This is a great big brick of a book that I really enjoyed, but no one else much seems to have read. (Except for Julian Assange who rates it as one of his favourite books). Stephenson has a bit of a cult following for his cyber punk stories (also known in the hacker community as cypherpunk), but this doesn’t fit into that category. It doesn’t fit any category, except perhaps ‘adventure’, and that doesn’t do it justice.
The book is about two sets of characters, one taking part in World War II, the other operating in the 1990s when the book was written. The themes that tie these characters and their different worlds together are codes and code breaking – crypto – and what Marx called ‘the means of exchange’ – be it bank notes, gold, or internet funds transfer. And of course war and conflict. These themes are introduced in the first chapter, and run throughout to a most satisfying conclusion.
The characters are linked by more than the themes; some of the modern ones are descendents of the earlier ones. There are also a couple of characters who survive the war and still have an important role in the modern story. Some of the characters in the story are real, like Alan Turing, the father of computing, and General Douglas (I will return) McArthur, allied commander in the Pacific. But most are marvellous inventions.
After the first chapter, the book starts a bit slowly. Bear with it. There is no need to understand the maths; I was no nearer knowing what a zeta function was at the end than I was at the beginning, and I know nothing about computers, but it doesn’t matter. The story soon gets into gear and carries the reader along at breakneck pace. It’s written mostly in the present tense, which gives it urgency and pace. I’m not even going to try and tell you how Stephenson ties it all together, since I hope you’ll read it for yourself.
Apart from the absorbing story, the other main reason I like the book is that it is really funny. Stephenson writes in a laconic, off-handed way about the most serious of things, but he doesn’t trivialise them. Take the opening to Chapter 1:
Two tires fly. Two wail.
A Bamboo grove, all chopped down
From it warring songs.
…Is the best that Corporal Bobby Shaftoe can do on short notice – he’s standing on the running board, gripping his Springfield with one hand and the rearview mirror with the other, so counting the syllables on his fingers is out of the question … The modern world’s hell on haiku writers: “Electrical generator” is , what, eight syllables? You couldn’t even fit that into the second line!
And how can anyone not like a book that contains the following passage:
“Jesus …Can’t you recognise bullshit? Don’t you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, ‘My goodness, this appears to be bullshit’?”
Being such a long and involved story, there are naturally bits I didn’t find as good as the rest. For example, some of the General McArthur sections are, to me, a bit odd. But with so much else to love about the book, there is room for a little unevenness.
Cryptonomicon is far more than just an adventure story. It deals with some of the forces that shaped the twentieth century. It has friendship, love, duty, courage, greed, deception and brutality. For all its cool language, it is a passionate book, which is I guess why I feel passionately about it.
What Book to Read? 
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[…] But his books are incredibly diverse, as you can see from the ones I’ve reviewed before – Cryptonomicon (1999), the three volume Baroque Cycle (2003, 2004, 2004) Anathem (2008) and Reamde (2011). Of […]
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[…] already a fan, I wouldn’t start with these three. You can read my posts on Cryptonomicon (1999) here, Anathem (2008) here and Reamde (2011) […]
[…] already a fan, I wouldn’t start with these three. You can read my posts on Cryptonomicon (1999) here, Anathem (2008) here and Reamde (2011) […]
[…] I’m a fan of Robert Harris’s Enigma, which is set at Bletchley Park, and of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, which also deals with code breaking, so I was looking forward to seeing how the writers would pick […]
My favorite Stephenson book and one of my top 25 favorites. Great book – read it!
[…] about the book on his website here. And you can read my earlier posts on his books Cryptonomicon here and on Anathem here. Share this:FacebookTwitterEmailLike this:LikeBe the first to like this […]
[…] you haven’t come across him before, you can read my earlier post on his book Cryptonomicon (1999) here. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]