Tome of Secret-shuns

One of the reasons I had to get out of the house this past weekend was that I had spent most of the time pounding through a goodly portion of the most recent book I was reading, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. If you want to know more about it I’ll probably ramble on for some time.

This is the second book I’ve read from Stephenson. The first I read was because it was nearly demanded of me by a friend. That book was Snow Crash. I really loved SC and devoured the book quickly. In fact I will probably have to buy my own copy now. This was several years ago, and when I saw Cryptonomicon a year or so back I had to pick it up. I’m glad I did.

The book takes place in two times, WWII and the 90’s, and bounces back and forth. In each time you get to follow several different people. The two groups of people end up being connected to one another through an intricate web. Stephenson makes the events of the two unfold so that hints are given, but suspense is maintained. The basic underlying theme behind the story is cryptography, duh. It’s about it’s uses as they changed from WWII until the 90’s computer boom. You follow Laurence Prichard Waterhouse, mathematics genius, as he works briefly with Alan Turing at Princeton and then joins the Navy. Due to his unusual rand of genius he is mistakenly put in the band. After surviving Pearl on Dec. 7 he is transferred to do clerical work in the cryptography office where is talents are discovered. He then sets off on an adventure of code breaking, life threatening, globe trotting, and war deciding size. All during this you also follow Randal Waterhouse Laurence’s grandson. Randal is off on a new business venture in the Philippines setting up a telecommunications company. The business soon evolves into something else, and the new associates seem far more menacing than Randy would like. Randy has to navigate threats, espionage, legal obligations, false accusations, and crazy people to try to survive the ever changing business plan. He comes in contact with people and descendants of people who had contact with his grandfather during the war. Through clues, events, and revealed secrets he begins to piece together more of what his grandfather and his associates did during the war and each step puts his life and the lives of others at more risk. Randy needs to use new crypto and break old crypto to help find a way out of this situation, and beating the bad guys wouldn’t be too bad either. Oh and did I mention he’s trying to figure out a woman at the same time.

This is a monster of a book at 1k pages. I haven’t read anything this long in some years. Some of the reviews call it a step away from Stephenson’s Science Fiction past, but I have to ask why. Is it because it takes place in the past rather than the future? The book is full of science and engineering of virtually every sort, and the beauty of it is that NS describes it all to you. The technology he is talking about might be commonplace now, but at the time the book is supposed to be taking place it was uncommon, or even non-existent. NS’s descriptions of the tech behind the events and people are outstanding. With an initial rudimentary knowledge of simple high school algebra, you should be able to leave this book with a basic understanding of cryptography. I find that an amazing feat, and a testament to NS’s descriptive abilities. Then the storytelling itself is suspenseful, engaging, scary, disturbing, and funny as shit. Anyone who enjoys science, math, or engineering, will laugh their asses off; most other people will laugh a lot too.

Basically, this is a damn good book. It’s got all the right writing, character development, suspense, humor, confusion, etc. I liked this book as much or more than I liked Snow Crash. I recommend this to anyone who likes good storytelling. Don’t let the length fool you. Once you get about 150 pages into this thing you will probably start pounding it back like beer during the Superbowl. Just make sure you have time to do that before you start reading it.