Cryptonomicon

Rating:
Summary: book is great, tape is short
Review: Just a warning on this audio...this is one of my favorite Neal Stephenson books and Scott Brick is a wonderful reader...I didn't notice until the tape arrived that it said 'unabridged EXCERPTS' on the box. Can you say that? It's only 6 tapes long.

Rating:
Summary: Confused moral message makes for disappointing book
Review: In CRYPTONOMICON, a massive (900 page) tome that interweaves plotlines of World War II codebreaking and modern-day data security, Neal Stephenson continues to explore how technology influences our lives and unlocks exotic futures. Stephenson's first novel concerning the advent of the digital era, 1991's SNOW CRASH, was a highly entertaining and satirical romp that I quite enjoyed. I found CRYPTONOMICON, however, disappointing.

The basic gist of CRYPTONOMICON is that the actions of a handful of intelligence experts, led by USN Captain Lawrence Waterhouse, and a Marine, Bobby Shaftoe, to conceal from the Axis that they had broken ENIGMA affect the efforts of Waterhouse's grandson Randy, and several of his coworkers, to construct a "data haven" in SE Asia. This data haven would allow individuals to communicate in total privacy as well as pave the way to true electronic currency. Hidden Japanese and Nazi gold figures too, and Randy teams up with Shaftoe's granddaughter Amy in an adventure to increase shareholder value, avoid lawsuits, and save the world from future Holocausts. Does that sound complex? It is. CRYPTONOMICON is a large book, and although one may argue that 900 pages is a bit much, this book would have to be large no matter how tightly edited it was. Some of the book's bulk is due to cameos of key figures from the 1940's (Alan Turing gets mocked, Douglas MacArthur becomes a hilarious parody of himself), but I found these amusing.

Nonetheless, CRYPTONOMICON is a bit foggy in its moral messages. Instead of using the word "Japan," Stephenson always uses "Nippon," thus instead of "Japanese" one finds "Nipponese." It seems to at least this reader that Stephenson is trying to avoid blaming Japan for its actions in World War II as to not offend a Japanese audience for his book. Nonetheless, there are parts in the book where Stephenson does speak of the horrors inflicted by the "Nipponese" army in Nanking and New Guinea, so perhaps he isn't an apologist for imperial Japan. One other hazy moral point is that Stephenson draws short of outright criticism of US intelligence activites, and its most infamous organization the National Security Agency. He merely dances around the point that although fifty years ago codebreakers saved the world from Hitler, nowadays they are more dedicated to economic espionage and violating the privacy of individuals than serving democracy. These two issues should have been presented more clearly, so that the reader can see who is good and who is bad in each plotline of the book and in real-life. Stephenson does however give a delightful view of the McCarthy-ish creation of the NSA in Comstock's diatribe against "communist homos," but it comes very late in the book and doesn't change the preceding 800 pages.

For all its complex plot mechanics and geek subculture, CRYPTONOMICON is surprisingly lowbrow. There is an uncomfortable amount of profanity and pointless sex which is rather not like Stephenson. The book also lacks the wealth of gee-whiz ideas which characterize his earlier works. SNOW CRASH wasn't exactly great literature, but it did have a wide range of futuristic notions that are only now coming into being.

Well, CRYPTONOMICON was certainly a let-down to me. For those unfamiliar with Neal Stephenson's writing, I would wholeheartedly recommend SNOW CRASH. For fans of Stephenson who wish to move on to CRYPTONOMICON, I would suggest waiting for its rumoured sequel to come out and seeing from its reviews whether the second volume makes the first worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Audio book edition - beware!
Review: A great book, but beware - the "unabridged" audio book edition is actually "unabridged excerpts" from the book Cryptonomicon. I bought this as a gift for my father who has been dying to read the book but tends to have more time for listening to audiobooks while commuting, and had no idea that I was not receiving the entire book until it arrived.

Rating:
Summary: A review
Review: This book is pretty long, but i find Stephenson's prose a breeze to get through. I only had to crack open the dictionary a couple of times. I suppose it would help to know a good amount about WWII, especially intelligence operations, before reading this book. Without this knowledge, I still enjoyed it and even learned a few things. I think I enjoyed the WWII story better- Bobby Shaftoe is a riot. I also enjoyed the fact that the entire book is written in the present tense. At first I thought it was wierd, but then I decided it made the future a little more mysterious.

On the downside, Stephenson seems to be obsessed with masturbation- it must be discussed a dozen times throughout the book. From reading a few other reviews, I agree- the character's relationships are confusing! There are some characters that seem to disappear, reappear, and be friends with people you never knew they had met before.

All in all, a lot of fun, good laughs, and makes you think.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed in the Best Way
Review: This book is flawed, but in the best way, in that the execution is hampered only by the daring ambition of the author, and the ambition is achieved sufficiently to keep the reader engrossed and make the flaws themselves very interesting. Stephenson sustains this with a certain humorous and quirky approach to style and characterization that is very appealing. It seems, though, that he makes all his characters as clever has he is, and gives them a similar dry wit.

As an interested layman with respect to most of the technical topics laid out in Cryptonomicon, this was a fun way to learn something without knowing whether it really makes sense to an expert. The list of topics include: much about how compters and networks operate, much about cryptography/ology, the Philippines, U-Boats, venture capital etc. The fun is in the characters, the worldwide travels, the constant bouncing between WWII days and the present day, and all the intertwinings of plot, character, time and detail that make the this book a true roller-coaster ride.

Clearly, this book was written by someone whose mind was heading in a thousand directions at once, and that tendency was indulged. If you enjoy following a broad mind in somewhat disorganized fashion and just letting things flow, you will not be disappointed. If you are looking for a well-organized story without loose ends, then you will not like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, challenging work
Review: I loved this book pretty much from beginning to end. It does require lots of real-life RAM to keep track of all of the characters and subplots, but it's worth it - by the end of the book, a terrific haze of intermeshed narrative has descended. Also, this book struck me as NECESSARILY long, like Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, rather than just overlong. Wonderful, virtuosic writing, and full of vivid details, plus the great climactic creative scenes (the revelation from organ pipes, the sex-starved jail-cell code-cracking), make this one worth reading and re-reading.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting! Most of the time....
Review: I say 'most of the time' only because of this book's hefty size. More on that in a moment.

Very likely, if you picked up this fairly thick book, it was because you had read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash," a very readable, much shorter book.

This book is in a different league altogether. It grabs your attention from the start, and I would say that it's only real fault is its length. However, I should also say that Stephenson really needs every page to say what he has to say. It would seem impossible to edit out any part of this book. His characters are vivid and believable. This book will keep you happy and occupied for many nights before lights out.

Rating:
Summary: Cryptonomi-wow!
Review: Just chiming in with everybody else. It was great a great read - fun and informative. Crypto's new to me and it was neat to get the gist of it wrapped up in such a great story.

Wish I had a broader base of friends to recommend this to!

Rating:
Summary: Dear God, where to start?
Review: "My Favorite Book of All Time, Including All Past Lives, Future Lives, Lives in Parallel Universes, And Any Other Possibilities" is how I respond when asked what I thought of Neal Stephenson's epic Cryptonomicon. (On second thought, epic doesn't do the book justice. I have no words to describe my love for this book.) The author, himself very knowledgeable of the the topics he writes about, goes into fascinating detail on a wide range of subjects, - from WWII history to a multi-page analyis of stocking fetishes - drawing his readers into the story on a breathtaking degree. Second only to his style of weaving past and present, Stephenson's talent for glib wit and penetrating observational humor make this book a treasure to be, well, treasured.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Having read quite a few of Stephenson's works, I can say that this is one of his best. Though its size may detract a few of its readers, and occasionally it may seem like the side plots are dragging the main plot down, it is still a great work of fiction. It is set simultaneously in the future and the past with tenuous links between the two which gradually start becoming stronger as the novel moves forward. Expounding quite a bit on cryptography, and sometimes going into the mathematics behind it, it will appeal to everybody who is interested in math. In short, it is a novel worth reading and having in your bookshelf.