Cryptonomicon

Rating:
Summary: Another good one by Stephenson
Review: Cryptonomicon is yet another good novel by Stephenson. Though I feel it was a bit long and dragged a little in places, it is a wonderful book. I look forward to reading the other books yet to come in this storyline.

Rating:
Summary: A book of a higher order
Review: After reading through both the book and several of the reviews I have come to the conclusion that this book is only enjoyable under the following conditions:

1) You're willing to think through a lot of the concepts: Some of the crypto/mathematics/mythology discussions can not be zipped through and fully understood. Like many other great books, this is not fast food to be consumed and thrown away, but rather a fine wine to be appreciated.

2) You must possess a significant amount of background knowledge: Math especially is troublesome on this point. Many negative reviews of this book are bascially premised on "If Stephenson wanted to write a math book, he should have just done it" To be honest, the math is not especially complicated. One simply needs to understand the way that functions operate and maybe a little bit of calculus understanding, although I don't know if it is entirely necessary.

3) You must be able to enjoy interesting digressions that have little to do with the plot: Personally I like the digressions by the two Waterhouse characters because it's the way that real people actually think: within their field of knowledge and in highly complex terms. It turns others off though as wasting pages. To be honest, I think the best parts of this book are the digressions (particularly Enoch Root's digressions on mythology and his relationship to the church).

In the end, this book is very good. The only thing that prevents it from getting the full 5 stars from me is that it really needed another 50 pages to properly end the plot, digressions or not. Stephenson's books are as much about the character's ideas as the actual character's themselves. So if you're interested in complex ideas, with some WWII and business mischief thrown in, this book is a winner.

Rating:
Summary: where are the good editors?
Review: If you can slog through the verbosity, it is possible to mine some very good fiction out of the messy slag pile of this over-written over-indulgent under-edited book. Why do we have to do the work of the publisher?

Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: This was my first Stephenson book and I'm happy that it introduced me to such a consistent author (at least in terms of readability and entertainment). Although the book is war and peace lengthy, it never feels that way (i.e. you never get any of the preface-materials-interrupting-glorious-story that are tolstoy's dissertations on keeping history, etc...), and it's a pretty breezy read. The writing seems intelligent without any of the over-the-top-pseudo-scientific-babble common to really bad science-fiction books (not that i don't love pseudo-science...). Thoroughly entertaining and not in an entirely hollow way.

Also, anyone formulating expectations for what the exeprience of reading this book will be like should take pains to ignore any comparison (favourable or not) to gravity's rainbow. Most of these critics who are saying cryptonomicon is like gravity's rainbow probably havn't read either and are simply good at clasifying lengthy... probably the same people who consistently have promo quotes on tom clancy jackets. Distinct both narratively and stylisticly, if the two books have anything in common it's the gleeful absurdity (that in my limited reading, seems) common to the cyberpunk/sci-fi genre. Read both, don't let comparisons stop you from reading either (especially if you've read or tried reading gravity's rainbow... cryptonomicon is an "easy" read... especially compared to pynchon).

Rating:
Summary: Whoa.
Review: Heavy going in places (hint: skip the maths bits if you find them a bit tricky, because they don't add a lot to the story) but fundamentally absorbing and entertaining. Not quite a masterpiece, but a class effort nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: No "Gravity's Rainbow"
Review: I believe they call this "hysterical fiction" nowadays-- literature so beefed up with detail and plot intrigue as to offer some source of verisimilitude... however the merit in this type of literature starts with William Gaddis, then Pynchon, and finally David Foster Wallace.

The point is those guys are hard to read, and the books are long so you as a reader can work through them with a concentration that's due to real art.

Stephenson, however, is a hack, and is one tier above grocery store fiction. I read 50 pages of this book and put it down when i realized it is terrible writing. Don't waste your life on a book that doesn't pay off at all.

Rating:
Summary: Best Hacker-SciFi I have read
Review: At first I was daunted by the 900+ page book. Books this size tend to be a chore to read through, ala Infinite Jest. No so for this book. If you live in San Jose and/or are a programmer, this will resonate with you. Stephenson understands our culture. It is also structurally rich, with parallels to the WWII generation. Also, it contains one of the shortest sex scenes in all of literature, outside of Thomas Hardy.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant but flawed
Review: ...This book is definitely fascinating enough to be worth a read, but by no means is it a literary masterpiece nor is it fully succesful as a work of art.

Pros
*Readable, absorbing accounts of cryptography, mathematics, computer geeks and various technical topics. This is what makes Stephenson stand out. I am a computer scientist, and I found his description of technical concepts to be highly accurate.

*Great, complicated plot that keeps you turning the pages right up to page 910. Stephenson is great at descriptions and gives interesting information about U-boats, World War II, the Philippines, Greek mythology, academic culture, oral surgery and much more.

Cons
* The parts do not add up to a comprehensive whole. There are many interesting bits, but I was not left with anything to chew on at the end of it all. I was looking for some underlying themes or unifying ideas and I didn't find them.

*Shallow character development. Apart from Randy Waterhouse, we gain very little insight into the character's thinking. Thus, it is difficult to engage with them and to really care about what they are going through. In particular, the relationship between Randy and his romantic interest is poorly developed and doesn't feel natural at all.

*Poor ending. The ending feels like Stephenson has ran out of stuff to write and just decided to end it there.

This novel is a cut above the John Grisham stuff, but it does not attain the level of literary fiction, despite strenuous attempts by Stephenson. He has a great knack for plotting and vivid descriptions, but he needs to work on presenting a unified artistic vision and creating characters that the reader can actually care about if he wants to fulfill his artistic ambitions.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, a little too long
Review: This is a great book and was very enjoyable to read, a real page-turner like a good Clancy or King book that you can't put down. However, at around page 500, I just wanted this book to be over. I really wanted to find out how the story ends and find out what happened to the characters, otherwise I probably would have stopped reading the book (which I'm glad I did), but in the middle of the book it seemed more like the quest for the Holy Grail than a book.

The details in the book are amazing, Stephenson's sure done his research. Most sci-fi books are lite on true facts, just throwing in mumbo-jumbo to make it sound techie, but this book has the technical details right!

Rating:
Summary: ultra chilled Cap'n Crunch
Review: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is everything but science fiction, but it somehow has a science fiction feel to it. Perhaps this is because Stephenson constantly alternates narrative between the past (WWII) and the present - also the fact that the story focuses on the nature of information technology and how information can impact human lives and world events over time and distance. The cryptography in this book alone is enough to blow your mind - add to that a layed back, ultra cool marine in WW2, an absent minded pipe organ player, a computer programmer with an unusual family, and one of the coolest treasure hunting chicks ever conceived. At times, this story does give you the head-spins due to an "all over the place" storyline, but still it gets five stars for sheer magnitude...