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Cryptonomicon

4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 · rating details · 40,320 ratings · 2,484 reviews

Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that have shaped the past century. Weaving together the cracking of the Axis codes during WWII and the quest to establish a free South East Asian 'data haven' for digital information in the present, Cryptonomicon explores themes of po...more

Paperback, 928 pages

Published April 27th 2000 by Arrow (first published 1999)

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May 11, 2013 Megan Baxter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 screechi...more 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.

Okay, the second one was a little funny, at first, until the character went on to explain in great detail how women run the world to prevent men from ejaculating in anything but approved receptacles. With no obvious sense of satire.

Since I'm a feminist, and an academic, who sometimes has hairy legs, depending on whether I remember or care on any given day, this was less than fun. It was frustrating as hell to have a story I was enjoying interrupted about once every two hundred pages for a little diatribe on how feminists/women/the PC police were ruining the men they encountered.

You know, like the digression where one of the main characters writes that he's sure that the "PC police" would call him going on a date with a woman rape, since, although she asked him, she was the daughter of a guy whose company had been contracted to do some work for the main character's company. Not just sexual harassment, rape.

Straw man much, Neal Stephenson? Come up with a bullshit thing you think the "PC police" would say, and then destroy that bullshit argument, again and again? This, sir, is a logical fallacy.

Look, I'm not saying that academic wanking is unknown. Goodness knows it exists. But dude, you're a writer. Are you trying to tell me you think self-indulgent masturbatory writing is restricted to academia? Really?

So all of the aforementioned kept taking the wind out of my sails, and every time it happened, it took longer to get my enthusiasm up again, which made reading this book a very bumpy 1131 page ride.

Outside of this major issue that pretty much spoiled the book for me, there were some good things here. The story was a little overlong, but when I was into it, it was very enjoyable. The chess game of World War II cryptography was fascinating. The male characters were fairly engaging, when they weren't pissing me off. High tech business strategies as they played out through the book kept my attention.

This story takes place across two time periods, World War II and the present, and involves secrets, codes, and a very large hidden pile of gold.

There's an interesting story here. It occupies most of the book. But the things that bothered me took me so aback that they spoiled huge swathes of my reading. And it was frustrating, because the misogyny had exactly zero to do with the story, and contributed exactly nothing to the plot. That's a large part of the reason it kept taking me by surprise, the first two or three times I ran across these sections. They are few and far between. But why the hell are they there in the first place?

Crossposted to Smorgasbook (less)

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Mar 21, 2013 Aubrey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-06-12, 1000-guardian, ever-on, 3-star, reviewed

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 spill...more

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May 04, 2013 Clouds - (¿head-in-the?) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction-stand-alone, locus-sci-fi, science-fiction, reviewed

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...more

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Dec 15, 2007 Conrad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, fiction

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 ha...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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Sep 01, 2010 Russell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 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 w...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, 2008, 100-howell-favorites

Though Snow Crash will probably remain my all-time favorite Neal Stephenson novel, Cryptonomicon might take the crown as his best.[†:] As I write this review, I wrapping up my third reading of this novel.

BRIEF ASIDE REGARDING THE TIMING OF THIS THIRD READING: It is probably worth noting my mental state when I cracked the spine on this one for the third time. Stephenson's Anathem had just come out and I could not quite bring myself to drop the cash on the hardcover. But I was overwhelmed with t...more

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May 12, 2011 Clif Hostetler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

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 write...more

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Apr 08, 2009 Brooke rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

*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 indepe...more *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.(less)

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May 09, 2012 Krissa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: geeks

Recommended to Krissa by: Conrad, Stuart

Shelves: favorites

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 year...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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Sep 08, 2007 Andrei Alupului rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 read.

Clearly a lot of research w...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-fantasy-horror, contemporary_fiction

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...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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Sep 27, 2007 Chris McLane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

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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Sep 25, 2009 Nicholas Karpuk rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Cryptology Dorks, Fantasy Roleplayers, People I Don't Like Talking to For Extended Amounts of Time

This is a failure on several levels.

Firstly, I did that This American Life offer with Audible so I could try it for a few weeks and get a free book out of the deal.

First off, Audible isn't particularly good. Though one credit generally will get you a book a month, their definition of a book can mean the first 4th of a Stephen King novel. You also lose all access to these DRM encrypted files when you drop the service, so I doubt I'll be keeping it.

The second issue is that the version of "Cryptono...more

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Feb 27, 2008 Coco rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 migh...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, fiction, read-2009, historical-fiction

Though I'm giving this book four stars, I am a little disappointed in it. For the first time, Stephenson's wordiness got to me. At first, it is all fun and "character building" and enjoyable to read. But after working through 700 pages and still hitting long stretches about Randy's fascination with dust devils as a kid or how he had really bad wisdom teeth years earlier, I got a little frustrated. I had the feeling he was striving for length instead of letting the story dictate the number of pag...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Erez Schatz rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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, just fo...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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May 29, 2008 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 1001-books, worldview, dtb-own, award_winner

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 ge...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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Aug 08, 2007 Phil rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: geeks, history buffs, and literary enthusiasts

I'm an English major. I've read a lot of books. This one, is -- hands down -- my favorite modern fiction novel. I've read it twice, recommended it to others, and I'm sure I'll read it again. There is so much to appreciate here.

It is a semi-historical adventure, so there's something for fiction and non-fiction fans.

The writing is justly verbose at times, and conversationally abrupt at other times. In essence, you find yourself wholly in the minds and bodies of the characters while reading every s...more

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Feb 25, 2009 Blake rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction, stephenson

Stephenson is an amazing writer. He uses the entire first half of the book to establish characters, settings, and background, and the second half to actually tell the story. When you consider that the copy of the book I have is just over 900 pages, that translates into a lot of "marginally interesting but clever reading material" followed by a lot of "this is badass, why didn't I get this far sooner?" which in the end comes out to suck pretty hard, because you become angry you didn't read throug...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Kat Hooper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a lengthy historical fiction set during both World War II and the late 1990s with much of the action taking place in the Philippines. In the 1940s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, colleague of Alan Turing, is hired by the U.S. Navy to help break Axis codes. Meanwhile, Marine Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, who's too enthusiastic and courageous for his own good, doesn't realize that his troop's job is to make it look like the U.S....more ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is a lengthy historical fiction set during both World War II and the late 1990s with much of the action taking place in the Philippines. In the 1940s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, colleague of Alan Turing, is hired by the U.S. Navy to help break Axis codes. Meanwhile, Marine Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, who's too enthusiastic and courageous for his own good, doesn't realize that his troop's job is to make it look like the U.S. hasn't broken the codes, but just happens to always be in the right place at the right time.

Waterhouse and Shaftoe know each other only superficially, but their descendants, who've noticeably inherited some of their traits, meet in the 1990s storyline. Randy Lawrence Waterhouse is a systems administrator who's trying to set up an electronic banking system in the Philippines. There he meets Doug and Amy Shaftoe, a father and daughter team who are doing the underwater surveying for Randy's Internet cables. Randy and the Shaftoes eventually realize that they share a secret heritage and together they set out on a massive code-breaking treasure hunt.

The plot of Cryptonomicon is clever and elaborate, sometimes exciting (e.g., most scenes with Bobby Shaftoe), frequently funny (such as when Ronald Reagan interviews Bobby Shaftoe, and when the Waterhouse family uses a complicated mathematical algorithm to divide up the family heirlooms), and always informative.

Neal Stephenson's fans know (and love) that you can't read one of his books without learning a lot. Predictably, Cryptonomicon is chock full of information. If a character walks past a bank in China, you can bet you're in for a lecture on Chinese banking. If he sees a spider web dripping with dew, you'll be taught how spiders catch their prey. Character backstories are used to teach us about the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe or the familial habits of the Filipinos. In Cryptonomicon there are many pages that think they should be in a textbook on computer circuitry (and some that actually admit they belong in Letters to Penthouse). There are three pages devoted to a doctoral dissertation on facial hair and shaving fetishes, and another three pages of instruction on the proper way to eat Cap'n Crunch.

These divergences interrupt the plot and make the book much longer than it needs to be, but you just can't help but forgive Stephenson (or to at least smile and shake your head knowingly as if he has some sort of uncontrollable yet endearing pathology), when you see him poking fun at himself for this very thing. In one scene, Bobby Shaftoe thinks he's in "HELL'S DEMO" when he's forced to listen to someone "explain the organization of the German intelligence hierarchy." Though the lecture causes Shaftoe to hallucinate, the reader still manages to learn something about the Wehrmacht Nachrichten Verbindungen while being thankful to realize that Stephenson knows he has this "issue."

It's easy to tell that Neal Stephenson loves to do research and loves to impart the knowledge he's gleaned, or ideas he's thought up, and it's hard to criticize him for this, especially since it's all done in his clever, colorful, and entertaining style, even if it's not always relevant to the plot. And sometimes these infodumps can really set a scene. Here's a very short example:

"The Bletchley girls surround him. They have celebrated the end of their shift by applying lipstick. Wartime lipstick is necessarily cobbled together from whatever tailings and gristle were left over once all of the good stuff was used to coat propeller shafts. A florid and cloying scent is needed to conceal its unspeakable mineral and animal origins. It is the smell of War."

Stephenson also delights in creating quirky similes:

"Like the client of one of your less reputable pufferfish sushi chefs, Randy Waterhouse does not move from his assigned seat for a full ninety minutes..."

Though I skimmed a few of Stephenson's longer tangents, I was nevertheless entertained by the clever plot of Cryptonomicon. I read the novel in two formats. One was Subterranean Press's signed limited edition which was printed on thick glossy paper and embellished with new artwork by Patrick Arrasmith, several graphs, and even some perl script. My Advanced Review Copy of this book weighs 4 pounds (and it was only paperback -- the published version is hardback). I also listened to MacMillan's audiobook read by William Dufris. I'm sure Cryptonomicon was not an easy book to read out loud, but Dufris did an amazing job, even actually sounding like Ronald Reagan during the Reagan interview.

Cryptonomicon won the Locus Award in 2000 and was nominated for both the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards that year. Pretty big accomplishment for a book that's not even science fiction. For readers who haven't tried one of Neal Stephenson's books yet, Cryptonomicon is a good place to start. (less)

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Feb 22, 2013 Donnagha Dulchaointigh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am half-way through Cryptonomicon, and here are my thoughts so far:

1. Where is the storyline? Why no plot? So far, the only moderately compelling story - and this is after 553 pages - is Goto Dengo's accidental encounter with and escape from cannibals on the island of New Guinea. Otherwise, I have been unable to detect a plot anywhere in this book.

2. Neal Stephenson has little narrative skill. He does not seem to know how to describe action so that the reader becomes caught up in the plot. But...more I am half-way through Cryptonomicon, and here are my thoughts so far:

1. Where is the storyline? Why no plot? So far, the only moderately compelling story - and this is after 553 pages - is Goto Dengo's accidental encounter with and escape from cannibals on the island of New Guinea. Otherwise, I have been unable to detect a plot anywhere in this book.

2. Neal Stephenson has little narrative skill. He does not seem to know how to describe action so that the reader becomes caught up in the plot. But then again, there is no plot in this book.

3. Neal Stephenson desperately needs an editor. This book would have been more effective had it been one-fifth the length. E.g., is a four-page dissertation on eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch really necessary? In Anna Karenina, when Tolstoy spent several pages describing Levin's unsuccessful attempts to keep pace with the serfs in mowing and reaping grain, he made an important, poignant point: that Russian landowners could not physically perform the work of souls they owned. But what is the purpose of Stephenson's verbosity in so many passages throughout this novel? Does the reader gather any insight of real value? Or are these passages just so many words?

4. What is the purpose of two separate narratives - one in the 1940s and one in the 1990s? I identify with none of the characters in the 1990s storyline, and this is a fatal flaw of any novel: if the reader cannot identify in any way with the main characters of a story, and especially if the reader neither likes or dislikes any of the main characters - then why read the book?

5. I wish that Stephenson would not try so hard to devise cute metaphors and similes. I find them distracting, forced and at at times puerile.

6. Stephenson has little narrative skill, and his writing has almost no eloquence. I would rather read a much shorter novel that is well written and that conveys a message, than 1000+ pages of logorrhea.

Sorry, I intensely dislike this book. But I intend to finish it, just so that I can tell all who listen how much I detest this book _ and why I find it so ... empty and pointless. After I finish Cryptonomicon, I will return to Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Melville, Verne, Durrenmatt, Frisch, Kafka, Pushkin, Hawthorne, Joyce, Hugo, Zola, Korolenko, Lu Xun, Yu Hua, Ba Jin, Shen Congwen - in short, writers who actually knew or know how to write ...

(less)

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Mar 30, 2008 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 chapter...more

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Oct 11, 2007 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 togethe...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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Aug 16, 2007 Keely rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, novel, reviewed, american

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 believ...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Philip rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, historical-fiction, 2011, public-library, favorites, 2012, re-read

A very enjoyable book, lots of interesting characters with plenty of development. Stephenson is very funny and masterfully uses hyperbole while taking his time telling an intricate story. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and came to care about virtually all of them. There's plenty of fascinating history woven in and out and a complex plot that wrapped up quite nicely for me. This was a very fun book I look forward to revisiting someday.

Great re-read of the audiobook. Stephenson's quirky...more

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Feb 25, 2009 khalil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sffantasy

not up to the hype, although worth reading if you like historical novels. (I can't fairly evaluate Stephenson books that aren't Snow Crash or The Diamond Age. No matter now good they are, they will never be that much fun.)

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Jan 15, 2009 WK rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5/4.0

This is a brilliant book.

Not science fiction, really. More like history-of-science fiction. A World War II cryptography/adventure/treasure hunting story, with an overlarge dose of modern international computer corporation politics thrown in for good measure. Full of digressions, which are part of the feel of the story. If you don't like getting sidetracked, then avoid it. Unfortunately, even with all its brilliance, it has notable problems.

1) The ending is poor, which is a huge disappoint...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, cyberpunk, favorites

As usual Neal Stephenson gives us a thoughtful view on the role of technology and society - this time however, the philosophy is buried a bit deeper than the other novels I've read by him. It would be easy to read this book as a simple, exciting multi-generation spanning adventure of war, code writers and code breakers, a myriad of pieces of stories that all weave together in the end. Quite the thrilling tale all on his own. However, there's a deeper story here: one that asks what does true net...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Piotr rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Absolutnie perfekcyjna książka. Prawdę mówiąc nie przypominam sobie żebym ostatnimi laty czytał cokolwiek, co dałaby mi tyle radości co Cryptonomicon. Świetna historia i bohaterowie, unikalne prowadzenie fabuły - to wszystko jest tylko podstawą do bardzo dobrego wydawnictwa. To co czyni Cryptonomicon wyjątkowym i absolutnie genialnym są wtrącenia fabularne typu analizy brodatych mężczyzn (w szczególności południwo-kalifornijskich informatyków, opis greckich bóstw (dosyć nietypowy), podejście do...more

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Sep 29, 2008 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mathematics, historical, science

Neal Stephenson is brilliant. Quite obviously so. And one of his strengths lies in writing books that make abstruse, convoluted niche subjects feel approachable and exciting to the average reader. His attention to detail and his playful tangents, asides and divagations are charming, witty and often fascinating.

Unfortunately this does not always translate into well-written and well-structured narratives. To put it mildly, Cryptonomicon drags. It meanders. Occasionally it stops completely dead. Mo...more Neal Stephenson is brilliant. Quite obviously so. And one of his strengths lies in writing books that make abstruse, convoluted niche subjects feel approachable and exciting to the average reader. His attention to detail and his playful tangents, asides and divagations are charming, witty and often fascinating.

Unfortunately this does not always translate into well-written and well-structured narratives. To put it mildly, Cryptonomicon drags. It meanders. Occasionally it stops completely dead. More than a hundred pages before the end all the surprises and brilliance had been squandered and I was gritting my teeth and just waiting for it to be over.

This is a very male narrative. All of the main characters are straight males, and the book (and its characters) are obsessed with male ejaculations (yes, explicitly) and their effect on the male thought process. Furthermore, Stephenson includes some facile pop psychology about the interactions of the the sexes (which made this homosexual roll his eyes) and took a few embarrassing swipes at academia, atheism and gender equality. The fact that two of the male supporting characters are homosexual does not lessen this impression of male heteronormativity, especially when you realize that both of these characters are doomed to lonely, loveless deaths.

Women are cast only in the most stereotypical roles and are never completely fleshed out. They are either sex objects, sex tyrants, frigid or helpless--nothing in between. Out of all the many, many orgasms in the book, only two belong to women (or rather, A woman) and they are presented in such a way as to make them sound unnatural and almost frightening.

I'm not sure what Stephenson's point was in writing such a heavy-handed, gender-unbalanced narrative, but it alienated me almost completely. Maybe I'm missing the point--I'm sure there are people who would say I am--but it just didn't work for me.

So! In conclusion, Cryptonomicon was a lengthy slog that could have used tighter editing and plotting, and far less fixation on reinforcing gender and sexual norms.(less)

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Sean ... and I guess I'm sorry that you misunderstood my review. The point isn't that I disagreed with his "morality and opinions," but that the obsession...more
updated Feb 25, 2009 02:08am

Carrie I DID notice that you liked Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. In fact, your review of DA was the reason that I looked NS up in the library. They didn't...more
updated Feb 25, 2009 02:08am

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About Neal Stephenson

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known primarily for his science fiction works in the postcyberpunk genre with a penchant for explorations of society, mathematics, cryptography, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired Magazine, and has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (funded by Jeff...more

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“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.” — 233 people liked it

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