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Cryptonomicon

By Neal Stephenson

(170)

| Hardcover | 9780380973460

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Book 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 - mContinue

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

15 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

Not as cryptic as you'd expect

Obvious point of reference for this is Gravity's Rainbow. However, unlike Pynchon's book I find that in this the technological aspects feel grafted onto what remains a generic global conspiracy plot.
I wasn't too keen on the mysterious monk figure turning up deus ex machina at several points.< ... (continue)

Obvious point of reference for this is Gravity's Rainbow. However, unlike Pynchon's book I find that in this the technological aspects feel grafted onto what remains a generic global conspiracy plot.
I wasn't too keen on the mysterious monk figure turning up deus ex machina at several points.
All in all, a bit disappointing.

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huntch said on Apr 4, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Badass!

Cryptonomicon is not a science-fiction novel. It has 2 parallel storylines divided in time -- one happens in World War II and the other is present day. Due to the detail it dives into while describing WWII, it's a historical/techno-thriller. The book is too huge and the plot is too long and complica ... (continue)

Cryptonomicon is not a science-fiction novel. It has 2 parallel storylines divided in time -- one happens in World War II and the other is present day. Due to the detail it dives into while describing WWII, it's a historical/techno-thriller. The book is too huge and the plot is too long and complicated to faithfully describe here. The WWII storyline revolves around 3 mathematicians, Turing (yes, the real Alan Turing!), Waterhouse (an American) and Rudy (a German). When Pearl Harbour happens, Waterhouse is pulled into London's Bletchley Park to help the Allied powers break the cryptographic Enigma (and other) codes of the Axis powers. While doing this, Waterhouse and Turing help build some of the earliest computing devices in human history. A large part of the story takes place in Asia, where Shaftoe (an American soldier) is fighting the Japanese. This takes him from China to Philippines. In the parallel current-day storyline (which is told in alternating chapters), the descendants of the above WWII characters are part of a Silicon Valley startup named Epiphyte that specializes in cryptography. They're setting up secure data havens in Philippines and Kinakuta (a fictional name, but it's nothing but Brunei) to act as new Internet backbones and also for Internet banking. These hackers soon run into some WWII artefacts which as they slowly decrypt leads them them to a treasure of unimaginable proportions hoarded by the Japanese towards the end of WWII. It will lead them to discover some startling revelations about their grandparents and their roles in WWII.
With one book, I'm a convert. At 918 pages and 108 chapters, it's long, but ah so delicious! Cryptonomicon is satisfying at all levels, what's not to like! The WWII storyline starts from Pearl Harbour and goes on upto the defeat of the Japanese, thus ending the war. My WWII knowledge jumped by several magnitudes due to the detailed descriptions of the German and Japanese cryptosystems, their war strategies and how they failed. Especially enlightening was the tons of information about the Japanese-American conflict that happened in Asia. The other current-day storyline can't compare to this, but is still engaging enough to be a page turner. This is a real techno-thriller since Stephenson doesn't hold back from smattering his pages with formulas, graphs and details of cryptosystems when they're needed. Linux, UNIX, Windows NT, actual Perl scripts, Turing machines and the wickedly cool Van Eck phreaking all play a part! Also, Bruce Schneier contributed a new encryption algorithm named Solitaire for this book, which can be used to encrypt messages using a deck of playing cards. This is used as a major plot device in the book and Schneier describes the system in the Appendix at the end of the book. Cryptonomicon is badass, I look forward to reading more Stephenson and cyberpunk now!

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Ashwin Nanjappa said on Jan 1, 2009 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

Amazing

This book effortlessly pulls you with it through the ages with incredible writing and with an interesting story to tell. I'm not sure about the ending, but somehow the rest of the story makes up for it. Stephenson's language and authorship is, as always, incredible and sometimes just leaves me wond ... (continue)

This book effortlessly pulls you with it through the ages with incredible writing and with an interesting story to tell. I'm not sure about the ending, but somehow the rest of the story makes up for it. Stephenson's language and authorship is, as always, incredible and sometimes just leaves me wondering how he does it.

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Hans said on Nov 13, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Biblical...

Well, this immense novel (some 900 pages) is many things - novel, cryptography primer, biography, history book, and doorstop. The plot covers two (related) timelines - the Pacific theatre in the second world war, and the same area in the modern day, with side trips to the UK, US and Finland. I did e ... (continue)

Well, this immense novel (some 900 pages) is many things - novel, cryptography primer, biography, history book, and doorstop. The plot covers two (related) timelines - the Pacific theatre in the second world war, and the same area in the modern day, with side trips to the UK, US and Finland. I did enjoy the book in spite of is great length, though it is more thriller than science fiction, Stepensons's usual genre. There is also much about cryptography (coding), which I found a little complex to follow, but if you're interested makes fascinating reading (Stephenson has actually written a text book about the subject). Even computer genius Alan Turing makes numerous appearances.
Worth persevering, and has some great set pieces - though I wasn't 100% convinced by the ending, which after such a LONG journey was a little disappointing ;)
See what YOU think.

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Ian Hodgson said on Dec 24, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

"I've been doing all of the 2701 work to this point."
"It's detachment 2702 now", Lawrence says.
"Oh," Alan says, crestfallen. "You noticed."
"It was reckless of you, Alan."
"On the contrary!" Alan says. "What will Rudy think if he notices that, of all the units and divisions and detachments in the ... (continue)

"I've been doing all of the 2701 work to this point."
"It's detachment 2702 now", Lawrence says.
"Oh," Alan says, crestfallen. "You noticed."
"It was reckless of you, Alan."
"On the contrary!" Alan says. "What will Rudy think if he notices that, of all the units and divisions and detachments in the Allied order of battle , there is not a single one whose number happens to be the product of two primes?"

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larsen said on Jul 1, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Geeky

Awfully longwinded, but also very funny and, this is Stephenson after all, very clever.
Several plot lines, some set decades apart, are interwoven into a clever tapestry seemingly aimed at a nerdy audience, not unlike Stephenson's Snow Crash or his recent Anathem. This one actually lists an actual ... (continue)

Awfully longwinded, but also very funny and, this is Stephenson after all, very clever.
Several plot lines, some set decades apart, are interwoven into a clever tapestry seemingly aimed at a nerdy audience, not unlike Stephenson's Snow Crash or his recent Anathem. This one actually lists an actual Perl script and seemingly mentions Finux, a non existing UNIX variant, obviously referencing Linux, on every page. The hero of the story, as in Snow Crash, is, for all intents and purposes, a nerd.
What turns out to be the main plot line involves the Japanese hiding tons of gold in a secret location in the Philippines. Funnily enough, one of the blogs I follow was talking about exactly that last week.
Read more: http://babakfakhamzadeh.com/site/index.php?c=2&i=4818#i…

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Babak Fakhamzadeh said on May 31, 2010 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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Book Details

Rating:
(170)
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English Books
Hardcover 928 Pages
Edition: 1st ed
ISBN-10: 0380973464
ISBN-13: 9780380973460
Publisher: Eos
Pub date: May 01, 1999
Dimensions: 1613 mm x 1097 mm x 323 mm Just how big is that?
Also available as: Mass Market Paperback, Paperback, Audio Cassette, Library Binding and Others
In other languages: other languages Deutsche Bücher, Libri Italiani, Polskie Książki