Product Description

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

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10774 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Released on: 2002-11-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 1168 pages

Amazon.com
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

From Library Journal
Computer expert Randy Waterhouse spearheads a movement to create a safe haven for data in a world where information equals power and big business and government seek to control the flow of knowledge. His ambitions collide with a top-secret conspiracy with links to the encryption wars of World War II and his grandfather's work in preventing the Nazis from discovering that the Allies had cracked their supposedly unbreakable Enigma code. The author of Snow Crash (LJ 4/1/92) focuses his eclectic vision on a story of epic proportions, encompassing both the beginnings of information technology in the 1940s and the blossoming of the present cybertech revolution. Stephenson's freewheeling prose and ironic voice lend a sense of familiarity to a story that transcends the genre and demands a wide readership among fans of technothrillers as well as a general audience. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Dwight Garner
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.

Customer Reviews

Classic
Cryptonomicon is one of those novels that wouldn't be out of place on a bookshelf next to classic epic stories like the Odyssey or the Iliad. Its grand, sweeping plots encompassing two time periods coupled with its realistic yet slightly superheroic characters create a unique experience that many of today's so-called "epics" lack. The hero journeys of the follow-orders-at-all-costs Bobby Shaftoe, the scary-brilliant Lawrence Waterhouse, and the forward-thinking entrepreneurs Avi and Randy twist and weave across the ages with precision and guile. Along the way, these heroes encounter other larger-than-life characters -- a conflicted Japanese soldier/digger, a pontificating immortal, General MacArthur -- further fleshing out the already three-dimensional story. And interspersed throughout everything is gold, glorious gold. Truly epic!

Is it for everyone, though? No. The sheer size of the novel alone will present a daunting challenge to even the hardiest of readers. Throw into the mix heavy doses of (sometimes subtle) sarcasm and pages-long ramblings on subjects seemingly unrelated to any aspect of the story, and some readers may find themselves throwing the book across the room. If you don't care about why men grow beards, or the extraction of some obscenely impacted wisdom teeth, or why Athena was really the goddess of technology, you may find yourself with some dented walls. But if you can stomach the following: "The uppers were so deep in his skull that the roots were twined around the parts of his brain responsible for perceiving the color blue (on one side) and being able to suspend one's disbelief in bad movies (on the other) and between these teeth and actual air, light and saliva lay many strata of skin, meat, cartilage, major nerve-cables, brain-feeding arteries, bulging caches of lymph nodes, girders and trusses of bone, rich marrow that was working just fine thank you, a few glands whose function were unsettlingly poorly understood, and many of the other things that made Randy Randy, all of these definitely falling into the category of sleeping dogs," you'll be just fine.

Is Cryptonomicon perfect? Sadly, no. At times it feels as if the plot is getting away from Stephenson and he has to kick it back into place. Whole huge periods of time pass in narration, not action. An entire trek into the jungle to find a mysterious location is recounted by Randy in an email. And, of course, as has been expressed in other reviews here, the ending comes on way too quick. But fortunately these incidents are few and far between and do not cause great distractions from the already sprawling plot. Even the ending, upon reflection, feels appropriate in the context of the entire novel.

All in all, it takes a quirky personality to love Cryptonomicon. But if you're one of these unique individuals, be prepared for a wild ride.

A big, gold, brick of a book
I loved this book.
It seems like most reviewers who enjoy Cryptonomicon are involved heavily in some type of geeky activity, so this review is for the other people out there, people like me, who ask only "Does it work?", not, "How does it work?"
This book, with all of its in-depth explanations for questions I never thought to ask, was incredibly engaging. It has an enormous plotline that spans several decades, yet does eventually tie in together. There are lots of "Aha!" moments, as well as several where you ask "How did he DO that?"
I loved it so much that I bought it for my husband, a computer geek, and my dad, definitely not a computer geek, for their father's day gifts. It is looong, but unforgettable. The best way to read this book is in big stretches, so carve out some time, put your feet up, and get ready to lose yourself in a place where eating cereal has a mathematical precision that will amaze you.
And if you don't like it, you can always use it to prop open doors.

Long and glorious.
Neal Stephenson is a fantastic writer, and his skills truly shine in Cryptonomicon. Yes, it's a long book, but I suggest to all those who find fault with Stephenson's long-windedness that brevity is not somehow 'better' than verbosity, it's just different. Stephenson has carved his own niche in the continuum of writing-style, and, yes, it's in the Long-Winded-Land area of the spectrum. Is it a good style despite this? YES. Stephenson is incredibly deft with words, and the telling of his story is extremely effective. Cryptonomicon made me laugh, cry, and feel ill to my stomach at times (in a good way!). The dialogue is witty as usual for Stephenson, the plot is dense, multifarious, and fascinating, and the characters are well-developed. What more could you ask for? I recommend 'Cryptonomicon' to you, yes, YOU.