Cryptonomicon

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Average customer rating 4.9 (12 comments)

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Few contemporary novels should be forced reading for future high school & college students: relevant yet contempory, rabble-rousing, incandescent as the George Orwell classics of Animal Farm or 1984, a rare stroke of brilliant love for the free world. But here is one. Could it too grace every dusty shelf or digital personal stack of near-future luminaries? But if you were hoping for a nap, beware... No dusty tomb of the anolog, pedestrian epochs of 24 hr news channels... It's roots are (visceral, personable) tales at the dawn of information technology in the savant minds that decoded signals & secured our freedoms in The Great War, yet the narratives interweave generations--such as in David Mitchell's ambitiously fractal novels--right into our unresolved struggles of internet privacy, virtual currancy, need for mythology to guide us. Captivating and increadibly relevant, this is a story we are all in: a digital age of sharing across boundaries while maintaining refuges of privacy and security, a brave new world. Did I mention it was fun? Try his Snow Crash for a wilder pulp fiction ride, but this book is a true milestone of our time.

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Everyone should read everything by Neal Stephenson. Seriously. But if you're looking for a place to start that doesn't have too much of a forward or backward historical learning curve, Cryptonomicon is ideal. It takes place during two eras that are reasonably familiar to most American readers -- World War II and the late 90s/early 00s dot-com phase. Yes, it's long, but you'll have trouble forcing yourself to put it down. Yes, it's one of those novels full of, um, novel ideas, but Stephenson is all about STORY and the ideas tend to fall right into place in a plot that moves right along and pulls you with it. Just take my word for it: You must read Stephenson and you should probably start with Cryptonomicon. Then you'll be ready for Snow Crash or the System of the World trilogy. After that, it's all gravy. Really good gravy with lots of meat in it.

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This novel is a very large, in-need of pruning, book. Could have easily done without 500+ pages. It has a lot of cool concepts - cryptology, invention of digital computers, electronic money, more gold than Ft. Knox, intelligence agencies, etc. The evolution of cryptology was interesting. Certainly appealing nerds and techno-geeks.

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Cryptonomicon begins with a real time haiku, and journeys from pre-WWII to post-today, showcasing Stephenson's rich imagination throughout. It's big, but exhilarating all the way. You will meet characters having roots in the Baroque Cycle and learn how PGP works, and why it has to.

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Simply the best, most interesting, suspenful, fascinating novel I've read in a very long time.

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There's enough fact in this story to enable the reader to surrender to its incredible complexity. On top of the technical virtuosity on which the premise is based, it's a pretty good adventure story. This is one of the few fiction books that I've read twice in relatively quick succession.

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A phenomenal tour de force of complex story, characters, technology and history.

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Such a sprawling, compelling novel that dragged me into Stephenson's works. Without it, I doubt I'd have even considered tackling The Baroque Cycle.

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Page-turning good read, with a strong undercurrent of extremely smart humor running through its length. It's dense, multiple-era plot may put some off, but it easily makes up for this with some of the funniest writing published in the 00's.

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This piece of historical fiction is extremely entertaining. Pace and intrigue are both great in this book.

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Epic novel weaving three generations of men and women with cracking code, WWII and encryption of data. This wasn't a quick read. There were so many details, and the explanations so intricate, that I didn't want to skim over it and miss something. The story jumps around from the WWII era to present times, and covers the stories of many different people. With such an epic story, it needs to be read slowly and absorbed so you can remember some little detail later on in the book. It is also one monster of a book. I was intimidated by it when I started it, and became increasingly intimidated by it as I moved toward the middle of the book because I was reading it so slowly. I don't read books slowly unless I am not enjoying them. I was enjoying it though. In the beginning, the story concentrated on three main characters: Bobby Shaftoe, a U.S. Marine in WWII; Lawrence Waterhouse, a mathematician who works for the military during WWII; and Randy Waterhouse, grandson of Lawrence who is also building a crypt of data in order to make tons of money for his company. I loved Shaftoe. He was blunt and hilarious. I loved that when he ran into Waterhouse, he hated him with all his talking. He was a man of action, not of words. I was always entertained when the story was focusing on him. I loved it when he unsuccessfully tried to drown himself because he thought he was about to be caught by Nazis. The parts with Lawrence Waterhouse were a bit dry at times. They were the parts that I had to slow down to understand what he was talking about with all the encryption. I enjoyed that an actual historical person, Alan Turning, was a character in the book that Waterhouse interacted with in college. While it was a struggle to get through some of the encryption parts, since that is not a major interest of mine, the rest of the storyline involving him kept my interest. I knew the encryption parts were a major part of the story, so I didn't want to skim, but understand what was going on. I laughed at the parts where he was building the first computer, especially since he made RAM with tubes. Randy Waterhouse was starting a company with some friends to make tons of money by creating electronic money and a crypt of data. This leads him to the Philippines and meeting America Shaftoe, the granddaughter of Sgt. Shaftoe. These two are hilarious when they decide they are attracted to one another, yet can't have normal conversations with one another. While Goto Dengo is only superficially introduced in the beginning, his story comes in somewhere towards the middle. I loved his storyline, especially the areas of him trekking through the jungle, hiding from cannibals, being sneaky while digging tunnels, and other adventures. I enjoyed the last half of the book more since all the various storylines start coming together, people from all generations and areas interact with one another, and it finally comes to the big conclusion. I was actually waiting for it continue, even after it was done, and so very long. It was that good that I could have kept reading about the various adventures of everyone involved.

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It took me a few stabs before I really got into the story, but once I did I couldn't put this book down. It's a complex novel with lots of characters, great descriptive language and wonderful diversions along the way. Aside from "Snow Crash," this is probably Stephenson's best work.