Meanwhile, across the Pacific, a young Marine is fighting and raising hell in doomed China. Whoops! Guess what? There are bad good-guys and good bad-guys: Moral ambiguity, hooray! The good guys use codes, the bad guys use them. The practicality, theory, and philosophy of coded meanings make up a great deal of this novel. What do brilliant, young mathematicians become in wartime? Cryptographers, of course: code-makers and code-breakers. Soon-to-be-famous mathematicians are pursuing radical new theories while bicycling around Princeton and getting into mischief. The novel begins with the world on the brink of war. The gist of the caveat is this: If the reader is a fan of bodice-rippers (which are actually maligned in the narrative) there exists a great possibility for disappointment. Nerdiness is elevated to the level of Super-Powers. Their offspring, the modern characters, carry on the examples of their forebears. The formative characters in the story establish the historic Nerd substructure. Computer Nerds will be in Nerdvana ditto Math Nerds, Conspiracy Nerds, Crypto Nerds (of course!) and nerdy combinations of all the above. There is a great deal of Nerdiness to go around, spread across the novel’s scope of seven decades and three generations.

It is not an absolute requirement, but it is fair warning. That is “Cryptonomicon” and the results are fiendish and engrossing.īefore we get further into the review, a few caveats: this is a Novel for Nerds. Speaking of references mix “Catch-22” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” in a literary bowl, throw in a dash of Tolkien, then let the story continue into modern times. There are LOR references in Stephenson’s novel, of which more later. This is much like reading the entire Lord of the Rings (1137 pages) and in more than just length.

“Cryptonomicon” comes to the scales at a heavy-weight 1139 pages. The paperback was published in November, 2002. Neal Stephenson’s massive crypto-Sci-Fi novel “Cryptonomicon” was first published in May of 1999. My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Specs and the Caveat:

Cryptonomicon book