I’m 40 percent done with Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and I can safely make one pronouncement with certainty: I have never read a book quite like this one.
According to this man, Stephenson’s the best science fiction writer working today. Though Cryptonomicon isn’t (so far) science fiction, I’ve come to agree after some initial hesitation. The book’s probably best described as part historical fiction, part cutting-edge business textbook (!?!). The story shifts back and forth between the 1940s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, generally switching time periods every chapter or so.
During World War II we partake in some very gripping adventures shadowing a cryptographer assigned to a joint American-British special forces unit. The visuals here would make a phenomenal summer blockbuster. I can see the CGI and hear the Dolby stereo! The best vignette so far has to be the team salvaging a locked safe from a grounded German U-boat on the verge of sliding back into the sea during a violent thunderstorm. Stephenson mixes a bunch of colorful fellows with actual historical personalities, the most prominent of which is Dr. Alan Turing, one of the forefathers of the computer.
Flash forward sixty-five years and we’re knee-deep in the process of Epiphyte Corp’s creation of a "data safe haven" in the Philippines. Stephenson’s knowledge of startups and state-of-the-art computer technology is quite simply unbelievable. Makes me wanna shake my head and throw in the towel – how can I write anything with as much authority? Our heros (one of which happens to be the grandson of the WWII cryptographer … hmmmm) are up to their eyeballs in the shark-infested waters of the high-tech high-finance world that’s almost as dangerous as Europe or the Pacific during the Big One.
But that’s just a two-paragraph teaser of the book a little less than halfway in. Now: why do I say I’ve never read a book quite like this one?
Stephenson writes as if he had all the time in the world. That’s it, if I had to sum it all up in a sentence. Long, lazy paragraphs, packed with beautiful imagery, witty turns of phrase, ideas thrown at you from out of left field, a blunt laugh unexpected as an uppercut. Slowly his characters unfold, and they’re more real than the people in the cubicles surrounding you forty hours a week at work in the "real" world. Every word, every picture, every sentence spoken, every metaphor and simile, all in the confident hands of an artist, a craftsman, and you only have to trust it will lead somewhere rewarding. An unrushed master doing work he loves. That’s Stephenson, and the result is Cryptonomicon.
Examples, you say? Sure. I love this single powerful sentence describing the mind of Alan Turing:
He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain.
What about the humor, and the historical figures you said he wrote about, you ask. Okay. I liked this paragraph enough to mark it, found in the chapter describing in painstaking detail the untimely demise of Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor:
That is what Yamamoto thinks about, shortly before sunrise, as he clambers onto his Mitsubishi G4M bomber in Rabaul, the scabbard of his sword whacking against the frame of the narrow door. The Yanks call this type of plane "Betty," an effeminatizing gesture that really irks him. Then again, the Yanks name even their own planes after woman, and paint naked ladies on their sacred instruments of war! If they had samurai swords, Americans would probably decorate the blades with nail polish.
Oh, and the novel is ultimately about cryptography, so remember: Every number in the book has some special significance. They’re all prime numbers, or products of primes, or primes plus one to disguise the fact that they were primes. Hmmmmm.
Full review to follow in a month or two when I’m done with the gigantic lumbering beast of a book.
According to this man, Stephenson’s the best science fiction writer working today. Though Cryptonomicon isn’t (so far) science fiction, I’ve come to agree after some initial hesitation. The book’s probably best described as part historical fiction, part cutting-edge business textbook (!?!). The story shifts back and forth between the 1940s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, generally switching time periods every chapter or so.
During World War II we partake in some very gripping adventures shadowing a cryptographer assigned to a joint American-British special forces unit. The visuals here would make a phenomenal summer blockbuster. I can see the CGI and hear the Dolby stereo! The best vignette so far has to be the team salvaging a locked safe from a grounded German U-boat on the verge of sliding back into the sea during a violent thunderstorm. Stephenson mixes a bunch of colorful fellows with actual historical personalities, the most prominent of which is Dr. Alan Turing, one of the forefathers of the computer.
Flash forward sixty-five years and we’re knee-deep in the process of Epiphyte Corp’s creation of a "data safe haven" in the Philippines. Stephenson’s knowledge of startups and state-of-the-art computer technology is quite simply unbelievable. Makes me wanna shake my head and throw in the towel – how can I write anything with as much authority? Our heros (one of which happens to be the grandson of the WWII cryptographer … hmmmm) are up to their eyeballs in the shark-infested waters of the high-tech high-finance world that’s almost as dangerous as Europe or the Pacific during the Big One.
But that’s just a two-paragraph teaser of the book a little less than halfway in. Now: why do I say I’ve never read a book quite like this one?
Stephenson writes as if he had all the time in the world. That’s it, if I had to sum it all up in a sentence. Long, lazy paragraphs, packed with beautiful imagery, witty turns of phrase, ideas thrown at you from out of left field, a blunt laugh unexpected as an uppercut. Slowly his characters unfold, and they’re more real than the people in the cubicles surrounding you forty hours a week at work in the "real" world. Every word, every picture, every sentence spoken, every metaphor and simile, all in the confident hands of an artist, a craftsman, and you only have to trust it will lead somewhere rewarding. An unrushed master doing work he loves. That’s Stephenson, and the result is Cryptonomicon.
Examples, you say? Sure. I love this single powerful sentence describing the mind of Alan Turing:
He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain.
What about the humor, and the historical figures you said he wrote about, you ask. Okay. I liked this paragraph enough to mark it, found in the chapter describing in painstaking detail the untimely demise of Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor:
That is what Yamamoto thinks about, shortly before sunrise, as he clambers onto his Mitsubishi G4M bomber in Rabaul, the scabbard of his sword whacking against the frame of the narrow door. The Yanks call this type of plane "Betty," an effeminatizing gesture that really irks him. Then again, the Yanks name even their own planes after woman, and paint naked ladies on their sacred instruments of war! If they had samurai swords, Americans would probably decorate the blades with nail polish.
Oh, and the novel is ultimately about cryptography, so remember: Every number in the book has some special significance. They’re all prime numbers, or products of primes, or primes plus one to disguise the fact that they were primes. Hmmmmm.
Full review to follow in a month or two when I’m done with the gigantic lumbering beast of a book.
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