About this title: Weaving between two separate time lines, this novel depicts the adventures of a codebreaker, a Japanese lieutenant, and a U.S. Marine in World War II with the modern-day tale of their grandchildren, who are jointly investigating a mysterious computer program in Southeast Asia.
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Description: Reader copy. This book has medium cover wear, light cover lift, spine creases, medium spine tilt, some creases on covers, remainder marks, some mark soiling on page edges. I will ship this book out on the next business day! Each book individually hand cleaned. read more
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Firstly, I did that This American Life offer with Audible so I could try it for a few weeks and get a free book out of the deal.
First off, Audible isn't particularly good. Though one credit generally will get you a book a month, their definition of a book can mean the first 4th of a Stephen King novel. You also lose all access to these DRM encrypted files when you drop the service, so I doubt I'll be keeping it.
The second issue is that the version of "Cryptonomicon" has a disingenuous label that you might miss if you're not paying attention. It's not unabridged, it's "unabridged excerpts", where certain chapters are summarized in a few sentences. So yeah, it's basically abridged, and severely so. It's like saying something is non-toxically poisonous.
I could forgive all of these things if the book were better.
My interest in Neal Stephenson springs almost entirely from "The Diamond Age" which I thought was a great, ambitious novel. His knack with science fiction is amazing. The trouble is "Cryptonomicon" is more or less set in the real world.
I like many books written by nerds. I like many books written about nerds. Until now I didn't really think about the fact that I don't like books written by nerds about what nerds are into.
The book is split between nerds in World War Two and nerds in the 90's, between nerds discussing cryptology and Turing Machines and nerds discussing cryptology and computers.
There's an entire chapter on a character using a library to program a realistic system to deal with how many calories people burn from eating within the main character's roleplaying game. Not an aside, not a paragraph, a chapter.
Of course the discussion of fantasy roleplaying, unix programming, complex communications microwave towers and router systems all take a backseat to the mind numbing discussion of cryptology. I dislike solving word jumbles, so this almost erotically detailed discussion of code breaking and the math involved left me cold and alienated.
I've accepted all of these elements in other forms before without minding at all. I read Neuromancer for god sakes, but most sci fi discusses these topics while exploring a bigger issue or for the sake of advancing the plot. In "Cryptonomicon" all this nerd fodder is just sitting there posing like a centerfold for the Asperger crowd.
I got about halfway through the audiobook before an extended conversation about ethics and routers ultimately killed my patience. This book is some of the most masturbatory nerd porn I've ever read.
I'll probably pick up other Neal Stephenson books, but I'm going to have to start reading the first chapter to make sure it in no way resembles this."
"Cryptonomicon is a stunning masterpiece, well worth the time it will take to read (and digest) the over 900 pages it fills.
The book is divided into two time periods -- World War II, and the current day (which appears to be right around the turn of this century). In WWII, there are several different characters, each operating independently though all crossing each others path -- an American code breaker, an American Marine and a Japanese soldier. In the present, we mainly follow Randy and Avi, two software entrepreneurs heading to the Philippines to set up The Crypt, a project the reader slowly learns about through the course of their story. Along the way, real life characters such as Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Ronald Reagan and Douglas MacArthur make cameos.
To say that this is a complicated book is an understatement, and yet Neal Stephenson makes it incredibly engaging, funny and consistently brilliant. As but one example, he writes four or five pages on how the chain on a bicycle wheel operates -- and it is only when he breaks from that narrative to point out that it's similar to how the German Enigma machine worked that I realized I'd just read five pages about a bicycle chain. It?s incredible, and a book that -- given even more free time -- I'd easily read again."
Not science fiction, really. More like history-of-science fiction. A World War II cryptography/adventure/treasure hunting story, with an overlarge dose of modern international computer corporation politics thrown in for good measure. Full of digressions, which are part of the feel of the story. If you don't like getting sidetracked, then avoid it. Unfortunately, even with all its brilliance, it has notable problems.
1) The ending is poor, which is a huge disappointment from a 1,000 page novel.
2) There are no good women characters. None. This is a boys-and-their-toys story, and the females have the same personality depth as cheap cardboard. Not super surprising from a war story, but still frustrating, especially given the modern day scenes.
Still, it's fascinating, and absolutely worth reading. But it's not as worth reading as Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle, which is (basically) the same genre but without the flaws."
"Neal Stephenson is brilliant. Quite obviously so. And one of his strengths lies in writing books that make abstruse, convoluted niche subjects feel approachable and exciting to the average reader. His attention to detail and his playful tangents, asides and divagations are charming, witty and often fascinating.
Unfortunately this does not always translate into well-written and well-structured narratives. To put it mildly, Cryptonomicon drags. It meanders. Occasionally it stops completely dead. More than a hundred pages before the end all the surprises and brilliance had been squandered and I was gritting my teeth and just waiting for it to be over.
This is a very male narrative. All of the main characters are straight males, and the book (and its characters) are obsessed with male ejaculations (yes, explicitly) and their effect on the male thought process. Furthermore, Stephenson includes some facile pop psychology about the interactions of the the sexes (which made this homosexual roll his eyes) and took a few embarrassing swipes at academia, atheism and gender equality. The fact that two of the male supporting characters are homosexual does not lessen this impression of male heteronormativity, especially when you realize that both of these characters are doomed to lonely, loveless deaths.
Women are cast only in the most stereotypical roles and are never completely fleshed out. They are either sex objects, sex tyrants, frigid or helpless--nothing in between. Out of all the many, many orgasms in the book, only two belong to women (or rather, A woman) and they are presented in such a way as to make them sound unnatural and almost frightening.
I'm not sure what Stephenson's point was in writing such a heavy-handed, gender-unbalanced narrative, but it alienated me almost completely. Maybe I'm missing the point--I'm sure there are people who would say I am--but it just didn't work for me.
So! In conclusion, Cryptonomicon was a lengthy slog that could have used tighter editing and plotting, and a far less fixation on reinforcing gender and sexual norms."
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