Cryptonomicon

by Neal Stephenson

918 pages

English language

Published Aug. 11, 1999 by Avon Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-380-97346-0

(134 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 Diamond Age) hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped the twentieth century — and that have led us into the twenty-first. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse — mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy — is assigned to Detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702 — commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe — is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia — a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702, linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty … or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

31 editions

tracyspacy reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Dan Brown-esque

4 stars

Dan Brown-esque

n-gons reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

It is long

4 stars

A bunch of good stuff, but also quite a lot of it. It got me very interested in a cryptography, which I really enjoyed, so that's nice.

tgt reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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.

Coalford reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

One of Neal Stephenson's best.

Found myself constantly searching tidbits of information and characters to see how real they are. The best kind of alternate history

jbschirtzinger reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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 a universe that Stephenson has concocted viewed at different angles. Indeed, certain characters, such as Enoch Root, appear--and certain themes like the desire to be immortal and Greek myth permeate the work throughout in patterned ways.

As is expected with any novel, certain characters die off, and Stephenson does the job of telling the story well enough that you, as the reader, sort of hate to see it happen. He likewise does a good job of allowing chapter endings to dangle in a suspenseful sort of way only to reintroduce them later at a slightly different point in time. In a sense, the reader has to be brought up to speed so that one can understand where one is in the unfolding plot. This is good in the sense that it keeps the mind agile, but is a little confusing at times as a final statement about a previous suspenseful matter may reach resolution in a future chapter in about the middle of completion. One must be a little on the alert to be sure one has not missed the transition.

On the other hand, the work bends "Back on itself" in the sense that themes introduced are bent and turned back around later although not always explicitly stated. It is left to the reader to notice these small bends and permutations. A familiarity with Greek myth, as is true in most of Stephenson's other work, is helpful.

The book decries in the beginning that it is not attempting to reveal any secrets. However, the story Stephenson puts together offers a plausible alternative history to events that did actually occur. The characters are the same as ones that appear in history and have dialogs that are similar to the ones they truly had. One wonders if there is not a Roman a Clef that Stephenson is somewhere secreting, but of course, he assures us that his work is not trying to reveal any secrets. Of course, in the world of the Cryptonomicon, we, the reader, especially by the end of the book know that this is exactly what he wants us to believe and that, above all else, we should be very, very suspicious of.

Lavinia reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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 haven in Southern Asia. Halfway through the two story-lines do start to converge and the reader is able to connect the dots between the two eras. Stevenson shows the insanity of the war and at the same time he does a brilliant job introducing us the personalities, mind-set and even the paranoias of the present-day geek culture

Cryptonomicon is a tough but fascinating reading. The plot is simple and humorous, but the novel is very dense and packed with information about anything and everything. The human element is very strong in Stephenson’s work. You really need to pay attention to the characters,two computer nerds, (the granddad, with some markers of autism and a love of information theory and cryptanalysis and his grandson), a marine, unlike any other, and a Japanese engineer, and their relationships.

I am impressed by Stephenson’s work. He is one of those writers that can write both a cutting edge science-fiction book and a serious literary work. William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) had this quality. One of the things the book asks, I think, is what history is going to turn out to be. We are now living day-to-day in a world that it is shaped by technological inventions and events. History, for Neal Stephenson, is the history of technology.

Read the full review at Maquina Lectora

Katherine Villyard reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Review of 'Cryptonomicon' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Positives: I really loved the descriptions of computer science and cryptography. I work in IT and Stephenson did an excellent job explaining the science. I also genuinely liked Randy, Ari, and Enoch.

Negatives: I wasn't enthralled with the gender roles in this book, and became very impatient during the long mathematical description of horniness and "sigma." In fact, the long spiels about women basically being a device to reduce male horniness so they can concentrate on important things is actually a serious turn-off.

WTF: A woman running your car off the road with a U-Haul is not normal woman behavior. You should run away at high speed.

Ikwezi reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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.

Bean reviewed Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

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.