Cryptonomicon

This book took me over a month to read, with a couple of short books sandwiched in between. It is not a good sign for me when I need to take two breaks to finish a book. However, this is not a book that I can dismiss regardless of whether I like it. I have several friends who love Cryptonomicon to bits and they are smart, discerning readers. I remember when I finished reading Twilight I was kind of glad that I didn't think it was very good. Had I found it to be an amazing classic I would have no credibility left among my peers. With Cryptonomicon the problem is the opposite, I am kind of disappointed that even though I like some of it, on the whole I don't particularly care for it. Still, better to be accused of being a philistine than to write a dishonest review just to be up with the Joneses eh?

Cryptonomicon is a hard book to synopsize, I feel nonplussed just thinking about how to describe the basic plot in a few sentences (so I won’t). The novel is set in two timelines 1942 and the present (or the 90s, the “present day” at the time the book was written). There are several narrative strands that gradually intertwine toward a single ending. The book is also hard to categorise, part historical fiction, part thriller, some element of cyberpunk, a bit of romance and (thankfully) a substantial amount of comedy.

This novel seems to be more character driven than the other Stephenson books that I read*. The central characters are quite well developed and are generally interesting and likable but unfortunately I could not invest in their adventures. I think this has more to do with the plot they are embroiled in rather than any deficiency in their development. The structure of the book is quite complex and there does not seem to be much in the way of momentum in the pacing, it also seems to be somewhat incohesive. The frequent switches in narrative strands made it difficult for me to remember what each character is up to the previous time they appear.

On the positive side the book is often very funny, the main saving grace as far as I am concerned. Lines like this just crack me up

n  “You know what this is? It’s one of those men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus things.” “I have not heard of this phrase but I understand immediately what you are saying.” “It’s one of those American books where once you’ve heard the title you don’t even need to read it,” Randy says.n

I laughed out loud quite a few times while reading the book. On the whole I find it to be well written, with some wonderful turns of phrase, another factor that prevent me from giving up on it. Some of the cryptography and hacking scenes are also fascinating.

Of the four Neal Stephenson books that I have read Cryptonomicon is the hardest to get into, and even by the end of the book I still wasn't really into it. It is clearly too good to dismiss out of hand and I always admire Neal Stephenson for aiming his writing toward an intelligent readership; I am not sure I can claim to be a proud member of his target demographic but kudos to him for respecting his readers. Regrettably this book turned out to be one of those "good but not for me" books. I wouldn't like to dissuade anyone from reading it, but I can't honestly recommend it either. If you are interested but doubt I suggest you read a few more reviews and decide for yourself whether it seems likely to appeal to you. I suspect you never know until you actually try it though.

*In order of preference: Snow Crash, Anathem, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon.

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.

-Bajo múltiples disfraces de géneros y subgéneros varios se esconde aquí la novela de aventuras de toda la vida.-

Género. Ciencia-Ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. Las vidas y peripecias de varios personajes relacionados de diferentes formas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial se conectan con las de otros en el presente con la criptografía, el desencriptado y diferentes modalidades de protección de la información como nexo común. Libro originalmente publicado en un único volumen pero publicado en tres en varios países en alguna de sus ediciones, que en el caso de España se llamaron “Criptonomicón I: El Código Enigma”, “Criptonomicón II: El Código Pontifex” y “Criptonomicón III: El Código Aretusa”.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephenson also delights in creating quirky similes:

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

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

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

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.

A must-read

A masterpiece of humor, history and cryptology.

Cryptonomicon was both totally hilarious and brilliant. This was hilariously written in a sort of hybrid style of P.G. Wodehouse and Vonnegut. Stephenson adopts a tone that completely undermines the drama of WWII and weakens it to a charade run by very few players who are trying to win the battle of information: decryption. It's a story about the power of sheer intellect and nerdiness and how it was what really won the (somewhat fictionalized) war and how the same nerds are the ones who are protecting our data today. The story is told over large swathes of time (1940-50s and then the 1990s during the early internet age) and has dozens of settings around the world. The characters (Shaftoe, Waterhouse and Randy) are all totally flawed, brave, brilliant and lovable.


I think this was an entirely self indulgent work for Stephenson. He clearly is extremely knowledgeable about decryption, coding, engineering, mathematics and many other disciplines. For this reason, the book runs a little long. It didn't have to be 900 pages to tell this story. I think some editor came along while he was writing, tapped him on the shoulder and said "Neal, time to wrap this thing up". I thoroughly enjoyed the ride but not everyone will. You can probably clock out at about two hundred pages if you're not into it. If you are, this is a wholly unique book and worth your time.

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.