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Cryptonomicon

Avon

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Average customer rating: 4 stars

a story of computer geeks stumbling onto history

This is a story of World War II and a story of computer geeks stumbling onto history.
Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is the main character. He has what may be Asperbgers syndrome. In college he meets Alan Turing and a German, they are all math wizs. The story in the book bounces around with several characters being important. It gets to the point you can see all the story lines will meet. It makes a really good story.
The computer geeks are starting a company to do something and stumble onto scavenger treasure. The Japanese build a mountain of gold and bury it. This does get to be a bit of a complex story, and knowing that all the story lines come together, you read on to see where and how. It is most interesting that the author does introduce masturbation and sexual relief. You know that this stuff does happen, but authors do not generally bother to mention it.

Awesome WWII crypto hacking story, terrible otherwise

Cryptonomicon blends several storylines told from different character's perspectives, taking place during WWII and during modern-day 1999.

The WWII story lines in this book absolutely rock. I loved the crypto hacking especially. This kept me reading the book, despite the absolutely crap modern day story line.

The modern day storyline is vapid, pointless, and completely uninteresting. Oh, and it's also borderline sexist. It reads like the fantasy of some fat talentless nerd that scores with one dimensional hot super chicks and reaches hacker stardom. It's stupid and unfortunate. It's basically the uberstereotype of computer hackers seen in hollywood for the last dozen years. Can you detect my hate? :-)

One last thing - the author, despite being knowledgeable about UNIX, is obviously unaware of the credo "less is more". I almost did not purchase this book after getting fed up with a metaphor that lasted roughly a page. But it does get better, I promise.

Oh, Neal Stephenson, How You Do Go On

Yeah, it's a long book, and Stephenson seems to have as a personal moral code the idea that anything that can be said in ten words is probably better said in a thousand. But such great words!

I'm a computer guy and also a former academic and I can say from my own experience that Stephenson is clearly deeply knowledgeable in both fields--so much so that I'm utterly convinced that he's also deeply knowledgeable about every other subject he explores in detail including--World War II, cryptology, mathematics, the history of the Philippines, and so on.

Cryptonomicon is full of long-winded diversions and digressions, and if that's not your cup of tea, then I suggest that you avoid this book. However, if you really love that sort of thing when it's handled expertly, then Cryptonomicon is just what you've been looking for.

I feel it necessary to add one additional comment. Stephenson generally has a reputation for writing strong female characters. I found that to decidedly not be the case in this book, to the point where I felt some of the book was borderline sexist. Sure, war and computer geekdom (the book's two main stomping grounds) are real boys' clubs, so we're left with essentially only one female character who is actually characterized at all--America Shaftoe. Fine. But she is such an absurd nerd's fantasy girl (she kicks ass and she's a virgin!) as to be almost a joke. Obviously I did not find this flaw powerful enough to undermine my enjoyment of the novel, but I think in bears pointing out.

Halfway through, I quit

Having tried to get into this book, having read over 500 pages of its bloat, I give up.

Way too many poorly defined characters that do very little given the number of pages devoted to them. There is potential here, but only if someone had taken the hatchet to about half the unnecessary text, and also put some life into the characters to distinguish one from another

not my type of writing

To start with the end. It just ends!
The flipping/cycling between time and characters and writing so much unnecessary details to fill pages after pages about the settings the characters moving through are very annoying to say the least. It is like writing about the computer has 45 chips of the dimension of 1 inch each connected with green wires to another pcb board to make an 256 Kbit multi channel i/o port to induce an open channel for full duplex handshaking protocols according to the ieee convention drafted in Paris in 1984 during the time that the president was evicted for drugs trafficking. And then nowhere in sight of the story this information comes back or is needed or adds anything to the content of the story. Pages after pages. After reading i remembered another book i recently bought and read and was also very disappointed. I just looked it up in my library and it was the same author writing snow crash. Both books are highly (marketing hype) talked of but to me its as bad as it can get. It is a shame that it is even an New york Times Notable book. Just bought hype marketing to put on the book to push sales. Also on his snowcrash book is an positive quote of New York Times. Snowcrash was also so bad pathetic written unbelievable childish contetn. I will no longer buy any of his bad books nor take the New York times as an credible source of finding good books. My above opinion is personal as the same goes for certain food you like to eat or not the same goes with reading books.