Cryptonomicon

paperback, 918 pages

English language

Published April 27, 2000 by Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House.

ISBN:
978-0-09-941067-6
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4 stars (101 reviews)

E-book extras: "Stephensonia/Cryptonomica": ONE: "Cryptonomicon Cypher-FAQ" (Neal addresses "Frequently Anticipated Questions" and other fascinating facts); TWO: "Mother Earth Motherboard" (Neal's landmark nonfiction account of, among other techno-feats, the laying of the longest telecommunications cable on earth); THREE: "Press Conference": Neal answers "Why write about crypto?" and other penetrating questions.The smash New York Times bestseller and cult classic is at last a special-features-loaded e-book. Dashing between World War II and the present day, Cryptonomicon is an epic adventure of codemakers and codebreakers; soldiers, hackers, spies, pirates, lovers, prisoners; power, secrets, conspiracies, great escapes -- and a buried fortune in gold."Engrossing … insightful ... fascinating and often hysterical... Cryptonomicon is really three novels in one, featuring healthy portions of World War II adventure, cryptography, and high-tech finance, with treasure hunting thrown in for good measure... But that's only half of it." —USA Today "Hell of a read." —WiredNeal Stephenson (Snow Crash; The …

31 editions

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

As with every Neal Stephenson book I've read, Cryptonomicon was promising and intriguing, but ultimately overlong and somewhat of a letdown. Typically my problem with Stephenson lies in his endings, but in this case I struggled whenever Randy became the focus, i.e. often. Part of this was the tedious explanation of technology (which I can understand for certain audiences, but irritated me), but mostly it was a dislike of the characters, reminding me too much of Silicon Valley culture (as seen from far away) compounded by the current “crypto” craze. The rest was a nice blend of history and fiction and I'm looking forward to one day tackling the Baroque Cycle. It's a pity that half the book didn't appeal to me as I know I've overlooked interesting links within this book and to future books such as the mystery surrounding Enoch Root.

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I tend to be a somewhat sporadic Neal Stephenson reader in the sense that our magisteria--to borrow a term from Stephan Jay Gould--tends to continue to overlap.

It is somewhat surprising I had not hitherto stumbled on this work previous to now. Certainly, I had heard many references to this particular novel, but had never stumbled across it in my path. It was with some surprise then when I finally did in a used bookstore.

The novel starts out somewhat slowly and since the work is over a 1,000 pages you can expect that the plot will move more slowly than a book of smaller length. Stephenson's writing style is markedly different here than from his other works, but there are certain themes present here that are echoed in his future works. One could posit, in a sense, that each work is a continuation in …

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I finally finished Cryptonomicon. All 917 pages. Wow, what a tour de force by Neal Stephenson!

There is a mythic technological framework that makes sense, but the novel is very technical at times and some passages would make sense in a textbook. There is even an appendix written by Bruce Schneier, a renowned security technologist, a “security guru” according to The Economist, explaining the workings of the Solitaire encryption system (in the novel it is called “Pontifex”)described by the mysterious character Enoch Root (more about him shortly).

Cryptonomicon is a complex, multi-layered story developed in two story-lines. The first takes place in the WWII era and it is about the work at Bletchley park, centre of Allied code-breaking operations. The second takes part to the present day(end of the 20th century) and it is about a team of a bit paranoid computer whizzes who are planning to build a data …

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I have given up halfway through this one, the overwhelming "bro-ness" of it is just too much for me. Every woman is assessed in terms of f**kability, every non-white (male or female) is a bundle of hackneyed caricatures, and every non-Western place is quaintly bizarre, and most of the time it's just played for "laughs." Not enough of this POV narrator's nonsense is accounted for by the two-thirds of the book that follows members of the Greatest Generation. If anything, the modern characters are the worst ones. To his credit, there are many laugh-out-loud moments of humor, and the glimpses of WWII battles are what got me this far. I don't know anything about GamerGate but I imagine this is their type of SF writer.

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Got through about 150 pages and lost interest. I knew it was comprised of 3 stories, I didn't know it would be skipping between them in between every chapter. By the time I get interested in one character, the chapter ends and I'm on a totally different story.

I may pick it up again some day, but it's looking doubtful.

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