A gripping and page-turning thriller that explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in the twentieth century. From the author of the three-volume historical epic 'The Baroque Cycle' and Seveneves. In his legendary, sprawling 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 - a mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned ...
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A gripping and page-turning thriller that explores themes of power, information, secrecy and war in the twentieth century. From the author of the three-volume historical epic 'The Baroque Cycle' and Seveneves. In his legendary, sprawling 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 - a mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to Detachment 2702, an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists. Some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. Their mission is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. Waterhouse is flung into a cryptographic chess match against his German counterpart - one where every move determines the fate of thousands. In the present day, Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. Joining forces with the tough-as-nails Amy, Randy attempts tosecretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 - and an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. There are two ways this could go: towards unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty - or towards a totalitarian nightmare... Profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyperactive, Cryptonomicon is a work of great art, thought and creative daring, the product of a ingenious imagination working with white-hot intensity.
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Picked this earlier work up, after reading the first volume of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. In the very fast-paced Cryptonomicon, he combines the recent history of codes and code-breakers with a unique interpretation of the present World Wide Web, and a prophetic (1999) view of a future in which ordinary citizens seek to protect their data from the prying eyes of governments. Scenes with a nerdy tech set alternate with those of battles and treasure hunters. Definitely gets the imaginative juices rolling.
greebs
Feb 5, 2009
A brilliant piece of genius
Cryptonomicon is a stunning masterpiece, well worth the time it will take to read (and digest) the over 900 pages it fills.
The book is divided into two time periods -- World War II, and the current day (which appears to be right around the turn of this century). In WWII, there are several different characters, each operating independently though all crossing each others path -- an American code breaker, an American Marine and a Japanese soldier. In the present, we mainly follow Randy and Avi, two software entrepreneurs heading to the Philippines to set up The Crypt, a project the reader slowly learns about through the course of their story. Along the way, real life characters such as Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Ronald Reagan and Douglas MacArthur make cameos.
To say that this is a complicated book is an understatement, and yet Neal Stephenson makes it incredibly engaging, funny and consistently brilliant. As but one example, he writes four or five pages on how the chain on a bicycle wheel operates -- and it is only when he breaks from that narrative to point out that it's similar to how the German Enigma machine worked that I realized I'd just read five pages about a bicycle chain. It's incredible, and a book that -- given even more free time -- I'd easily read again.
Ricolaw
Jun 24, 2007
Nice story
Very nicely written story wrapping the internet and World war 2. It was a very believable story that worked very well.
