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…!

Raz, keď zo mňa bude 130-ročná starenka, príde za mnou nádejná lokálna influencerka spraviť menší rozhovor: "Aby si mladí viac vážili, teta," zahučí mi do ucha, "čo všetko pre nás vaša generácia obetovala."
"Jáj moja," spľasnem rukami a dám sa do spomínania a keď už deckám porozprávam všetko o tom, ako som pašovala knihy cez tretiu svetovú a kde som sa schovávala pri prvom celosvetovom výpadku Internetu, nazrie lokálna influencerka nenápadne do poznámok. "A teta," odkašle si, "ešte nám povedzte, ako to bolo v tom dvetisícdvadsiatom roku."
Prestanem štrikovať a zamyslene nakrčím obočie. "Dvadsiaty, dvadsiaty...to mi nič nehovorí, srdiečko."
"Ale veď teta," zatvári sa influencerka trochu netrpezlivo, "ten pamätný dvadsiaty rok..."
"Jaaaaj," rozleje sa mi zrazu po tvári bezzubý úsmev. "Dvetisícdvatsiaty! Už viem!"
Influencerka s maskérkou si vydýchnu a ja sa opäť dám do štrikovania." Dvetisícdvadsiaty," zopakujem s pohľadom upreným kamsi do diaľky. "To bol ten rok, kedy som objavila Neala Stephensona."

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 the characters are trying van eyc phreaking, apparently this is using an antenae to read the signal off of monitor cables and such to get an image. This is fine, but rather than having the characters do it, see it works, and have it established as plot point later, he decides to give us 8 pages of what is on the computer. An interesting piece about the origins of fetish, but it has nothing to do with the book. The whole book was full of this stuff. I just wanted to yell shut the hell up and get on with the story!

Also if there is a clever way of saying something he goes out of his way to do it, for example he calls sunburns, radiation burns. While true, it doesn't come off as clever, just one of those science geek things where they wink and whisper, "Most people don't know sunight is radiation! hehe we are smart!" Granted he assumes that the reader is in on the joke, but it still bugged me.

Which is all too bad, I liked the storyline a lot, it was interesting, the way he went from WWII to the present was nicely done. His descriptions of how crypto and counter crypto both then an now were interesting as well.

I was talking to another friend of mine about this and he agreed only about another one of his books, Snowcrash, i think, and he summed it up as, "I get it, nanotech is cool, now move on with the story."

In game terms this is like playing a game of titan, it takes forever, you have fun while you are playing but you never want to play again.

Neal Stephenson performed his usual wizardry in "Cryptonomicon", a very long book that is a sequel to "The Baroque Cycle", which was in fact written later. ("Cryptonomicon" was published in 1999, where the three volumes of "The Baroque Cycle" came out in 2003 and 2004).

"Cryptonomicon" is ostensibly a historical novel. But the genre is really magical realism, although the elements of magic are subtly interwoven into the usually realistic plot. Stephenson creates his special and unique stew of multi-culturalism, deadpan humor, geeky technological details, and multiple times, places, and eccentric characters, along with lots of interesting tangents. As usual with Stephenson's work, the various characters, plotlines, locations, and timelines intersect more and more until they converge. He orchestrates all of this brilliantly and keeps the reader constantly entertained and interested.

The novel takes place in a variety of locations, and most of the characters travel around the world. Many of the locales, although not all of them, are in the Pacific Rim. The locations include various place in the U.S., including the Midwest, Seattle, and San Francisco, Manila, and various other points in the Philippines, Stockholm, London, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Hawaii, New Caledonia, New Guinea, Shanghai; Qwghlm (a fictional Celtic-flavored island, apparently pronounced like "Tagum"); Bletchley Park, the British top secret World War II facility for cryptography and cryptoanalysis; Brisbane, Australia; Kinakuta (a fictional island sultanate in the South Pacific which only figures in the 1990's timeline, although there are tie-ins to World War II); and Japan.

The book interweaves two main timelines. One takes place in World War II, the other in the late 1990's. The book also picks up the tale of two families central to "The Baroque Cycle," the Shaftoes and the Waterhouses. As in "The Baroque Cycle", the Shaftoes are the people of action, and the Waterhouses are the intellectuals.

Note: I'm giving the only (minor) spoiler in this review here. The mysterious(and apparently ubiquitous) Enoch Root also makes his (re) appearance in both timelines. (He appeared and disappeared during "The Baroque Cycle" as well).

The book is quite long--1130 pages--so while listening to the audiobook I often followed along in the eBook version as well in Adobe Digital Editions.

The WW II timeline mainly focuses on the stories of three major characters--Marine Corpsman Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, American cryptoanalyst and mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, and Japanese soldier and engineer Goto Dengo. Of course, in typical Neal Stephenson fashion, all of their lives intersect, as do the two timelines. Shaftoe is a brave and conscientious soldier, a charismatic leader, more of a physical man than a verbal one. He lacks formal education, but has plenty of moxie and street smarts. I'll try to avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say that Sergeant Shaftoe ends up travelling all around the world in his quest to return to Manila. Goto Dengo, a Japanese man who meets Bobby Shaftoe in Shanghai, also spends time in the Philippines, (via New Guinea, like Shaftoe) and once again encounters Shaftoe in Manila. Goto Dengo probably endures more hardship and pain than almost anyone else in the book. Stephenson presents the suffering of war unflinchingly, but in a way that does not make the book less interesting.

There are a few famous historical personalities that show up in the World War II timeline.

Lawrence Waterhouse meets Alan Turing, the famous British cryptoanalyst, at Princeton University before the war, and continues his interaction with him later.

Also, General Douglas Macarthur puts in a (rather comical) appearance in the Philippines.

In the 1990's timeline, the focus is on Randall (Randy) Waterhouse, a Unix geek who is part of a technology startup, Epiphyte (2) on the West coast. Epiphyte (2) plans to start a data crypt in the South Pacific primarily for use in the Philippines. Randy is the grandson of Lawrence Waterhouse. He is primarily interested in computer programming, but becomes progressively more involved in computer cryptosystems. So he ends up travelling a parallel path to that of his grandfather, Lawrence Waterhouse. Randy meets Douglas Macarthur Shaftoe, son of Bobby Shaftoe and America (Amy) Shaftoe, Doug's daughter and Bobby Shaftoe's granddaughter, on multiple business trips to the Philippines. Doug and Amy run Semper Marine, a diving business with a boat named Glory IV after Doug's mother and Amy's grandmother. Semper does some work for Epiphyte. Randy travels far and wide in the course of the book, taking multiple trips for business and personal reasons. Randy survives quite a few major setbacks and run ins with enemies. (I'll skip the spoilers). Of course there is also a huge cast of characters in this timeline, including the dramatis personae of Epiphyte (2), and lots of other colorful people.

Stephenson somehow manages to keep us interested and entertained through a seemingly endless series of plot twists, surprises, people, and locations. That's quite a feat in a book this size. And I always learn about all kinds of interesting things reading his books. For example, I learned a lot about secret codes used during World War II and about modern computer cryptosystems.

Of course, reading a novel of this size and complexity is a challenge. But in this case, it's well worth the effort.

I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson. I previously gave Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Anathem each 5 stars, and include the first two among my favorite science fiction stories. That is why, I was so disappointed that I didn't love this. I didn't even really like it.

There are parts of this novel that are brilliant, and the scope of it is impressive, but it just seemed to drag on for too long and in too many spots. Great writing, great characters and even a great story, but it was just too slow to keep me into it.

I still love Neal Stephenson, however, and am just going chalk this up to a bump in the road.

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.

It's obvious that author Stephenson does lots of diligent study that shows in the works of his novels. He discerns the complicated and transforms it to his novels. 7 of 10 stars

"Over and over again we see the pattern of the Titanomachia repeated—the old gods are thrown down, chaos returns, but out of the chaos, the same patterns reemerge.”
- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon



I didn't like it as much as Anathem or Snow Crash, but like those two Stephenson novels Cryptonomicon has a large cult following, and was on the bleeding edge of a lot of ideas only starting to bubble up in 1999.

Stephenson's prose can go from poetic to obnoxious pretty fast and the tone of this novel was sometimes kinda ridiculous, but ignoring a couple big things that I generally rolled my eyes at -- I loved the novel. It moved, was moving, and came together very well at the end.

Think of this novel like a REALLY good war thriller (Red Storm Rising) that runs with three or four distinct story lines and about a dozen characters that jumps to another storyline every 6-1o pages. So even when a storyline was dragging a bit, soon I was flipped into another zone that I enjoyed a bunch. It is also a fantastic historical war novel, focused on cryptography during WWII. So, it kept reminding me of other historical novels of WWII. It seeemed a bit like Wouk's The Winds of War (except this book was strictly focused on areas mostly ignored by Wouk). Finally, it was a well-paced gernational/family novel (see Roots or The Godfather).

Anyway, it is a good book to read during the 2017-2018 boom (and perhaps bust) of cryptocurrency, since the 1997 portion of this novel deals A LOT with the establishment of a cryptocurrency (NOT a blockchain encrypted currency). Supposedly Paypal's founder Peter Thiel used to require his employees to read Cryptonomicon. It might be a myth, but if so, it is a good one.

Si no me equivoco, debió ser en secundaria cuando jugábamos a crear un código para cifrar mensajes y podernos enviar notas dentro del salón de clases y que en caso de ser descubiertos, quien interceptara el mensaje no supiera lo que estábamos diciendo. Eran códigos extremadamente simples donde solo alterábamos el orden las letras, una a podía ser una r, o una b podía ser un número. Los mensajes eran más bobos aún.

Releyendo Crítica y verdad, de Barthes, releo al respecto de la interpretación que la crítica literaria puede hacer de la literatura, es más, que la misma literatura puede hacer de lo que comprendemos como realidad, de la ficción como otra realidad, ni mayor ni menor que lo que experimentamos cuando estamos conscientes. Simplemente una realidad que apodamos “ficción”.

Esta novela de Stephenson llegó a nuestra biblioteca cortesía de una “recomendación” de Fresán en su artículo New American Cookbook, listado de libros que nos ha dado mucho que explorar, a mi padre y a mí, de la literatura norteamericana de fin del siglo pasado.

Después de meses de dedicarle a ratos lectura a esta especie de Moby Dick de la criptografía, he podido dar fin a una de las mejores novelas que he leído en mi vida, e ignoro qué tando de verdad hay en lo que afirma Charles Yu de que “A person who has recently read Cryptonomicon is temporarily the smartest person on Earth. That’s a fact”, pero sí debo reconocer que me siento muy diferente de cuando comencé la lectura de este librote a ahora que le he dado fin.

No solo ha pasado tiempo en mi vida, y otras lecturas intermedias, no solo he envejecido unos meses, sino que además, he confrontado la lectura de una novela que abarca demasiados detalles en un momento culminante de la historia de la humanidad: la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Aunque, más que ese periodo en particular, más bien, mi atención se inclinó por la influencia de la guerra en el progreso de la humanidad.

Uso la palabra “progreso” desde la perspectiva escéptica de Gray, la estulticia de la humanidad ante el conocimiento, ante la “sabiduría” que ha generado en su andar sobre la tierra. Un progreso más bien imbécil e inútil.

“Tanto daño que le causamos a la Tierra”.

“Las bombas nucleares pueden destruir el planeta”.

Patrañas. Al Mundo le importamos todavía menos de lo que nosotros podemos preocuparnos por la existencia de una bacteria.

Criptonomicón viene a ser una lápida inmensa en relación al legado de la humanidad. Sus conocimientos y avances tecnológicos, vienen a ser resultado de el afán de ganar una batalla, una pelea, una guerra. Los países “desarrollados” invierten cantidades demenciales de dinero, esfuerzo, materia prima y recurso humano, en crear nuevas armas y herramientas de destrucción. De destrucción del otro que no soy yo, que no se ve como yo, que no piensa ni cree lo que creo yo.

Una tremenda puñetez.

Ni todo el oro del mundo bajo el Gólgota o en el V-Millennium podrán nunca evitar que catástrofes bélicas puedan volver a suceder. Es el sueño, la utopía de unos pocos. De muchos. Contra los sueños de dominación y control y poder de otros pocos.

Stephenson se las ingenia para escribir una novelota increíblemente amena, entretenida, divertida y para nada tonta, al contrario, hay partes que te exigen todas tus neuronas trabajando; podrías brincar esas partes, pero, entonces, cuál es el chiste. Finalmente, una novela puede ser un mensaje cifrado de algo más. De algo que solo cada lector podrá descifrar, incluso no en una primera lectura, a lo mejor en dos o tres; incluso, puede que no al terminar de leerla, puede que pasen meses, años, antes que tu cabeza, o tu espíritu, tengan la “tecnología” necesaria para descifrar ese mensaje.

No recuerdo haberme encariñado tanto con la trama de una novela, con sus personajes, y medio odiar a unos.

Espero que Bobby Shaftoe me acompañe en más de una batalla. Espero tener tiempo, ojos y vida para leer algo más de Stephenson. Espero poder ser digno de ese río de oro que es la vida.

This is the book that caused me to break up with Neal Stephenson. The premise is wonderful, but it completely fails to deliver. It's overlong, ponderous, and self-indulgent. The entire modern section—fully half of the book—is completely superfluous. It's uninteresting, poorly-written, and terrible science-fiction. (I'm sure it felt cutting-edge to refer to Linux and Windows NT when the book was written, but now it comes off as lame and precious.) The WWII espionage part is legitimately interesting, but only because of the parts that are true; you'd be better off reading actual histories of WWII espionage. "Operation Mincemeat" would be a great place to start.

In summary: don't waste your time. If this book sounds interesting to you, try "Declare" by Tim Powers. It's shorter, better-written, and far more interesting.

A Nerd-porn Fiesta: hackers bravely battling through carpal tunnel syndrome; Amazonian bodied virgins falling in love with chubby computer programmers; strangely conflicted weeaboo overtones; more fapping or thinking about fapping than anyone wants to read about; phreaking; the Riemann Zeta function.

Entertaining enough, the analysis of the conflict between Ares and Hera being the highlight of the novel, but a low signal to noise ratio leads to significant data redundancy in a nine hundred page novel. Loses a star when you remember you could have read at least two Elena Ferrante using the same bandwith.

This is my third Neal Stephenson book. You could say I'm a fan of his work. You would be correct in such a statement. But, this is not for everybody. His writing style is dense and there is a great deal of information being presented to you. More so than the intricate nature of the information is the fact that, sometimes, the author will take you down a bizarre side track that will actually make you sit there and think about what you just read. If this doesn't seem like something you'd enjoy-then skip out on Neal Stephenson. This is a large book and if you're not down to go through some really fascinating ideas that may have not much to do with the plot, then I'd not even bother.

Now for the rest of you that don't mind utterly bizarre side tracks and very high end ideas that actually require you to think (how solitaire can be used an encryption algorithm) and form concepts in your mind-then you will love this dense work. What is it about?

There are two time frames where the story takes place, one being during World War II and the other in "modern" (1990's?) times. The cryptography WW II story has to do with the famous minds of Dr. Turning and Dr. Waterhouse who broke the German and Japanese codes. It then becomes a story about the founding of the NSA and in the modern timeline it is a story about building a "Crypt" to store information that governments can't break into. How does this all flow together?

The lynchpins are the families who keep appearing- the Shaftoes, the Waterhouses, the Goto's, etc. The story jumps back and forth between World War II and current. The families have changed in that the current generation are the grandchildren of the ones described in World War II. More than that I will not say. It's hard to explain such an amazing plot and I shouldn't. Discover it for yourself.

The Marine Shaftoe, the Japanese Army Goto Dengo and the priest Enoch Root are the best characters in here..but there is a lot in here.. just a taste includes Nazi German U-boat commanders, hidden gold, angry Filipino rebels, Japanese Army units, U.S. Marines, Douglas MacArthur, a scary venture capitalist known as the Dentist, an unbreakable cypher as well as various and sundry different side tangents (the equation for optimum masturbation was funny)-well you're starting to see why Neal Stephenson can be a Love or Hate thing. Me? I love this.

One of the more unique books and minds out there. Finishing one of his books feels like the end of a day in undergrad- having studied multiple subjects and beginning to grasp that they might all fit together after all. If this seems too tedious then yes skip this book. If this seems fun-then do what I did and take your time and read this savoring every new thought you come up with. NS has a very dry wit and it shows. I truly enjoyed this book and am now a Neal Stephenson fan for life. I appreciate intelligent books and this certainly qualifies.