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.

Now an all time favorite book, though I'm definitely a little bit crazier than when I started reading it... Review to follow.

In some ways Crytonomicon is an absolutely stunning book. It is a seriously lengthy treatise about the importance of cryptography historically and in the present (well, 1999) day, focussing heavily on the impact it had on the outcomes both small and large during World War II but also on how it can be utilised in the modern day. Following Bobby Shaftoe; a Marine in World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse; a cryptographer in World War II and Randy Waterhouse; a somewhat unlucky tech start-up in 1999, the story passes from past to present and back again with the threads only loosely drawn together by the generational family. At least, that's how it seems.

You get everything from hard hitting war scenes, political manoeuvring, friends to enemies to allies, family squabbles, drama and romance here. You also get unbelievably long winded info dumps on cryptography - the history, importance, usage, background, and intricate details on how specific code breaking systems work. You get computer hacking and many other things, some of which I completely failed to understand like the pages dedicated to RIST. Some of it was fascinating, some of it tedious, all of it highly informative. However, Stephenson is also a master at turning a single sentence into pages and pages of text - even when it is completely unrequired. An example that astounded me was his description of a computer turning on. Never in my life have I read the better part of two pages dedicated to the single act of a computer turning on. Or the description of people in a room:

The room contains a few dozen living bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air-sacks and pierced by a Gordian sewer filling with burbling acid and compressed gas and a squirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung across its length.

And I'll point out, I've cut that particular passage very short. It keeps going. And you're left wondering... or pleading... 'WHY?!' It sometimes feels like what would happen if a toddler had the intelligence of a fifty year old genius. All the mathematical genius or stirring war scenes and then suddenly - oooooh, shiny! And off you go into the depths of whatever caught it's attention this time. Except without the blessed relief of the really short toddler attention span.

It's funny at points, striking at points, very educational at points and despite being so very hard to get through, I kept coming back to it time and time again. But it says a lot that it took me the better part of two weeks to get through this mega tome. Part of that is just down to it's length - 1000 odd pages will slow anyone down - but it's also down to the divergences into completely unnecessary aspects, sometimes pages or even chapters long. And as with all things, some of them really caught me - I got far too invested in the food and activity 'costs' for RPG's even if it had nothing to do with the plot - others, just didn't.

This is a book that would likely have been an easy five star read if some of the info dumps and random descriptive passages that turn into pages were removed... or at least significantly shortened. It is hands down, too long. There is a huge amount of content, but much of it reads like an encyclopaedia and other parts are completely random divergences that don't add a lot. There are exceptions - the scene with Randy's family dividing out the inheritance by mathematical manoeuvrings in a parking lot was completely unnecessary in many ways, but equally was both entertaining and developed the characters somewhat. Other sections don't even have that to explain them.

And the conclusion did admittedly let this down. The historical elements were fine; after all, there's not a lot Stephenson could do considering it's not an alternate history and he was following the course of the war. But the 'present day' finale felt like a huge let-down considering how long it had taken to get there!! Of all the things to rush - particularly after a 1000 page tome - the ending really shouldn't be it... and yet, it felt rushed, unexplained and frankly rather pointless.

I'm sticking with three stars though because despite the desperate need for a large scale trim, I did enjoy large sections of this book. It made me laugh at points, I grew truly fond of the characters - particularly Shaftoe - and I've certainly come away educated on some things I never thought I needed to know. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, unless you are in the market for a truly long and heavy read, but I don't regret putting the time in.

Just re-read this for the first time, and it's still one of my favorites. This book is geek-heaven: cryptography, world war II, code-breaking, nazi gold, and modern day internet beginnings all tied together in one masterful story.

It also was largely lost on me, and I suspect many of my generation, that the second world war was won - or at least greatly accelerated - in great part due to the fact that we had cracked the German and Japanese codes. Learning more about the efforts of Bletchley Park, and Dr Alan Turing and huffduff and cribs, etc was fascinating.

I think the funniest part of the book is the page where Stephenson actually graphs out how productive Waterhouse is when he has recently had sex (very productive) and when he hasn't (not very productive).

The code-breaking and cryptography is not stuff I know a ton about, as modern day programmers largely don't have to worry about that stuff, but it's a good reminder to think about, as we don't have it on our brains nearly enough. Avi & Randy's paranoia and tendency to encrypt everything from their hard drives to their emails may be overkill, on the other hand, it also may be wise. I remember getting email from people who used public/private keys to encrypt their email before, but not in the last 5 years. Maybe we should request that Gmail Labs add that!

If there was a theme to this book, it's that cryptography is everything. It defined the second world war, and it also defines the modern internet. Information is king - not large caches of gold.

Bene prieš dvidešimt metų skaitytą „Cryptonomicon“ jau labai seniai prisiekinėjau sau pasikartoti. Bet vis atidėdavau. Gal baidė plytos apimtis – vis tik virš 1000 puslapių (kita vertus, tai, jog prieš porą metų pasikartojau to paties rašytojo „Barokinį ciklą“, kuriame trys tokio pat storio plytos, tai tarsi ir paneigtų), o gal bijojau, kad įspūdis nebebus toks pats. Kaip ten bebūtų, atėjo laikas. Be to, susiradau pateisinamą priežastį, bet tegul ji lieka neįvardinta.
Romano veiksmas rutuliojasi dvejuose laiko sluoksniuose – Antrojo Pasaulinio karo metais ir pačioje XX amžiaus pabaigoje.
II PK metais sekame paskui genialų matematiką ir kriptoanalitiką Lawrence Waterhouse bei nuo morfijaus priklausomą jūrų pėstininką Bobby Shaftoe. Abu jie priklauso slaptam 2702 būriui – sąjungininkų grupei, kuri narplioja Ašies šalių komunikacijos kodus ir kartu organizuoja klaidinančias operacijas, kurių tikslas – nuslėpti nuo nacių ir jų šalininkų, kad šių šifrai nulaužti. Vėliau abu herojus aplinkybės nubloškia ir į Pietryčių Aziją.
XX amžiaus pabaigoje vieno iš tų herojų anūkas, kietas programavimo maniakas Randy Waterhouse sykiu su bičiuliais imasi projekto sukurti nepriklausomą duomenų prieglobstį Pietryčių Azijoje, kur sutinka Americą Shaftoe (patys spėkite, kieno anūkę). Galiausiai įvykiai pasisuka taip, kad Randy ir kompanija imasi karo metais japonų suslėptų aukso atsargų paieškų. Panašu, kad informacija apie auksą slypi Randy senelio išsaugotose, taip ir nenulaužtose šifruotėse.
Ir nors „Cryptonomicon“ laimėjo 2000-jų Locus Award kaip geriausias mokslinės fantastikos romanas (o be to – buvo nominuotas Hugo ir Arthur C. Clarke premijoms), bet čia įžvelgiu klastą. Mat tos fantastikos čia... kaip čia pasakius? Na, nėr. Nebent paminėsim lyg ir nemirtingą Enochą Rootą, kuris neretai šmėkščioja ir kituose Stephensono knygose, kad ir tame pačiame „Barokiniame cikle“ (kuriame, beje, sutinkame ir tolimus Waterhaouse bei Shaftoe protėvius). Bet tai čia toks labiau link fantasy požymių būtų?
Žodžiu, su žanru komplikuota. Gal protingiausia būtų knygą įvertinti kaip istorinio nuotykinio romano ir technotrilerio pavainikį. O gal tiesiog kaip gerą knygą. Arba ne – labai gerą knygą. Vieną iš geriausių, kurias esu skaitęs.
Tai mažiausiai šeši iš penkių galimų. Mažiausiai.

I had been warned about this book. It's big. And complicated. And bizarre. And it if it was my first Neal Stephenson book I don't think I could have done it. Please don't start with this book. Go get Snow Crash or The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Start there. Ease yourself in.

Because this book really is a mindfuck. It skips between various times with no warning. Once you get the hang of it, and start learning the characters, it gets easier. Not easy, easier. As can be gathered from the title cryptography plays a very important role in this book. And it gets detailed. Not so much with modern cryptography, which while mentioned plays a backseat to the codes and processes of WWII, but that doesn't make them any simpler.

The mathematics is deep and requires a great deal of concentration for those of use not mathematically inclined, or many years out of study. And bizarre. There are no punches pulled here. It is part graphic, gory, sexual, racist (characters, not author). It is mostly set during WWII, and the ugly thoughts and ideas of those times shows through. Atrocities abounded on all sides.

This book is hard reading. Multiple times I put it down, unsure if I could finish it. But the threads started tying together, sense started to shine through, and I kept on going. I don't know if I could recommend this to anyone, as I said at the start you'd really have to already have an idea if you like Stephenson's books first. But if you do, just give it a try.

I am somewhat ambivalent about this novel. If "novel" is the right word. It's more like a treaty on a bunch of topics with a narrative woven through. If a novel it is, then it's one with a lot of exposition. Perhaps that's why it's so long. That, and the diggressions. Good heavens, the diggressions.

The story itself is not bad, and it's even gripping on occasion. It sometimes reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug", what with the cryptography and hidden treasure. Only with Nazis instead of pirates. And, of course, much longer, ambitious, and sprawling. In fact, its own ambition and scope might be playing against it. The book is all over the place, and in some spots the author seems to be out of his depth.

Now, if you have any interest in mathematics, cryptography or history, you could certainly do much worse than read this book. You could, for example, watch that recent movie where Benedict Cumberbatch plays a Sheldon Cooper-esque version of Alan Turing. Cryptonomicon is much more respectful and knowledgeable about its subject matter, and it doesn't tend to underestimate its reader.

But there are also some things I didn't quite warm up to. First, it is glaringly obvious that Cryptonomicon was written in the days of the dot-com bubble, and it partakes on that techno-capitalistic optimism that private entrepreneurs will singlehandedly make the world a better place, and the best thing governments can do is to stay out of the way.

Also, this is a very nerdy book. I don't mean that in a bad way; after all, that's one of the main reasons I picked it up. I loved reading about hacking, Enigma machines and one-time pads. The unexpected downside, however, is that it showcases, in what seems to be an earnest, unselfconscious manner, some of the ugly parts of nerd culture as a white boys' club [1]. To the book's credit, at least gay characters (among them a fictionalized Alan Turing) are treated no differently than straight characters. No sophomoric jokes are cracked at their expense. And sophomoric this book can be when discussing sexual issues.

Female characters, on the other hand, are a different matter. You see, women are for sex [2]. Women are irrational. Women manipulate men. Women in this book exist to be someone's wife, or girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, or prospective girlfriend. None of them shows any interest in math or IT, or has the required skills. Those are male pursuits.

This is not just subtext. It's pretty much spelled out. Randy Waterhouse, protagonist of the 1990s storyline, voices the idea that women are just not focused enough. But, you see, this is totally not a sexist remark, because he immediately adds that this alleged fact makes women superior to men, not inferior, as it allows them to develop their social skills rather than hunch in front of a computer. I am sure Randy's opinion is objective and fact-based. After all, we know he is totally unlike those intellectuals whose smug ignorance annoys him so much in an early chapter. Only those social science types would ever run their mouths about things they know nothing about, right, Randy? Right, Mr. Stephenson?

Seeing this is such a nerdy book, the pro-Christian, anti-atheist undercurrent that rears its head from time to time is somewhat surprising. A couple of background characters are even stated to be non-judgmental precisely because they are secretly devout Christians. Why secretly? Because apparently, in certain circles Christianity is not "politically correct" [3].

And there's the matter of the character that dies, yet later pops up still alive with no explanation. I find references online that this particular character shows up in other books and might be immortal. Still, it might have been a good idea to drop some hint rather than have the readers scratch their heads all the way.



[1] Cue angry, missing-the-point yelling: "What do you have against white boys?" The protestors might or might not include the author of the book, who either (a) thinks that the concept of "privileged white male" is supremely amusing, or (b) has a big chip on the shoulder about it.

[2] And the point of sex is male ejaculation. So, women are for male ejaculation. I wish I was making this up.

[3] Yes, this is a book that uses the words "politically correct" unironically.

Executive Summary: If you're a computer or math geek, this book is a must read. If you like geeky humor mixed with world war 2, and random side tangents, this might also be a book for you.

Audio book: I listened to the unabridged audio book by William Dufris. This is the first that I have listened by him. While he didn't do distinct voices for all the characters he did do some as well as a few accents. His German accent was particularly good.

The audio suffers a bit from being unabridged, but thankfully in only a few places. I imagine the book has a bunch of white space/different font for some of the these parts where codes are written out, but Mr. Dufris is forced to read everything out and it can be a bit tedious.

This is my only relatively minor complaint. For a 42+ hour book, this occurred very infrequently.

n  Full Reviewn
This book has been on my to read list for a long time. Snow Crash is one of my favorite books. While this book is more historical fiction than sci-fi (and certainly not cyberpunk), it has the same geeky humor that I loved in Snow Crash so much.

The book has two time periods: The 1940's starting shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the mid-late 90s.

There are several point of view characters for the 40's timeline, but the primary one is Lawrence Waterhouse, an often misunderstood and awkward mathematical genius.

Waterhouse gets blown off by Einstein but becomes friends with Alan Turing. He eventually is put to work breaking codes of both the Japanese and later the Germans during the war.

Meanwhile in the "present" Randall is Unix Guru working with his friend Abby to set up their next business venture in the Philippines.

The other point of view characters include Goto Dango, a Japanese soldier, and Bobby Shafto an American soldier. Their stories augment the main narrative of Waterhouse's.

This book has several tangents, including one on beards and another on bicycles. Many of his tangents turn ordinary thinking into mathematical equations. I found most of them interesting if not amusing, but they are of little importance to the story, so I can see people complaining of the excess in what is a rather lengthy book.

The stories of the two timelines eventually converge in a way that wasn't very apparent to me until about the midway point or so.

I really enjoyed the book, although I'd be happy with some follow-up as I was left with several questions, though mostly minor ones.

Most of my questions relate to the historical accuracy of many events in the story. People like Alan Turing were quite real, as was his involvement in the British efforts to break German codes during the war. There is work involving the Enigma, but the names of the Japanese codes appear to have been changed, as well as replacing several of the people involved with fictional characters.

At some point I hope to find/read a non-fiction book (or books) on the breaking of codes in World War 2, and I am now fascinated by it.

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

An enormous collection of novels - a spy thriller, and a military farce, and a comparative history (of Showa Japan, Churchill Britain, Roosevelt America, the pre- and post-Marcos Philippines), and an oral history of computing, and a modern legal psychodrama, and a family saga of three large dynasties. And a divisive book:

1) It is extremely focussed on men and masculine mindset - guts and brutality, mathematical facility, mind-numbing horniness, how shit works, emotional impermeability, pride in being a stereotype. (Scroll down to see reviews reacting in highly exaggerated ways to this fact, with either horror or delight.)

Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time... there might be a third category... [Waterhouse] speaks, not as a way of telling you a bunch of stuff he's already figured out, but as a way of making up a bunch of new shit as he goes along. And he always seems to be hoping that you'll join in. Which no one ever does.

On the wonder and absurdity of social etiquette:

n  The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead. Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus greased ball joints. Infinite phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy. And yet, despite all of this, not one of those bodies makes a single sound during the sultan's speech.n

Half of this is an accurate portrayal of 40s gender politics, half a defensive reaction to contemporary blank-slateism. I don't think it's a malign kind of masculinity, though there are only a couple of female characters who don't have at least peripheral or inverted sexiness - if you can't handle that I'd avoid it. A good point to bail out would be the bit where Waterhouse models the effect of masturbation vs sex on his cognition as a periodic timeseries. I'm very hard to offend, but the constant use of "females" got to me, by page 400.

n  Randy stares directly into the eyes of the female customs official and says, "The Internet." Totally factitious understanding dawns on the woman’s face, and her eyes ping bosswards. The boss, still deeply absorbed in an article about the next generation of high-speed routers, shoves out his lower lip and nods, like every other nineties American male who senses that knowing this stuff is now as intrinsic to maleness as changing flat tires was to Dad. "I hear that’s really exciting now," the woman says in a completely different tone of voice, and begins scooping Randy’s stuff together into a big pile so that he can repack it. Suddenly the spell is broken, Randy is a member in good standing of American society again, having cheerfully endured this process of being ritually goosed by the Government.n

2) It is also a partisan in the Arts vs STEM "culture war". (In fact Stephenson is often dismissive of all academia - "grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research".) One of the most important scenes in the book shows a lone techie clashing with a self-appointed jury of stereotypically appalling critical theorists: they speak nonsense about an objective matter, he correctly calls them on it, they cover him in ad hominem bulverism until he gives in. It's not without nuance: his champion in the fight Randy is later shown sulking and reliving it and admitting his own pettiness:

n  “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.n

3) There are a lot of coincidences, much more than the novelistic baseline. Characters meet Atanasoff and Turing and Reagan and MacArthur. (A Nazi submarine captain makes a sneering reference to a bureaucratic nightmare being something out of "that Jew Kafka". I thought this was an absurd anachronism, but looking into it, the Nazi could easily have read him, but could not have made the reference to a Brit and expected it to stick. English translation of Das Schloss in 1930 but it didn't take off until after the war.) This is cute/trite on its own, but I find it helpful to imagine Stephenson looking down at history, selecting a particularly interesting sub-graph from the population

4) There are lots of info-dumps. Large sections of this are indistiguishable from nonfiction. ("This pause is called the horizontal retrace interval. Another one will occur...") People seem to hate this, but it is fine since it's done through aspie characters who absolutely do talk like that.

5) It has a lot of pulpy Feats, fuck-yeah setpieces which fiction this good usually foregoes. Tropical headhunters; escape from a collapsing mineshaft; cryptocurrency in the 90s; tactical blackface; drinking and lolling with your Nazi captors; etc.

n  It would be an idyllic tropical paradise of not for the malaria, the insects, the constant diarrhea and resulting hemorrhoids, and the fact that the people are dirty and smell bad and deat each other and use human heads for decoration.n

---

It's easy to miss the uniting theme, and thus call it "not a novel" or whatever, because it only unmasks on p.791. It is Ares v Athena, rage v cunning, politics v engineering, normies v geeks, law v ethics, conflict v mistake, local maxima v the search for the global. This overloaded binary is embodied in Andrew v Randy, the Dentist v Avi, Rudy v Göring, All of Japan v Dengo.

Now, it suits me to have litigious bastards and culture-warriors be the inheritors of Ares, of mindless destruction. But it would be silly to think that the stakes are comparable between the plot strands: it's WWII vs the Struggles of Some Cool Crypto Entrepreneurs. But Stephenson is obviously not equating them, and might be pointing out that stakes are now in general lower, even when you're up against contemporary gangsters.

Another giant theme is the emergence of one new masculinity, beyond the taciturn physical hero: the geek. This is the "third category" above. (Is this really that new? Isn't it just the Scholar?)

---

Misc notes

* Waterhouse seems to be taking Bill Tutte's space in history and seizing it for America but ok.

* Bobby Shaftoe is the noblest junkie character I've ever seen - ingenious in his pursuit of morphine, but slightly more keen on Marine honour than on it.

* I was not expecting Stephenson to use converting to Christianity as the symbol for Dengo leaving sick ultranationalism behind. Compassion and liberalism are far larger and better than the Christian launchpad they happened to use, after all.

* Relatedly there's his preference for cute family-values Christianity over postmodern critical theory:

n  To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy’s fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz, society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. n

* Some surprisingly deft notes on kink and the exogenous/preconscious nature of sexuality, in the bit where they're spying on Tom Howard.

* This line accurately portrays the mindset of certain wizard types like Turing:

n  It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers.n

though it is discreditable and nongeneralisable to hold.

* I learned a lot of words.

* There are dozens and dozens of depictions of Japanese war crimes before we get any note paid to the horrendous suffering of the Japanese troops. But after that it is suitably even-handed in its tragedy. One of the saddest sentences I've ever read: "They are strafing the survivors".

* Root is a tech determinist about the war - the Allies won because their tech was better, end-of. I seriously doubt historians would go with this.

* I struggle to fit Root into the world. His death and reappearance is the only magical element in the entire thing (coincidences aside), and clashes with the main bloody theme. I am toying with the idea that Root is a collective name like James Bond, but I suppose it'll just be some switcheroo bullshit.

---

There's a lot wrong with it - it's about twice as long as it needs to be, the gender stuff is overdone, it is intentionally annoying to its outgroup, succumbing to 'conflict theory', and none of its antagonists (Loeb, the Dentist, Wing, Crocodile) are fleshed out despite him having 900 pages of opportunities for fleshing them - but it's grand, clever, full of ideas, funny, full of great setpieces, and foresaw a couple of things about our decade.

9/10

2.5 Stars

The redeeming quality of this book is the Stephenson snark that I first came to love with Snow Crash. But overall there was so much jumping around with the story that my interest waned way too often and it was waaaaay too long with the entertaining parts sprinkled far and few between.

I was expecting this to be more of a sci-fi but it would be much more accurately described as historical fiction.