Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
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Book Reviews of Cryptonomicon
Book Review: Big book, big ideas; lots of fun
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the kind of great novel that, without any pretensions of intellectualism (but an enormous display of intelligence), is both immense in scope, bold in vision, and lightheartedly cool and funny. No review could convey the range of issues, both mundane and enormous, that are covered in this book. More than that, no review could convince a reader how enjoyable and laugh out loud hilarious it is in more places than I can count. I really liked the fact that I could get lost in the novel for a while, put it down for a few weeks, then be absorbed again, and again and again. One complaint that some have put down here is that it sometimes gets bogged down in details. That is true; Stephenson has a tendency to digress. But most of the digressions are fascinating; they sometimes do allow you to lose track of the story, such that when the digression is over you no longer feel the irresistable urge to know what comes next, but I liked that about my experience of reading this novel. I found that it can't be read in one or two or three sittings. There's just too much there. I probably read it in thirty or fourty sittings over the course of about a month; when I'd had enough, I could set it down and do something else, and come back to something new and surprisingly intriguing the next day or week. Most novels that took that long would lose their grip on me. Some books that don't lose their grip on me have me staying up all night for a few days. Somehow with this book the digressions and the interruptions in the story as he moves between the points of view of four or five main characters from different time periods allowed me to walk away and come back comfortably. I will say that by the last few hundred pages I couldn't put it down, and kept going until it was over.Book Review: Dazzling: Computers, Codes, and Buried Treasure
Summary: 5 Stars
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has to be read to be fully explainable or appreciated. An epic book, it details two interlocking plots involving two interlocking families: The Waterhouses and the Shaftoes. Part of the novel is set in the current day, and we follow two Silicon valley types, Randy Waterhouse and his friend Avi as they set up a "data haven" in the Philippines -- and as their fiber optic cables are laid on the ocean floor by the Shaftoes, American expatriate adventurers, a sunken German submarine is discovered off of Manila, filled with Nazi gold. Strangely enough, the submarine contains a document with the world "Waterhouse" on it, and Randy is confronted with a mystery -- what did his grandfather actually do in World War II? The other part of the story is set in World War II, and we follow Randy's grandfather, and a marine named Bobby Shaftoe, through their adventures, which involve high level crtyptograhy and a secret military detachment which exists to spread disinformation to the Nazis and the Japanese, in order to protect the secrets that the broken Enigma codes have revealed.
But this is no mere Clive Cussler tale -- it contains levels of irony, comedy, and just pure information that bring it to a very high creative level. There are portions of this work that will have you laughing out loud -- the cameo performances by Lieutenant Ronald Reagan and General Douglas MacArthur are masterpieces of sublime absurdity -- and other portions that will leave you in wonderment at Stephenson's technical erudition (van Eck Phreaking anyone? 4096 bit encryption? "One-time pads" generated by a deck of cards?).
It is a breathtaking performance -- a fascinating, complicated work that can be enjoyed on many different levels.
Book Review: Appallingly terrible. No cohesion.
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm shocked by the critical acclaim this book received in the sci-fi category but I suppose even a turd can float. Two stars is really pushing it. Maybe a star for the number of laughs I got per 100 pages. This is the work of a technically inept egomaniac. He does have some technical background (he drops Unix hints and anagrams the name of a supposed deity who dies and then later comes back w/ no explanation??) However, it's not enough "savoir faire" for any of the content to make sense. It might sound dangerous to some but just plain stupid to computer geeks such as myself. It's obvious that this is not his first book by the way that the author is allowed to recklessly abandon the main plot (or any of the 4 sporadic narratives) for 70-100 page tangents. If he hired a first yr EE student to clarify some basic principles, got some ritalin and snipped about 500 pages, this book *might* be tolerable. Like many technical books or movies, I was utterly disappointed.
Why did I continue? First, it was a gift and I would feel ungrateful if I didn't give it a fair chance. Secondly, there are many alternating plots that the reader would naturally be led to believe that the lives of these men parallel each other in a different time and place. If you like mysteries, you can almost imagine how these people are related. This would have made the book entirely more interesting. But then nothing. I finished the book and whipped it across the room. Later, I skimmed the last half of this 900+ PAGE SLEEPER to see if there was an overlooked morsel of evidence that made all these separate lives connected which would have made all of the silent pain and suffering from that book worth something. Nothing. Exactly what I got from the book: nothing.
Book Review: Bored me to tears
Summary: 2 Stars
It was like a chore to get through this book. Work. Like grueling manual labor. I see a lot of people really liked it, which is odd because normally my taste is not that far off of mainstream likes and dislikes. I have read my share of fiction including the likes of Clancy, King and some sci-fi including hard sci-fi by the likes of Sheffield or Niven. Many of the technically oriented writers out there are bad at character development. Stephenson is one of them. He is a great writer but goes off the deep end in his digressions and details and needs a better editor to keep him on track.
This was an interesting tale but incredibly flawed in the area of character development. I felt no empathy whatsoever for the characters. The love interests did nothing for me, I never "felt" anything. The only character I could understand was Goto Dengo because his background and motivations were relatively in sync. All the others were so off the wall and bizarre in their thoughts, feelings and motivations that I felt like the author was on drugs half the time. They did things totally not in keeping with who they were or should have been.
The narrative is witty to the point of annoying and precious. Stephenson went off on so many tangents that I would lose track of where the story was. There are so many complex subplots and characters that I almost started taking notes.
I also just don't buy that there are so many evil but incredibly well informed business people out there, all with state of the art crypto programs and ultra-greedy paranoid intentions.
If you're a computer programmer or otherwise technically fascinated by the particulars of cryptology, go for it. Otherwise I can't recommend this.
Book Review: War and Peace for the late 20th Century!
Summary: 5 Stars
The erudition and information in this book are humbling. Wait, wait! It also has humor, tragedy, war, romance, a bit of sex, intrigue, a treasure hunt, famous historical characters, and a whole bunch of other things---truly the complete range of human experience, across two generations of families. One of my more unusual tests for a book is its ability to keep me interested if I have to leave it for awhile. Well, I read Cryptonomicon over a period of more than 3 months, and even if I stopped reading for a week at the end of a paragraph (much less a section or chapter), I found I could return to it easily without losing the many threads of the story---minimal paging back to refresh my memory. In a book of this magnitude and complexity, that is a rare, perhaps unique compliment. I admit readily that it isn't fair to do this to a book, but sometimes stuff happens. The author even enlightened me about a personal character trait! That isn't something one expects in a work of fiction. On the minimal downside, Stephenson is so knowledgeable about technical matters that he devotes some space to theories, graphs, computer programs, and the like. The good news about this is that all of it is relevant to the story. The bad news is that I couldn't begin to repeat much of it after reading it. My best advice would be to read those sections several times, as I did, trying for a basic understanding of the concepts. Going to either extreme (skipping them entirely or getting bogged down in them or, horrors, quitting the book in frustration) is not advised!! Cryptonomicon ends with a brief excerpt from Quicksilver, the first book in a new trilogy. Stephenson has me intrigued already, and I eagerly await reading all of his other works.