storage and exchange which if successful will land them with untold fortunes of "fuck you money."

The plot eventually weaves around the infamous missing "nazi gold" and how much decrypting enemy messages led to the outcome of the war.

The author's voice is very sardonic yet, mirthful. There is literally a laugh-out-loud passage on every page. The opening passage is of Bobby Shaftoe composing a haiku about a truck wheeling around a corner on two wheels just about to tip over as Bobby himself is holding on for dear life to said truck as it careens around a corner on two wheels, just about to tip over. Another humorous passage involves Randy who is signing a disclaimer for a very delicate tooth extraction which only one or two orthodontic surgeons in the country would touch: "They gave Randy a bunch of forms which he signed saying something to the effect that they could put Randy into a wood chipper for all they cared and he would have no legal recourse."

All in all, a ripping good read. Stephenson actually makes data storage and finance much more entertaining than any brain candy pot-boiler we could read. I highly recommend this novel....less

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Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

09/27/07

bookshelves: favourites

Read in June, 2005

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 fou...more

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Krissa rated it:

(review of isbn 0380788624)

01/31/08

bookshelves: masterpieces

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Krissa by: Conrad, Stuart
recommends it for: geeks

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...more 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. ...less

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Jeff rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

03/30/08

Read in February, 2008

I read this book and I really liked it.

I liked the book a lot, but things about it have made me develop a whole speil. The story was great, interesting historical/thrill fiction. But! He could have easily cut a good 1/3 out of the book and it would have been fine. Mr Stephenson loves taking a long way around to describe things, and to compound the problem, his characters like to take the long way around to say things too. So you have this recursive loop of masturbation.

For example in one cha...more

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Andrei rated it:

(review of isbn 0060512806)

09/08/07

Read in August, 2007

I usually roll my eyes at blurbs on books, especially when they're as reductive and simple as the ones I'm about to cite, but "electrifying" and "a hell of a read" seem like the two most fitting ways to summarize my opinion on this book. I had a tough time putting this down. It's not a challenging book, but it's also not a stupid book and I was surprised to find how "literary" it actually is. Outside of that, and really most importantly, it's an absolute blast to re...more

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Coco rated it: