Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9455

Just finished this 900 page paperback monster.

Wow. Wow. Super wow. Awesome fun. Catapulted into my top fiction of all time.

As far as a synopsis goes, the amazon page has a good one.

quote:

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Neal Stephenson enjoys cult status among science fiction fans and techie types thanks to Snow Crash, which so completely redefined conventional notions of the high-tech future that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if his cyberpunk classic was big, Cryptonomicon is huge... gargantuan... massive, not just in size (a hefty 918 pages including appendices) but in scope and appeal. It's the hip, readable heir to Gravity's Rainbow and the Illuminatus trilogy. And it's only the first of a proposed series--for more information, read our interview with Stephenson.

Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, cryptanalyst extraordinaire, and gung ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first.... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed.... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."

All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.

Cryptonomicon is vintage Stephenson from start to finish: short on plot, but long on detail so precise it's exhausting. Every page has a math problem, a quotable in-joke, an amazing idea, or a bit of sharp prose. Cryptonomicon is also packed with truly weird characters, funky tech, and crypto--all the crypto you'll ever need, in fact, not to mention all the computer jargon of the moment. A word to the wise: if you read this book in one sitting, you may die of information overload (and starvation).

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19584

Started it the other day.

The style seems rather different than Snow Crash or Diamond Age, but I like it so far, however, I'm almost done with Kite Runner, and after that I'm going to concentrate on American Aurora.

-m

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: A New England
Posts: 9187

It was fun, waiting the rest of the Baroque cycle to move to paperback though. The first book, Quicksilver, is something of a precursor to Cryptonomicon.

If you liked one, you'll really like the Baroque cycle.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9455

I'll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation.

Mord, the style was very different and took me a bit to adjust to. Very different from most of the non-fiction I read (which is prolly 98% of my non-internet reading) as well. But it really grew on me and had me laughing out loud in places.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5156

I loved Cryptonomicon. I haven't read the Baroque cycle yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Den
Posts: 11311

*Gets tingly feeling*

I am going to pick this up. Thanks.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Den
Posts: 11311

This book is fucking hilarious. I had not expected to be laughing out loud so often. And some of it takes place in Manila, which makes me think of LF:
Our hero likes to walk through the city, a thing unthinkable to its natives. 'He has passed into the realm of irrational things that you must simply accept, and in the Philippines this is a nearly infinite realm.'

Paperback monster alright. They even saw it fit to include a chapter of Quicksilver. It's almost impossible to read this and be comfortable too.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: b0ulder
Posts: 5130

http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml

I haven't read him, but you people seem to make a lot of threads about him.

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: On a collision course with reality.
Posts: 334

quote:

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Originally posted by Goatboy
It was fun, waiting the rest of the Baroque cycle to move to paperback though. The first book, Quicksilver, is something of a precursor to Cryptonomicon.

If you liked one, you'll really like the Baroque cycle.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19584

Finished cryptonomicon the other day sitting in court, and well, by far the best thing I've read from Stephenson to date, but I'm a bit iffy on the ending.

-m

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