Cryptonomicon

Rating:
Summary: It Was Late One Night
Review: It was late one night as I lay in my bed reading "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. My wife lay beside me all tucked into bed and doing her best to get some sleep while I lay next to her with the night stand lamp shooting out a dim circle of light. I chuckled to myself. Then I laughed out load and apologized to my wife. Then a laughed until I cried. My wife at this point, obviously upset as I interrupted her best effort to sleep, demanded that I tell her what exactly I was laughing about. I then embarked on reading her the 3+ pages that described one of the characters in this amazing book preparing and partaking in a feast of Captain Crunch cereal. First off, you wouldn't think that eating Captain Cruch cereal could be that amuzing, but even more surprising, that it could take more than 3 pages to describe. That's exactly what makes this book so fun. What the average author would describe in one paragraph or even a single sentence Stephenson describes in three pages. This, you say, would be much too boring. Well it isn't. Stephenson has an incredible knack for knowing just how far to push a particular topic, making it both fun and interesting, without losing the readers interest.

This book is one of my new favorites. Right behind Snow Crash, and Wyrm by Mark Fabi.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Book....But....
Review: The twists and turns in this book kept me coming back for more. Stephenson's mixture of historical and fictional characters left me wondering who was real and who wasn't. The details he left unexplored I think were by design and left to our own imagination.

I was very intrigued by the relationships between the WWII characters and the present day characters with out any awareness of that by the latter. Particularly interesting is the relationship between the Waterhouse family and the Shaftoe family. Also amusing is the minor presence of G.E.B. Kivistik, the son of Julieta, and any of three men one of which was Bobby Shaftoe and his interaction early on with Randy Waterhouse in a heated debate. That Randy's ex-girlfriend Charlene ends up with this guy is subtle hilarity.

Now the "but..." There was no need for a writer of this caliber to use so much profanity in his writing. He could have conveyed everything he needed to say without constant cussing and sexual references. If it weren't for that, this would probably have been my favorite novel of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it
Review: I almost didn't buy the book because of the (few) negative reviews. Not having read any Stephenson before, I plan on ordering them all. This book was a great read. I marked many passages and read them aloud to friends. Forget the comments regarding the cryptography being too difficult, or that only CompSci majors will enjoy the book. The comedy was great, and the writing was precise and moved along at a good clip throughout the entire book. If you enjoy good fiction - albeit highbrow vs. slapstick - you won't go wrong.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing research and writing
Review: An incredible read. Stephenson's knowledge of events of World War II, the development of military codes, the birth of the computer, etc., is truly mind-boggling. Despite its heft, at 900 pages +, I never once felt my attention slipping, which is quite a tribute to Stephenson's writing skills. Great characterization, several gripping stories (present day and past history), as well as fascinating facts make for time well spent. If this truly is a first volume, I anxiously await volumes 2 - ?

Rating:
Summary: Pretty impressive!
Review: I am not a computer scientist, but I was persuaded to read this book by one, and boy, am I glad I did. I was amazed by the level of knowledge in this book (from the details of Bach to those of code), but it was the storyline that kept me engaged -- I finished it in about four days. It'd be perfect if things didn't wrap up quite so Hollywood-like at the end.

Rating:
Summary: Did we read the same book?
Review: Despite all the accolades here at Amazon, this book leaves several things to be desired. One is a coherent narrative. (It's not a matter of being lost in the fun little forays he takes into crypto as I too am a Computer Scientist...I know the technology he's talking about.)

While it's true that he throws three balls in the air at once (WWII Germans, WWII US Marine, Contemporary Data Haven Dudes, plus a few minor strands) he drops them all. Nothing ever comes of the great Conspiracies he sets up. Everything sort of fizzles and just ends at the ending. No connections are made (in any significant way, other than chance, unexplained meetings or enterly superfical segues) between the various groups, nothing ties together the threads.

The closest similar writer I can think of is Thomas Pynchon in terms of conspiracies and seemingly anomalous events actually being deeply interwoven. Except in Pynchon they actually interweave and suck you into the intense level of paranoid required to belive in things like a grand mail cabal (viz., Crying of Lot 49). Here, events kind of bump into each other and fall down, berift of the nuance required for such schemes to work.

Perhaps the worse, if superficial, example of this is when he kills off one character half way through the book, only to have him appear, unexplained, again towards the end. (A character whose biblical- and UNIX- significant name, becomes yet another promising premise that retreats into banality.)

There are lots of other examples where Stephenson can't hold up the foundation he lays out, (such as fantastically designed warehouses, elaborate crypto- and naming games and odd chance encounters of characters, none of which amount to anything) but describing such might ruin the book for other readers, so....

Finally, what is his problem with women in this book? While he spends plenty of time trashing academia's sillinesses (for no apparent reason), his absolute lack of insight into his few female characters (minor characters at that) resembles nothing so much as the perspective of a teenage gamer whose closest interaction with women comes from adult web sites. The flat treatments are boring and insulting. (And I am hardly what you would call a 'feminist'.)

All in all a disappointing book from the author of the much better 'Snowcrash'. It really seems like this is a rough draft, pushed out in a hurry to satisfy an editorial deadline.

Rating:
Summary: much weaker than Stephenson's other work
Review: I consider Snow Crash the best cyberpunk novel ever. Diamond Age was a bit weaker but still good. After reading the others I ran out to buy this book. Cryptonomicon is much weaker than these earlier works. The pace is slow and Snow Crash has more creative ideas on one page than this whole book on 400+ pages. I ended up selling it which I almost never do. I disagree with some of the other reviewers. I'm a computer guy too (working in the networking area) but this book doesn't have much to offer to hackers or "computer scientists".

Rating:
Summary: Captain Crunch
Review: The book is worth the effort. There are lots of digressions of varying degrees of importance. A classic description of the science of eating Capt. Crunch.

Rating:
Summary: 400 Pages too long
Review: Compared to his other books Cryptonomicon is a waste of time. Unless you are a die hard Stephenson fan who must read everything he writes then don't bother. If you must read it then don't feel guilty over occaisonally skipping 20-30 pages at a time, you won't miss much.

Rating:
Summary: Too real to be science fiction
Review: This is the most intelligent book I've read in years, clearly ahead of the curve in predicting near term events, as well as human interactions and emotional complexities. Exciting, entertaining and brain expanding.