Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neal StephensonBrand: Avon
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-11-05
ISBN: 0060512806
Number of pages: 1168
Publisher: Avon
Book Reviews of Cryptonomicon
Book Review: Cryptonomicon
Summary: 4 Stars
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is full of the kind of deadpanned cynicism that can normally only be developed through a lifetime of disingenuous lies, schmaltzy Hollywood happy endings, and heaps and heaps of tragedy. As often as these one-liners are hilarious, though, they're narratively substantial, revelatory of some finer point, character trait, or plot piece that Stephenson is demonstrating.
Then there are the metaphors. If Stephenson's one-liners are at the same time hilarious and dense, his metaphors are the sardonic vacuum of infinitely compressed sarcasm. Take for instance, this episode about a third into the book. One of Stephenson's several main characters, hacker-geek Richard Waterhouse, is eating dinner with his girlfriend's academic (read: snooty) friends, when one of them just can't help but launch into a severely ill informed attack against the internet. Waterhouse, as up on the internet as anyone in the world, sits by for as long as he can, letting this professor pontificate to his colleagues like a peacock strutting around.
All the time, of course, Waterhouse burns with the knowledge that the professor is spouting lies, blissfully unaware of his own ignorance as he demonizes an institution he knows nothing about. To placate himself Waterhouse imagines that he is a stout Dwarf from The Lord of the Rings and the professors are mindless Hobbits. This appeals to Waterhouse, as he sees himself Dwarfishly tolerating this foolish Hobbitry. As much as Waterhouse takes pleasure in this image, though, he still grows angrier and angrier. Finally, when he can stand it no more, Waterhouse gets out his trusty battle axe and proceeds to ravage the Hobbit's ivory towers.
If the above appeals to you as funny, or at least clever, then you'll enjoy Cryptonomicon for its deep, nuanced foray into hacker culture. Stephenson's wit, metaphors, and story capture the feel of the hacker universe, and quite amusingly so, suffusing virtually every page with energy and humor.
The plot is set in two separate eras. In one, marine William Shaftoe scrambles through an intercontinental quest, fighting the Axis powers in World War II, feeding his morphine addiction, and generally getting led around by the nose. Also part of the WWII scenario is Waterhouse, one of the most cryptographically genius men in the world, and one of the few people who may be able to crack German and Japanese codes well enough to keep the Allies from turning to subjects of the Thousand Year Reich.
The second era is at the end of the twentieth century, where Waterhouse's grandson (our Hobbit metaphor man) finds himself trying to set up a data crypt in the Philippines, part of a business venture that could either leave him and his partners rich, sued into oblivion, or possibly even dead.
Through narration that bounces between characters and eras with reckless abandon, Stephenson fleshes out the story of his characters. The plot itself almost immediately grows convoluted, intricate, and irresistible. For most of the book the reader is scrambling to just hang on as the plot drags him along as though he was bare-knuckling on the wing of a jet fighter. This is not the kind of book one reads for its gritty realism; it feels more like a comic book couched in the form of a novel.
Hard-headed marine Shaftoe aside, Cryptonomicon gives us a deep look into hacker culture. Stephenson's authenticity is made clear by his ability to portray even the most mundane events from a hacker's point of view. For instance, Stephenson's character, Waterhouse, who most definitely is a hacker, doesn't just eat breakfast; he has worked out an entire system, right down to the temperature of his milk and the exact space of time it is allowed to interact with each 'pillow' of his Cap'n Crunch cereal. And for Waterhouse's business associate, Avi, run-of-the mill encryption just won't do. Avi requires Waterhouse to encrypt their confidential e-mails to such an extent that it would take far longer than the estimated life expectancy of the universe for anyone to hack them.
Stephenson's intricate, intriguing takes on hacker life are the rivets out of which this roller coaster ride of a novel is built. And even though the term 'roller-coaster ride' is as cliché as it gets, it has never been so apt. Cryptonomicon is rife with such energy that the words practically erupt off the page and embed themselves into your irises. The narrative voice assaults you like a drill sergeant. And the plot moves at such a pace that Cryptonomicon may be one of the most densely plotted books in the history of literature: over ten main characters, each with histories, quirks, fears, and desires; a thorough explication of many facets of cryptology, mathematics, classical music, pipe organs, the military, internet startups; endless brigades of subplots, that sprout so often that the book resembles the root system of a thousand-year sequoia; tributary characters popping up in every scene; multitudinous locales so vividly described that Stephenson must have made a world tour part of his research.
Yet while the scope of Stephenson's work is undeniably impressive, it is also something of a liability. It's difficult for even such literary deities as Tolstoy to keep every last bit of a thousand page epic neatly in place, and here Stephenson is out of his depth. At times Cryptonomicon can feel slapped together, at other times it simply makes you ask why. Cryptonomicon has drawn comparisons to Gravity's Rainbow, and perhaps these comparisons are most appropriate for the two novels' sheer ungainliness. Yet where Pynchon's descents into chaos rattled the mind and spurred the imagination, Stephenson's messy plot points too often seem like obstacles to be passed before getting back to the action. Cryptonomicon certainly cannot justify all of its many pages.
Although Cryptonomicon may lack coherence, the many treasures embedded deep within are worth wading for. It is an at times hilarious romp, a story that makes itself strangely addictive, an examination of a world that has rarely been so interestingly dissected.
Summary of Cryptonomicon
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
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
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