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). --Therese Littleton
Stephenson follows his startlingly original Snow Crash (1992) and The Diamond Age (1995) with proof that he can do as well at twice the page-count, and not only that, but with the promise that this immense volume begins a saga that may rival Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time in its eventual proportions. Volume one, then, is the well-told tale of a World War II code breaker whose descendants end up trying to track down the secrets of the Third Reich's cryptographers--secrets that may liberate or ruin the cybertech world of the present day. Stephenson mixes historical and contemporary settings, handling both with great skill, as he presents a large cast of vividly imagined characters, notably including the original code breaker's granddaughter, and makes both the tale's technology and its conspiracies highly believable. His choice to tell the entire story in the present tense rather calls attention to itself, and, given a book nearly 1,000 pages long, every word is not really essential. Still, this is a book that should be bought for the sake of saying that you have it and read, however long that takes, for the pleasure and intellectual stimulation it is likely to give to most readers. Imagine Tom Clancy turning to cyberpunk, and you have some idea of its broad potential appeal. Roland Green
From Kirkus Reviews
Stephenson's prodigious new yarn (after The Diamond Age, 1995, etc.) whirls from WWII cryptography and top-secret bullion shipments to a present-day quest by computer whizzes to build a data haven amid corporate shark-infested waters, by way of multiple present-tense narratives overlaid with creeping paranoia. In 1942, phenomenally talented cryptanalyst Lawrence Waterhouse is plucked from the ruins of Pearl Harbor and posted to Bletchley Park, England, center of Allied code-breaking operations. Problem: having broken the highest German and Japanese codes, how can the Allies use the information without revealing by their actions that the codes have been broken? Enter US Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe, specialist in cleanup details, statistical adjustments, and dirty jobs. In the present, meanwhile, Waterhouse's grandson, the computer-encryption whiz Randy, tries to set up a data haven in Southeast Asia, one secure from corporate rivals, nosy governments, and inquisitive intelligence services. He teams up with Shaftoe's stunning granddaughter, Amy, while pondering mysterious, e-mails from root@eruditorum.org, who's developed a weird but effective encoding algorithm. Everything, of course, eventually links together. During WWII, Waterhouse and Shaftoe investigate a wrecked U-boat, discovering a consignment of Chinese gold bars, and sheets of a new, indecipherable code. Code-named Arethusa, this material ends up with Randy, presently beset by enemies like his sometime backer, The Dentist. He finds himself in a Filipino jail accused of drug smuggling, along with Shaftoe's old associate, Enoch Root (root@eruditorum.org!). Since his jailers give him his laptop back, he knows someone's listening. So he uses his computing skills to confuse the eavesdroppers, decodes Arethusa, and learns the location of a huge hoard of gold looted from Asia by the Japanese. Detail-packed, uninhibitedly discursive, with dollops of heavy-handed humor, and set forth in the author's usual vainglorious style; still, there's surprisingly little actual plot. And the huge chunks of baldly technical material might fascinate NSA chiefs, computer nerds, and budding entrepreneurs, but ordinary readers are likely to balk: showtime, with lumps. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Stephenson's world-building skills are extraordinary. . .The Diamond Age . . .should cement Stephenson's reputation as one of the brightest and wittiest young authors of American science fiction." -- The San Diego Union-Tribune
"Neal Stephenson is the Quentin Tarantino of postcyberpunk science fiction. . .Having figured out how to entertain the hell out of a mass audience, Stephenson has likewise upped the form's ante with rambunctious glee." -- The Village Voice
"Stephenson has not stepped, he has vaulted onto the literary stage." -- Los Angeles Reader
Stephenson ... lives up to his reputation as a steely-eyed word hacker, driving the story along with prose thick with cultural references and a plot that needs a substantial wood pulp infrastructure to support it. -- Wired, Craig E. Engler
"This is a story to bury your nose in." -- John R. Alden, The Plain Dealer
"Stephenson [is] a literary visionary of the technological future." -- Seattle Weekly
Cryptonomicon ... wants to blow your mind while keeping you well fed and happy. For the most part, it succeeds. It's brain candy for bitheads. -- The New York Times Book Review, Dwight Garner
"The Diamond Age establishes Neal Stephenson as a powerful voice for the cyber age and shows that his 1992 best seller, Snow Crash, was no fluke." -- Steve Jones, USA Today
"[Stephenson] is the hottest science fiction writer in America. . .Snow Crashis without question the biggest SF novel of the 1990s. Neal's new SF novel, The Diamond Age, promises more of the same. Together they represent a new era in science fiction." -- Bruce Sterling, Details
From the Inside Flap
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon was first published in 1999 to immense critical and popular acclaim. An ambitious, absorbing account of war, conspiracy, and code breaking, it represented a huge step forward for a gifted writer whose previous creations included the Hugo Award-winning The Diamond Age and the virtual reality classic, Snow Crash.The events of Cryptonomicon take place along two parallel time tracks: the Second World War and the present day. The earlier segments feature, among others, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young math prodigy tasked with concealing the fact that Allied forces have successfully broken Germany's infamous Enigma code. Protagonists of the latter section include Randy Waterhouse, Lawrence's grandson, a computer hacker helping to construct an autonomous data haven in the Sultanate of Kirakuta. Together, these two narratives successfully illuminate two different worlds, one of which grew directly out of the struggles and achievements of the other.Sometimes horrific, frequently hilarious, densely packed with information on a wide variety of subjects, from cryptanalysis to treasure hunting to the proper method of eating Cap'n Crunch, Cryptonomicon is a genuine modern epic. On one level, it is an astonishing, wholly original portrait of a world at war. On another, it is a provocative meditation on the ways that science and technology help shape and alter the course of human history. A work of great erudition and equally great imaginative power, it is and will remain one of the significant literary accomplishments of the modern era.
From the Back Cover
With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.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 Watrehouse and Detatchment 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 the 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 grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi sumarine 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 icon
About the Author
Neal Stephenson is the bestselling author of the novels Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, and Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
When an innovative Internet company decides to lay cable in the seas around the Philippine Islands, the company becomes embroiled in a treasure hunt of astounding potential. With roots in the Japanese occupation of the islands and in the grandparents of a current manager of the project, the story places its current happenings against a backdrop of history. As the plot bounces between the 1940s and the present, Scott Brick brings a sardonic tone that suits this motley collection of characters. His characterizations are well presented and differentiated. Some transitional passages are read by an unidentified woman, which is helpful, but close attention will still be required to follow the plot. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Now he had learned that a machine, simple in its design, could produce results of infinite complexity.Highlighted by 1,153 Kindle readers
