Dec 2024 BOTM: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

[Steve]

December 2024 Book of the Month:
We had 2. There was a tie.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999)


Publisher’s Summary
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, crypt analyst 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.

[Steve]

Started. The style of this book is a little unorthodox. Kind of reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut, though it has been decades since I read any Vonnegut and my memories of that have devolved to a mere fever dream. It portrays potentially heady material … with Turing talking about a computing device and such, but does so with an intransigent preference to only do so with some sort of oddball dry humor, like the author is perpetually smoking or drinking something. I’m just in the first chapter here. Americans seems to be cast as relatively dimwitted, Germans as insufferable logicians (too Spock-like), with only Turing not posed with a minor tinge of ridicule. We’ll see if that lasts.

Update: The oddball humor is persisting for sure.

[Steve]

Is it worthy of its #11 on the Best Technothrillers Ever?

[Harry]

TBH, I've struggled to read it twice ... so I guess that's a "no" :)

[Steve]

Steve wrote: "Is it worthy of its #11 on the Best Technothrillers Ever?"

I’m 26% of the way into the book, so it’s arguably a little premature to answer that question, but my answer is currently at a no, … closer to a hell no. I’m also struggling, but will keep going.

My new lowered standard for 2024 is to get as far as I can, and if that's at least 50%, I will declare it done/read guilt free and go ahead and review/rate it. I used to only review if I was 100% done. But this causes so much bias. If only the people who manage to finish the bible length novel review it, ... only the people who really like it will ever review it. If a book is bad, ... I'm doing a service with a truthfully bad rating, potentially saving the next sucker from a bad read. This book isn't terrible, but doesn't maintain my interest with its incessantly juvenile dialogue and caricatures instead of characters.

This topic interests me. I have no trouble math, computers, algorithms, programming, the web or communication protocols. That's not the problem. I have read another book on Turning ... The Enigma, which was a basis for the movie with Cumberbatch. That book was also quite a damn struggle to get through, in terms of maintaining interest, not understanding.

[Harry]

Using math as the prestige/hook of a thriller is a trick. Outside of crypto-themed ones, it's a short list of successful ones. Charles Stross, Greg Bear ... maybe?

[Steve]

Not familiar with those guys. Do you recommend any of their books? Can you briefly summarize them?

The only time a fiction book really tickled the math brain for me was the end of Contact, last chapter, last couple pages I think. I always think of it if/when co-workers get excited about Pi Day.

Fooled by Randomness, a non-fiction, had the wafting kitchen smells of math, but really it was the incredible vocabulary of the author Nassim Taleb that I liked. I then read Black Swan by the same author which seemed to rehash pretty much the same topic, but packaged for broader consumption (lower intellect maybe). That was a disaster. He just came across as a foot-stomping narcissistic grump saying everyone but him is an idiot.

[Harry]

Accelerando is the Stross book I remember the best. It varied for me between edgy, breathtaking writing and disappearing so far down thoughtful rabbit-holes that it came out the other side chewing its own tail. At it's core its an exploration of math/information theory that gives it both its arc and its rabbit holes. The first third is highly recommended, but after that, ymmv.

As for Greg Bear, I read one of his least math-y books Blood Music, which was more about a bio-shoggoth type of global consciousness (imagine "Dodge in Hell" but where the conceit was spores, not cyberspace). Honestly, I struggled with the writing. Regardless, the man publishes books by the bushel and is a card-carrying mathematician, so someone more intrepid than me might find math-based sci-fi to enjoy.

[Steve]

This book just has absurdist/juvenile humor, and I find it virtually unreadable. It goes on and on with no obvious direction or connection of substance between the various threads. Now and then the nonstop absurdist phrasing offers a rather inspired phrase, like he just mentioned someone walking up with a newspaper that had been throughly ravished, but it is way too rare to make it worth it.

My new rule starting this year is that if I make it as far as I can stand it and that is at least 50% through, then I will call it read guilt free and rank it guilt free. I’m at a solid 2 stars (garbage) at the moment, but not at 50%. I’ve got 10 hours to endure to get to 50% in this War & Peace tome. Sooooo long. Don’t know if that’s possible.

[Steve]

Got past 50%. Still insufferable. I’m abandoning with 2 stars. Garbage. I think 50% or 10 hours of reading ought to be enough. This took 21 hours to get to 50%. Will never get that time back. Too much time down the drain just to feel OK rating it.