Nov

22

Cryptonomicon looks like a fun read and perhaps presages some of the issues in the news now. What secrets will be revealed in the next 30 years about things going on today?:

About the book:

"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 Waterhouse and Detachment 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 granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine 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 iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity."

Scott Brooks writes: 

I read Cryptonomicon about 10 years ago and found it to be a mostly fascinating and fun read.

I recommend it to anyone looking for an enjoyable way to wile away the afternoon.

That said, Stephenson has a very distinct writing style that is somewhat cryptic (if you'll pardon the pun). There were multiple times in the book when I would have absolutely no idea what he was talking about, who the characters were or what it had to do with the story. He told the story in a disjointed and odd manor.

It was like he was writing in a puzzle format and tried to make things a confusing…like he was trying to be clever. Unfortunately, he only came across irritating. He did tie things back together later in the book, but it became a bit off-putting after a while.

However, that aside, I did enjoy it and recommend it to the group.


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