It was a dense challenging read I had my reservations about at first, but it turned out to be quite impressive and eventually won me over. While not as complex as Infinite Jest, this is one of those books that require some real attention on your part, especially when it comes to technical jargon and connecting the dots between timelines. Still, Stephenson effortlessly mixes them with captivating events, rich with dry humor that had me chuckling for its entirety so that even the pretentious parts were quite delightful and not a turn-off. The sprawling narrative that switches between past and present characters also kept things fresh and did not ruin the flow as I thought it might. The scope of the novel and the way it all conjoins towards the end was satisfying, especially for Randy's POV which I wasn't initially a fan of, but it all comes together nicely in the second half. Some of my favorite chapters involve Lawrence and Shaftoe, (Ram, Courting, and Metis to name a few) and I think it's safe to say it's one of the funniest books I have ever read, mainly due to the narration style. But it occasionally gets quite dark as well, so that you are suddenly caught off guard.

The 'cameos' of historical people were great, although I'm unsure why it's considered Science Fiction over Historical. While it's not an all-time favorite, I don't have many complaints to list, but for the sake of nitpicking, I would say it had a few lulls occasionally with random tangents that went nowhere, but they never overstayed their welcome in my experience. Certain female characters in the novel are not as fully realized as their male counterparts, which can feel like a missed opportunity given how detailed the rest of the cast is. Towards the end,  the return of Andrew Loeb as final antagonist was a comical surprise since he's not a direct presence in the main narrative and I can see it being an abrupt ending for some people. The passage of time can be hard to distinguish as well but ultimately, none of these bothered me too much. Overall, a fantastic read that you may not be able to binge, but if you like the humor and find it rewarding to connect the dots, definitely stick with it. 4.5 ⭐

It's probably safe to assume Neal Stephenson is some sort of freakish genius, along the lines of David Foster Wallace or someone. I felt at times while reading Cryptonomicon that I was reading Infinite Jest again, which isn't really a good comparison since the books have nothing to do with one another. Except this is my review and this is how I roll. Both authors can cram an exorbitant amount of information in less than 2000 pages, and to read it all makes ones head hurt, but in a good way. Like you're learning something. Stephenson takes his readers from WWII to the Internet boom of the 90s, discusses cryptography ad nauseum, and seems to know an equal lot about war, math, mythology, computers and technology (both of the 40s and the 90s), the Seattle grunge scene, and Cap'n Crunch cereal. Not necessarily all in that order, and that's leaving a lot out because there's not enough space here to write about it all. (Which is why Stephenson's book is almost 1200 pages long.) Then, for good measure (or maybe to show off?) he even makes up a whole fictional community as well. Jeebus, man! Way to make the rest of us look like a bunch of pansy-ass losers.

I'm not going to even come close to pretending like I understood everything in this book. I suck at math, and I know the basics of computers, and I don't eat Cap'n Crunch cereal, so really the Seattle grunge scene is all I really have any remote knowledge about, but that doesn't really count since I haven't even been there in person. I'm glad I read this because it was a wild read and I didn't hate it while I was reading it, even if it was over my head at times. There were graphs and illustrations and algorithms and stuff to give it some validity, and maybe someone much smarter than me could make sense of it all. As it was I just enjoyed looking at it and pretending I was learning something through osmosis.

This was so much better than Snow Crash or The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, but that's entirely personal opinion. This kind of spy stuff is much more exciting to me and makes more of an impression on me than the other two I've read. I'm sort of nerdily excited to read Quicksilver and the rest of the Baroque Cycle now because I guess it has a lot of familiar character names, but I have no idea if they're as good as this one.

One star knocked off for being insanely wordy. That may be genius, or it could just be overwriting.

Эпоха у нас такая, что перегруз информации транслируется по всем каналам, и предпочитаемой литературной формой давно стали «цитаты Раневской» и демотиваторы, а предпочитаемой формой потребления движущихся картинок — анимированные гифы. Клипы Ю-Тьюба — это длинно, досматриваются до конца сильно не все, а статусы Фейсбука считаются «лонгридом», если в них больше одной строки, и оставляются «на потом». Последние дни как бы уже настали.
При всем при этом, как ни удивительно, все постепенно свыклись с мыслью, что телесериал — это просто длинный роман: иногда бульварный, не всегда, прямо скажем, гениальный, но неизменно с продолжением, публикуется в газетных подвалах долгих вечеров. Работы и мозговых усилий на просмотр даже самой презренной жанровой шняги тратится столько же, сколько на изучение классиков марксизма-ленинизма или толстых томов модернистов.
А тут вам другой интересный пример взаимопроникновения жанров: книга в формате телесериала (напомню, что такого бума их еще не было, когда она писалась). Сценарий этого сериала мог бы написать Пинчон, но не написал, поэтому приходится довольствоваться тем, что есть. Короткие эпизоды, не весьма тщательно проработанные характеры, киномонтаж, сюжетные арки, отступления и вставные новеллы, флэшбэки и флэш-форварды — все, как мы в последние годы привыкли. Сериальность — вообще богатый литературный жанр, и он, понятно, не одни ж там мексиканские мыльные оперы. В «Радуге», с которой «Криптономикон» часто сравнивают, Пинчон, видать, тоже что-то подобное делал — задолго до того, как это стало модно, — но этим, некоторыми приемами да некоторым родством натуры сходство этих романов и ограничивается.
Шедевр (как все говорят) Стивенсона — вполне увлекательная одномерная линейная развертка на занимательные темы. Тексты же вообще существуют в диапазоне от нуля измерений до энного их количества, но это тема для диссертации какого-нибудь литературного тополога: Бекетт, например, может быть представлен в виде точки, у Пинчона измерений явно четыре, ну и так далее… К огромному количеству книжной продукции такая метафора вообще неприменима, как мы знаем.
Анализировать или описывать «Криптономикон» без толку, мы и не будем — читать его вполне, конечно же, стоит, как стоит смотреть качественный телесериал. Жаль одного — что он пошел по пути экстенсивного накопления целей квеста / ядра заговора. Точка притяжения тут — не просто золото, а очень много золота. Это мило само по себе, но как-то банально.

Ich habe den Roman vor vielen Jahren bereits gelesen, ich kann mich erinnern, dass ich absolut begeistert war und den Roman auch in meiner „All Time Best List“ aufgenommen habe. Nachdem die Figuren (bzw. Vor- und Nachfahren) des Romans, insbesondere Waterhouse & Shaftoe, immer wieder in anderen Werken des Autors auftauchen (z.B. in der „Barock-Trilogie“ oder „Corvus“) wollte ich mir den Backstein-Ziegel (ca. 1200) Seiten nochmals vornehmen, ich habe mir das Buch von Zeit zu Zeit immer wieder zur Hand genommen und habe darin geschmökert und habe geschwelgt in der Welt, die Stephenson dermaßen detailliert gezeichnet hat.
Der Inhalt ist, nicht nur wegen des Umfangs, schwierig wiederzugeben, deshalb hier mal ganz kurz: Es gibt zwei Handlungsstränge, die einiges gemeinsam haben. Es geht um Datenverschlüsselung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (für die unter anderen die Figur Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse zuständig ist, zusammen mit realen historischen Persönlichkeiten wie z.B. Alan Turing) und um Datenverschlüsselung um die Jahrtausendwende (mit der wiederum Randy Waterhouse, Enkel von Lawrence zu tun hat).
In diesen beiden Zeitebenen mischen noch die Shaftoes mit. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg ist das Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, der in einer geheimen Elite-Einheit alles Mögliche tut, um dem Feind - also den Deutschen und den Japanern - zu schaden. Im zweiten Handlungsstrang ist das Bobbys Sohn Douglas Shaftoe, der auf den Philippinen eine Firma unterhält, die auf dem Meeresgrund nach versunkenen Schätzen sucht und Bobbys Enkelin Amy, die ihre Brötchen mit Schiffstouren und Tauchen auf den Philippinen verdient und die dabei zufällig auf Randy Waterhouse trifft. Überhaupt: Gold ist für die Geschichte auch wichtig. Es gibt Gerüchte, dass die Japaner im 2. Weltkrieg auf einer Philippinen-Insel einen riesigen Goldschatz vergraben haben. Der spielt in beiden Handlungssträngen eine Rolle. Ich fand auch, dass die Philippinen als Handlungsort gut recherchiert war, offenbar ein wichtiger Ort für den Autor.
Die Stilsicherheit, mit der Stephenson Kolportage-Elemente mit informationstheoretischen Exkursen kombiniert, beschleunigt im Verlauf der Lektüre den Lesefluss zusehends, und man ist bald geneigt, all dies als packende Unterhaltung zu konsumieren. Da aber wird auf einmal, ziemlich genau in der Mitte des Buches, eine neue Erzählmelodie erkenbar. Die Familienbeziehungen und die Doppelpräsenz einzelner Charaktere, etwa des geheimnisvollen Enoch Root, der im Weltkrieg Soldat, in der Gegenwart Emissär eines ominösen Gelehrtenbundes ist, sind nämlich nicht die einzigen Verbindungen zwischen den Ebenen. Am Scharnierpunkt des Romans erklärt der amerikanische Jude Avi Halaby seinem Freund Randy die geschichtsphilosophische Überzeugung hinter dem "Krypta"-Projekt.
Gemeint ist damit, führt Avi aus, die Verhinderung von Völkermorden. Der bisherige "infotechnische Umgang" mit dem Holocaust sei nicht geeignet, künftigen Genoziden vorzubeugen. Fortan müsse man verhindern, dass Mächtige jeglicher Art je wieder ein Informationsgefälle zwischen sich und den Bedrohten schaffen, um letztere zu Objekten zu machen. Was Stephenson hier Avi sagen und denken lässt, bedeutet keineswegs Datenanarchismus. Es geht eher um den Versuch, politische Kategorien wie Minderheitenschutz oder Freiheit auf die Datensphäre zu übertragen.
Der Roman wird von vielen als zu kompliziert und als zu technisch abgewertet, insbesondre als Stephenson mathematische Beispiele oder Verschlüsselungstabellen zum besseren Verständnis in den Text einfließen lässt, diesen Leuten kann ich nur augenzwinkernd mit einer Stelle im Roman antworten in der Randy Waterhouse und ein Geisteswissenschaftler aneinandergeraten: Der Gelehrte faselt poststrukturalistischen Unsinn übers Internet, Randy reagiert gereizt, der Gelehrte schimpft ihn einen "Technokraten", Randys Replik: "Ich bin einfach einer, der runter in die Buchhandlung gegangen ist, sich einen Stapel Lehrbücher über TCP/IP, das Standard-Kommunikationsprotokoll des Internet, gekauft und sie gelesen hat. Dann habe ich mir einen Computer besorgt, was heutzutage jeder tun kann, habe einige Jahre damit herumgespielt, und jetzt weiß ich alles darüber. Macht mich das zum Technokraten? "
Diese Replik zeigt mit wenigen Worten, wie Stephensons Vorstellung von zeitgemäßer politischer Intelligenz aussieht. Wenn ein sensibles Spionagegerät eine kleine, in den Roman mit grandioser Präzision eingepasste Fetischisten-Novelle von einem Bildschirm abliest oder ein Hacker-Gegenangriff auf Regierungsbehörden, die einen Rechner beschlagnahmen wollen, furios geschildert wird, lautet die Botschaft: Niemand soll gezwungen werden, beispielsweise Konventionen und Syntax des interaktiven Betriebssystems UNIX zu lernen. Von dessen Existenz aber nichts zu wissen und sich dafür auch nicht zu interessieren könnte für Autoren wie für deren Leser ein Handicap sein - spätestens in politischen Auseinandersetzungen der nahen Zukunft, in denen Begriffe, wie Privatsphäre, Arbeitswelt, Rezession und Demokratie zur Sprache kommen werden.
In "Cryptonomicon" erzählt Stephenson davon, dass die Wurzeln der gegenwärtigen Informationstechnologien im Zweiten Weltkrieg zu suchen sind: "denn Computertechnologie ist Kriegstechnologie". Das zeige der Entwicklungsschub, der aus dem "Krypto Krieg zwischen den Deutschen und den Alliierten um die deutsche Verschlüsselungsmaschine "Enigma entstanden ist.
Als Fazit kann ich nur sagen, dass das Buch mit ihren über 1100 Seiten, Unterhaltung im besten Sinne ist. Egal, ob der Leser gerade Bobby Shaftoe in Nordafrika, oder wenn man Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse mit Leuten wie Alan Turing auf dem Campus einer US-amerikanischen Universität über Kryptografie diskuttierend, oder Randy Waterhouse in einer Vorstandssitzung seines Startups. begleitet: Es ist auf keiner Seite langweilig. Neal Stephenson serviert den umfassenden Plot mit viel Humor und Ironie. Und wenn mal Action angesagt ist, sind seine Helden nicht einfach strahlende Übermenschen, sondern Leute, die auch mal Angst haben und Dinge teilweise nur aus reinem Überlebenswillen tun.
Überhaupt sind die Charaktere sehr schön ausgearbeitet, mit Stärken und Schwächen wie im richtigen Leben. Das macht sie symphytisch und ihre Handlungen nachvollziehbar. Und dazu fand ich seine geistesgeschichtlichen, philosophischen Gedankengänge (s.o.) einleuchtend, augenöffnend und eindrücklich, dies alles ist, auch bei der wiederholten Lektüre, ein Meisterwerk…!

Interesting historical novel with some fiction about cryptographics during world war 2.

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 went into the writing of this and it's unbelievably thorough and generous in its presentation of all this information. Even when it gets into the mathematics and theory behind cryptography it never stops being comprehensible and it's very clear that Stephenson had a strong desire to not dumb anything down and to simultaneously not allow himself to get too obtuse or evasive. It's a really skillfully managed balancing act. I realize that accessibility is not a virtue unto itself, but it really is favorable for this particular story, because the majority of the labor done by the reader here shouldn't be to glean the meaning of the text so much as to keep up with it and figure out its applicability.

This book reminds me of David Fincher's film "Zodiac" in a lot of ways. Both of them are, as a result of the obsessive nature of their topics, obsessively structured themselves, reflecting not just the obsession of the characters within the works but also the obsession of the creators themselves. Both of them are packed to the gills with detailed information. Both of them are unusually long, although they're both so absorbing that this is a non-factor, or at least it was for me. The major difference between this and "Zodiac," however, is the fact that while that particular film zeroes in on one singular person/mystery/topic, this book seems to jump and tear and grasp at everything in its wake. The fact that it doesn't feel unfocused despite this really blows me away.

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 pages.

I am also what I assume to be a rarity in that I read Anathem before Crytonomicon. I actually liked Anathem a lot more. This is partly because everything felt necessary. I actually didn't want it to end, whereas I was ready for Cryptonomicon's ending.

I don't mean to be too negative, because I believe this is a great book. The two WWII storylines were the highlight for me. Loved Lawrence and Bobby and pretty much everyone else from that era. Especially enjoyed the Admiral Yamamoto scene. I was less impressed by the main storyline set in the present. Simply didn't enjoy Randy and Avi and their group of geeks as much. I came around on Randy a bit, mainly due to his Captain Crunch habit, but Avi had no such saving grace. Still, it was a masterful blending of multiple storylines into a cohesive and enjoyable experience.

Ghefilte fish
L'argomento preferito dell'autore è la criptografia, cioè la cifratura dei messaggi. Per rendere leggibile un romanzo sulla criptografia ricco di dotte spiegazioni ha dovuto allestirlo con personaggi accattivanti / buffi / matti / storici, avventure mozzafiato, luoghi esotici, nobili cause ed ha effettivamente raggiunto lo scopo. Un po' quello che la cucina askenazita ha fatto per rendere commestibile un pesce che vive nel fondo limaccioso dei fiumi polacchi (350 ingredienti e mani da artista).
Le storie, che poi convergono in una storia, cominciano negli anni trenta e si concludono negli anni novanta, due generazioni dopo. I primi personaggi in scena sono lo scienziato inglese Alan Turing e altri due, tedesco e americano, che si incontrano negli USA a Princeton e fanno amicizia, fino allo scoppio della seconda guerra mondiale. Turing è lo scienziato che forzerà la criptografia Enigma, aiutando molto gli Alleati a sconfiggere la Germania hitleriana (ed essendo mal ricompensato).
Io ho identificato subito il mio personaggio preferito, Bobby Shaftoe: è un marine convinto ma simpatico, abbastanza morfinomane, di vedute piuttosto ampie: contraddizione con marine convinto, temo, ma insomma è un romanzo. Molto divertente l'incontro fra Shaftoe e il comandante di un sommergibile tedesco, Bishoff, quando sono entrambi prigionieri nel sommergibile tedesco. Irresistibile la parte che riguarda lo scienziato americano giovane che viene mandato in missione in qualche isola a Nord della Scozia dove parlano una lingua di sole consonanti. Un altro personaggio importante è Goto Dengo, un ufficiale giapponese di cui si seguono le vicende, dalla Nuova Guinea alle Filippine.
Non essendo un libro di Storia, l'autore non si fa scrupolo di rappresentare i quadri dell'esercito giapponese come un gruppo di alieni cinici e sanguinari, pronti allo sterminio dei nemici e anche dei propri soldati, secondo un'idea di fedeltà all'imperatore piuttosto estrema se portata a tali conseguenze. Non conosco il punto di vista giapponese e dove sia la posizione di equilibrio fra le due versioni.
La lettura è interessante e divertente, se si riesce a glissare il pensiero delle stragi. Un appunto può essere che oltre a essere molto nerd, è quasi completamente privo di personaggi femminili e quei pochi sono di contorno, come la salsa di rafano del ghefilte fish.

This is an award-nominated historical novel techno-thriller mashup by Neal Stephenson, published in 1999, nominated to Hugo in 2000 (lost to A Deepness in the Sky. It was 3rd both in nominations and final voting, with A Civil Campaign being the 2nd one) and won Locus Award for Best SF Novel. It can be described as a computer geek dream novel, which appeared just before the dot-com crash and which discussed cryptocurrencies years before the general public heard about Bitcoin and the like. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for August 2023 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group.

This is a really large book, 42 hours of audio and 918 pages of the first edition hardback, big enough so that several translations were published as three and even four volumes.

I usually outline the starting setting, but because the book’s narrative weaves together multiple storylines spanning different periods, from before World War II to the late 20th century, I guess it is better to list the characters. Some of these characters or their relatives appear in the author’s later works, so they are a part of a specific universe. So, let's take a closer look at some of the characters:

Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is a brilliant mathematician and cryptanalyst who studied with Alan Turing and met Einstein. For most of the novel, he works for the Allied forces during World War II, helping to break Axis codes. He is an archetypical intellectually driven, socially awkward genius.
Randy Waterhouse is Lawrence Waterhouse's grandson and represents a more contemporary, tech-savvy version of a geek. He is a computer programmer and entrepreneur, and his character showcases the intersection of intellectual prowess with the emerging world of technology. He is also socially inept, but he understands that it is a drawback and tries to adapt.
Bobby Shaftoe is a Marine during World War II, and his character is an anti-thesis for geekiness: he embodies physical strength, toughness, and resilience, a Rambo version of WW2. He isn’t perfect, and he has brains, not only brawl.
Goto Dengo is a Japanese soldier in World War II, who became Shaftoe’s friend just before Pearl Harbor, when both Japanese and US troops stayed in Shanghai. He represents a different cultural perspective, not only as a soldier but as a poet and an engineer.

The novel is great in parts where it explores themes of cryptography, technology, and the impact of tech on society. While the book primarily focuses on themes related to cryptography and technology, it also delves into the lives and personalities of several key characters. It also gives a wealth of real historical figures and events as well as some slightly disguised/fictionalized, like there is Electrical Till Corp, which is IBM in all but name, or there is a version of Operation Mincemeat. The overall plot is heavily influenced by Libertarian thought.

It is definitely the work of its times and shows how in just a few decades SFF fandom may change: while "Cryptonomicon" doesn't necessarily stress masculinity as a primary theme, it, like much older SF, has most of the characters white, male, heterosexual. There are a lot of depictions of young men's sexual urges and the need to ‘lose some steam’, but all women in the book are more objects than persons, needed to move a plot. Also, there is a criticism of extreme cases of political correctness, like in the following two pieces:

1.
Nip is the word used by Sergeant Sean Daniel McGee, U.S. Army, Retired, to refer to Nipponese people in his war memoir about Kinakuta, a photocopy of which document Randy is carrying in his bag. It is a terrible racist slur. On the other hand, people call British people Brits, and Yankees Yanks, all the time. Calling a Nipponese person a Nip is just the same thing, isn’t it? Or is it tantamount to calling a Chinese person a Chink? During the hundreds of hours of meetings and megabytes of encrypted e-mail messages, that Randy, Avi, John Cantrell, Tom Howard, Eberhard Föhr, and Beryl have exchanged, getting Epiphyte(2) off the ground, each of them has occasionally, inadvertently, used the word Jap as shorthand for Japanese—in the same way as they used RAM to mean Random Access Memory. But of course Jap is a horrible racist slur too. Randy figures it all has to do with your state of mind at the time you utter the word. If you’re just trying to abbreviate, it’s not a slur. But if you are fomenting racist hatreds, as Sean Daniel McGee occasionally seems to be not above doing, that’s different.

2.
“So,” Randy continued, “to get back to where we started, the Information Superhighway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that metaphor seriously. Q.E.D.”
“Oh. I see,” Kivistik said, a little hotly. He had seen an opening. “So we should rely on the technocrats to tell us what to think, and how to think, about this technology.”
The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow, righteously struck.
“I’m not sure what a technocrat is,” Randy said. “Am I a technocrat? I’m just a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocol of the Internet, and read them. And then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me a technocrat?”
“You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you picked up that book,” Kivistik said. “The ability to wade through a technical text, and to understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilege conferred by an education that is available only to members of an elite class. That’s what I mean by technocrat.”
“I went to a public school,” Randy said. “And then I went to a state university. From that point on, I was self-educated.”
Charlene broke in. She had been giving Randy dirty looks ever since this started and he had been ignoring her. Now he was going to pay. “And your family?” Charlene asked frostily.
Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. “My father’s an engineer. He teaches at a state college.”
“And his father?”
“A mathematician.”
Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case closed.
“I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat,” Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person’s language, maybe in an attempt to turn their weapons against them but more likely (he thinks, lying in bed at three A.M. in the Manila Hotel) out of an uncontrollable urge to be a prick. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly; etiquette dictated that you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. “No one in my family has ever had much money or power,” he said.

I personally am interested in both major themes of the book like WW2 history and 90s hackers, as well as minor ones, like RPGs, trading card games, and theosophical discussions, so for me, the book is great, even if it definitely has flaws and therefore can bore or anger (quite reasonably) some people.

Eins der Bensten Bücher die ich kenne. Es erstaunt mich bei jedem lesen / hören aufs Neue, wieviele Querverbindungen es in dem Buch gibt. Alleine schon das Porzelanmuster "Lavender Rose" hat mehr Implikationen als man glauben möchte.

Cryptonomicon is a 50 year retrospective on how the flow of information affects history, with particular emphasis on the evolution of the modern day telecommunications networks that we all depend on. Along the way, Stephenson raises prescient questions about the ownership of those networks and the privacy of individuals who utilize them, eerily predicting the current policy controversy in the United States over encrypting data - with private companies trying to meet public demand for increased privacy from snooping agencies like the NSA and government actors on the opposite side who run around yelling national security and insisting that backdoors and keys be given to their agents to track down and prevent “terrorism.” And all of this at a time in history when most people still used dial up internet and smart phones as we know them today were 8 years in the future. (And yes, I’m aware that smart phones existed in the consumer market prior to Apple’s release of the first iPhone, but I’m taking that as a jumping off point that popularized and normalized the technology that we consider a “smart phone” to be today.) But these seems overly simplistic to me too. It’s also a spy novel. It’s an international business thriller in the vein of Rising Sun. It’s a treasure-seeking adventure story. It’s a story about paranoid hackers. It’s a conspiracy thriller. It’s...everything.

While the opening lines of this review may make Cryptonomicon sound like an abysmally boring essay on international economics and government regulation of telecommunications infrastructure, it’s not. Stephenson’s tone for the most part remains a wry sort of flippancy that seems at odds with the seriousness of his subject matter. The closest approximation I can make is that he’s sort of a hacker Joseph Heller. Maybe if Vonnegut had a received a PhD in mathematics or computer science instead of studying a more practical subject like mechanical engineering, this might be the type of novel that he’d write. The tone begins to break down in the last tenth of the book, when a lot of the ironic humor seems to mysteriously vanish. Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse sort of loses his absent-mindedness and becomes a shrewd actor in a conspiracy that becomes central to the wedding of the two timelines (one centered around the life of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse during the Second World War, with occasional jaunts into the lives of some supporting characters like Sgt. Bobby Shaftoe, the other centered around the grandson of LP Waterhouse - Randy in 1999) in a way that I find inexplicable. He starts off pretty much clueless, with an almost autistic inability to have what society deems "normal” social interactions. He's oblivious and focused only on problems that interest him. By the end of the novel, he’s a savvy orchestra master capable of manipulating individuals by knowing them in ways that he seemed incapable of noticing before, and we lose a lot of the bumbling humor and uncontextualized internal observations that made him unique and quirky to begin with. The evolution of several of the other characters seems much more realistic, and perhaps because of the length, I didn’t really notice any significant moments of change until the ending forced me into a sort of retrospective.

This is a monumental work of precision prose, but the plot is somewhat of a mess. Fortunately for Stephenson, it’s entirely possible to lose yourself in the narration. If it’s at all possible for a story to emerge out of a collection of brilliant, but diverse asides, this is it. The thread of the two narratives are frequently buried by Stephenson as he embarks on several page long odysseys exploring everything from the genesis of the Greek pantheon of deities, the basic construction of safe-cracking equipment, the derivation of a function designed to identify the optimum time for critical thinking both pre- and post-coitus and the relative efficacy of different methods of ejaculation, social and cultural observations tied to the evolutionary teleology of homosexuality, various explorations of cultural phenomena common to East Asian cultures, oh, and of course - the basics of cryptology. Stephenson is relatively easily and enthusiastically distracted when topics of interest emerge out of the narrative fabric of the story he’s trying to tell. The upshot is (at least for the first 700 pages), you don’t really mind these asides. They’re fascinating and told with a contagious sort of enthusiasm that is absolutely engrossing. Stephenson is an insanely genius polymath and puts every facet of his interest and intellect to work sharing with you the catalog of his knowledge.

Not only is the prose carefully considered and constructed, but it seems that great care was given to the interaction and overlapping of the two timelines (1940s and 1999) with a parallel structure built up that was subtle and very impressive. While such structures can seem contrived, in Cryptonomicon they add to the sense of mastery. There are no direct correlations and only thoughtful readers will notice thematic or symbolic overlaps in the lives of LP Waterhouse and his grandson, or, for that matter, in the lives of Bobby Shaftoe and his son Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe. For example, Stephenson might cut from a narrative chapter focused on Goto Dengo, a Japanese army corps of engineers type, constructing what he believes to be a crypt for the Emperor Hirohito (but turns out to be a vault for stolen war gold) as Japan begins its plummet to defeat after the Battle of Midway to a chapter focusing on Randy’s Epiphyte Corp’s construction of a secure and totally encrypted data vault for the storage of a next-gen crypto currency. It’s clever, and leaves the impression that quite to the contrary of appearances, Cryptonomicon is almost absurdly thoughtfully crafted.

I honestly can’t see how his book is categorized as science fiction. It’s absolutely historical fiction. It’s nerdy and full of science (complete with real math equations! Shame on you popular science books for eschewing them and their explanations.) and technology. Sure, the technology involved might have seemed cutting-edge in 1999, but it was widely available to people with the proper financial resources. Reading it just over a decade later makes a lot of the technology utilized by the characters in “the present” seem quaint. More often, when reading through, I felt myself wondering whether or not it was possible for that era’s technology to do the things it was doing in the story rather than the possibility of such tech existing in the first place. My only guess is that some dumb publisher looked at the equations and saw real explanations for how computers work and it gave him a headache. I also don’t know where this book’s imposing reputation comes from aside from its length. You don’t have to be a mathematical or scientific genius to grasp where Stephenson is going with the narrative. In fact, I’d argue that you’d be better served by a broader knowledge of the historical context of the story (the events of the Second World War) than by a broader technical knowledge of computers. Everything scientific or mathematic is thoroughly and simply explained - the historical allusions are not. It would probably be impossible to gain a full appreciation of how intricately Stephenson has embedded his narrative into a real historical context without knowing the history very well.

The story has some very exciting moments and very vibrant historical personalities like Alan Turing and Douglas MacArthur grace parts of the narrative. The events are suitably engaging and mysterious, the characters hilarious, and the narrative fascinating. I did begin to feel that in the last couple hundred pages, it overstayed its welcome a bit. Aside from an aside on the Greeks and a recontextualization of Plato’s Cave parable by Enoch Root and Randy Waterhouse toward the end, the asides started to frustrate me. By that point, I’d pieced together where things were going and I was eager for Stephenson to get on with it. It made me impatient and probably less appreciative of the narrative than I was when I first took up the book. All-in-all, this book is well deserving of its place on numerous “Best of” lists and is one of those novels that should be required reading for geeks of various stripes - from math geeks to history geeks, there’s something here for everyone.

4.5 stars because of the plot slowdown at the end, but honestly, the narrative is so good and long sections so eminently quotable with well-turned phrases and observations that on its merits alone, the novel gets 5.

It's perhaps not fair to review a book that I didn't finish reading, but I found this to be so poorly written, so painfully boring, so self-indulgent on the part of the author, and with such laughably sophomoric dialog and characterizations, that I couldn't resist blowing one final raspberry at Mr Stephenson's clown-car of a book. No doubt he is an author with a lot on his mind, and "computer" science fiction is a nice change of pace, but he's not got the chops to pull off such a long and intricate book without the help of a good editor with the guts to tell him when he's sucking.