Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
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Description
With this extraordinary first volume in an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse--mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy--is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and show more Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702--commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia--a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal totalitarianism reborn. A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
Zaklog Cryptonomicon strikes me as the kind of book that Hofstadter would write if he wrote fiction. Both books are complex, with discursive passages on mathematics and a positively weird sense of humor. If you enjoyed (rather than endured) the explanatory sections on cryptography and the charts of Waterhouse's love life (among other, rarely charted things) you should really like this book.
152
grizzly.anderson A great and fairly easy to read history of much of the history and cryptography the novel is based on.
110
30
LamontCranston Weaving fact and speculation, history and fiction, mysteries within mysteries
41
ianturton Another fictionalized look at Bletchly Park, shorter and with fewer Americans.
11
Busifer Many of the events featuring in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon have actually happened and while Budiansky isn't the most eloquent author his book is an interesting companion read.
lorax Seriously. A big fat book immersing the reader in a bizarre and alien culture, with well-written infodumps on subjects of interest to the narrator interspersed throughout the story. It's a very Stephenson-esque book.
1616
MarkYoung Similar humour, in this intelligent historical novel.
01
themulhern An exciting and tragic narrative with meditations on the effects of culture.
01
by jbizroe
themulhern Alan Turing is a significant character in both. He is a friend of a protagonist in Cryptonomicon from his time at Princeton until his work on encryption of voice. And of course he is the subject of the biography. Many events and concepts turn up in both works. In both books, he seems a rather appealing person, someone you would like to know even though he might tire you out w/ his eccentricities.
paradoxosalpha Wheels within wheels in a 20th century refracted across the Second World War. Digressive prose unafraid to be rude and hilarious.
Member Reviews
Cryptonomicon is mostly spent see-sawing across a half-century divide of two generations between World War II and the late 1990s. Its central topic is cryptology, and it was written when one could still be idealistic about cryptocurrency. It is an enormously long novel made up of short, single-sitting chapters, and it includes such apparent digressions as a gratuitous Penthouse "reader's" letter (365) and a functional Perl script (480).
My favorite chapter was certainly "Organ" (569 ff.), which built on the running conceit that the electronic computer had been inspired by the programmability of a pipe organ. But it also punned on the organ of generation belonging to 1940s viewpoint character Lawrence Waterhouse, whose libido takes show more center stage for most of the chapter. It offers hilarious notions regarding a global Ejaculation Control Conspiracy, and supplements this theory with a walk-on character's paranoia about the Bavarian Illuminati's engineering of the well-tempered musical tuning system as a medium for subliminal corruption.
Cameos by historical figures, including Alan Turing, Ronald Reagan, and General MacArthur, are handled amusingly. Although Stephenson's acknowledgments page disclaims any supposition that the book is a roman à clef regarding his own family, there are certainly some other characters and businesses given new names to insulate our actual world from their fictional deployment. For reasons I can't quite fathom, for example, he calls the Linux operating system Finux.
The ubiquitous use of present tense, general narrative sprawl, and conspiracy theorizing all reminded me of the work of Thomas Pynchon, and in particular Gravity's Rainbow. (Pynchon later tried out a hacker yarn of his own in Bleeding Edge as well.) Although Stephenson is published as a genre author, I think the comparable Pynchon books are actually more science-fictional than Cryptonomicon.
I have read other reader reaction that took issue with the end of this book. I didn't find it weak or dismaying at all, but I think the last five chapters (after "Return") need to be read as denouement, or they will suffer the appearance of anticlimax. show less
My favorite chapter was certainly "Organ" (569 ff.), which built on the running conceit that the electronic computer had been inspired by the programmability of a pipe organ. But it also punned on the organ of generation belonging to 1940s viewpoint character Lawrence Waterhouse, whose libido takes show more center stage for most of the chapter. It offers hilarious notions regarding a global Ejaculation Control Conspiracy, and supplements this theory with a walk-on character's paranoia about the Bavarian Illuminati's engineering of the well-tempered musical tuning system as a medium for subliminal corruption.
Cameos by historical figures, including Alan Turing, Ronald Reagan, and General MacArthur, are handled amusingly. Although Stephenson's acknowledgments page disclaims any supposition that the book is a roman à clef regarding his own family, there are certainly some other characters and businesses given new names to insulate our actual world from their fictional deployment. For reasons I can't quite fathom, for example, he calls the Linux operating system Finux.
The ubiquitous use of present tense, general narrative sprawl, and conspiracy theorizing all reminded me of the work of Thomas Pynchon, and in particular Gravity's Rainbow. (Pynchon later tried out a hacker yarn of his own in Bleeding Edge as well.) Although Stephenson is published as a genre author, I think the comparable Pynchon books are actually more science-fictional than Cryptonomicon.
I have read other reader reaction that took issue with the end of this book. I didn't find it weak or dismaying at all, but I think the last five chapters (after "Return") need to be read as denouement, or they will suffer the appearance of anticlimax. show less
What I realised about halfway through this is how much Stephenson's books hearken back to Tristram Shandy. They're just full of digressions, tangents, musings, lectures, yarning, meandering, and though it's all been hammered into something that has roughly the shape and outline of a novel, where the plot occasionally breaches the surface like a whale, or a pod of whales, or comes charging out of the chop like Mpby headbutting the Peaquod, it is still, essenatially, a whole bunch of stuff about history and technology and culture scattered across the second world war and the dot com boom in an intergenerational saga with distinctly libertarian vibes that gives it a sort of quaint vaguely Golden Age innocence, like psychohistory, trying to show more impose intellectual rigour on chaos and wrest a bit of hope out of horror. show less
Neal Stephenson is either an authentic genius or a certified wacko (or both), because Cryptonomicon is so intricate, so layered, and so engrossing, that someone who could write this much material, and contain it in one novel, must have an odd functionality to their brain.
Spanning two generations of families during pre-, intra-, and post-WW II, this epic (and it most certainly deserves that title) shows the reader the early formation of computer language that developed thanks to code-breakers within the U.S. and German intelligence communities. This may sound horribly boring, but it is far from tedious. Author Stephenson knows not to bore readers. He incorporates cryptanalysis into everyday life, often with hysterically funny results show more (at one point a character relates his masturbatory behavior to helping solve enemy codes; and another time the London street layout helps design a code system that is nearly unbreakable). All of the characters are incredibly human, from the earliest "geeks" (Richard Waterhouse and Avi) to the rough-and-tumble WW II gladiators (U.S. Marine Bobby Shaftoe and General Douglas MacArthur). There are deadly battles with Japanese soldiers, crushing encounters with German U-boats, and even a treasure hunt finale that'll tickle your funny bone. There's romance between a geeky code breaker and the young granddaughter of Bobby Shaftoe. There's government conspiracies, and unlikely alliances between men on opposite sides of the war. There's ...just too much to put into one review!
Fortunately, though, Stephenson masterfully ties all of these threads together and culminates it into one of the best conclusions seen in novel length fiction history. show less
Spanning two generations of families during pre-, intra-, and post-WW II, this epic (and it most certainly deserves that title) shows the reader the early formation of computer language that developed thanks to code-breakers within the U.S. and German intelligence communities. This may sound horribly boring, but it is far from tedious. Author Stephenson knows not to bore readers. He incorporates cryptanalysis into everyday life, often with hysterically funny results show more (at one point a character relates his masturbatory behavior to helping solve enemy codes; and another time the London street layout helps design a code system that is nearly unbreakable). All of the characters are incredibly human, from the earliest "geeks" (Richard Waterhouse and Avi) to the rough-and-tumble WW II gladiators (U.S. Marine Bobby Shaftoe and General Douglas MacArthur). There are deadly battles with Japanese soldiers, crushing encounters with German U-boats, and even a treasure hunt finale that'll tickle your funny bone. There's romance between a geeky code breaker and the young granddaughter of Bobby Shaftoe. There's government conspiracies, and unlikely alliances between men on opposite sides of the war. There's ...just too much to put into one review!
Fortunately, though, Stephenson masterfully ties all of these threads together and culminates it into one of the best conclusions seen in novel length fiction history. show less
A decade or so ago I read and enjoyed Neal Stephenson's 8-book series, The Baroque Cycle. I've finally followed up on reading this single-volume tome that has connections to that series, albeit set in a different time. All of these books are historical novels that incorporate Stephenson's interests in cryptography, mathematics, currency, banking, and philosophy. They also include characters from the Waterhouse and Shaftoe families and the mysterious Enoch Root. Cryptonomicon was published prior to The Baroque Cycle, but the latter is set in the 17th and 18th centuries, while Cryptonomicon is a 20th century story.
Cryptonomicon features two interweaving plot lines. The first story is set during World War II and focuses the Allies' effort show more to win the war by breaking Germany's enigma code. Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is an American mathmetician who works with the historical figure Alan Turing at Bletchley Park and is put in charge of a detachment that stages events behind enemy lines to deceive the Germans on how the Allies are gathering intelligence, when in actuality they've broken Enigma. Bobby Shaftoe is an experienced Marine Raider drafted into the detachment who has various adventures around the world - many of them ludicrous. Goto Dengo is a Japanese officer and engineer who suffers some of the worst effects of the Allies cryptographic knowledge in some of the most gruesome descriptions of war in the book, and then is put in charge of Japan's efforts to bury gold in caverns in the Phillipines.
The other storyline is set in the 1990s and tells the story of a tech startup company co-lead by Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson). His company sets up a data haven on fictional island sultanate near the Phillipines. He hires Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe (Bobby's son) and his daughter Amy to do the underwater surveying for laying cables. Complications arise when the discover gold under the sea. The ageless Enoch Root plays a part in both stories.
I found the World War II story more interesting than the 1990s story. There just isn't much that grabbed me aboutthe tech-bros and the nerd culture only faintly hides a toxic masculinity. In fact, this book is a sausage fest, with Amy Shaftoe the only promiment female character, and her major role is as Randy's love interest. The Baroque Cycle was also tilted heavily toward male characters but it least it had Eliza who had agency as a spy and financier and was a major driver of the plot.
So I guess this is a half-good novel? Albeit the signifigance of the WWII story would be less apparent without the 1990s story.
Favorite Passages:
Cryptonomicon features two interweaving plot lines. The first story is set during World War II and focuses the Allies' effort show more to win the war by breaking Germany's enigma code. Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse is an American mathmetician who works with the historical figure Alan Turing at Bletchley Park and is put in charge of a detachment that stages events behind enemy lines to deceive the Germans on how the Allies are gathering intelligence, when in actuality they've broken Enigma. Bobby Shaftoe is an experienced Marine Raider drafted into the detachment who has various adventures around the world - many of them ludicrous. Goto Dengo is a Japanese officer and engineer who suffers some of the worst effects of the Allies cryptographic knowledge in some of the most gruesome descriptions of war in the book, and then is put in charge of Japan's efforts to bury gold in caverns in the Phillipines.
The other storyline is set in the 1990s and tells the story of a tech startup company co-lead by Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson). His company sets up a data haven on fictional island sultanate near the Phillipines. He hires Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe (Bobby's son) and his daughter Amy to do the underwater surveying for laying cables. Complications arise when the discover gold under the sea. The ageless Enoch Root plays a part in both stories.
I found the World War II story more interesting than the 1990s story. There just isn't much that grabbed me aboutthe tech-bros and the nerd culture only faintly hides a toxic masculinity. In fact, this book is a sausage fest, with Amy Shaftoe the only promiment female character, and her major role is as Randy's love interest. The Baroque Cycle was also tilted heavily toward male characters but it least it had Eliza who had agency as a spy and financier and was a major driver of the plot.
So I guess this is a half-good novel? Albeit the signifigance of the WWII story would be less apparent without the 1990s story.
Favorite Passages:
Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.show less
“You know what this is? It’s one of those men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus things.” “I have not heard of this phrase but I understand immediately what you are saying.” “It’s one of those American books where once you’ve heard the title you don’t even need to read it,” Randy says. “Then I won’t.”
“Some complain that e-mail is impersonal—that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.”
“But before this war, all of this gold was out here, in the sunlight. In the world. Yet look what happened.” Goto Dengo shudders. “Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds. Tell those men that if they want wealth, they should come to Nippon with me after the war. We will start businesses and build buildings.”
I think I found my heroin.
Make no mistake, this is not a book for everybody. this is one of those books. One of those books where all the plot important stuff is localized to five chapters randomly distributed through the pages. One of those books where you need to get an epub version just for the sake of a ctrl-f function. One of those books that doubles as an encyclopedia for whatever kind of other universe the author lives in.
And I loved it.
Reading this book is exhilarating despite the lull in plot because it is in the incredibly precarious position of turning into a complete fucking joke. And yet is never does. Reading this book is fascinating because of the near conspiratorial way you need to thread all meaningless threads into show more a complete whole. Reading this book is engaging because it's such an honest look at more than just technical nonsense about number theory and cryptology, but the mind and inner workings of Stephenson himself.
Again, this is not at all for everybody. Every single negative review down below in this section (well not every one) is right on the money. It's way too much about a bunch of nonsense. That's why I love it. show less
Make no mistake, this is not a book for everybody. this is one of those books. One of those books where all the plot important stuff is localized to five chapters randomly distributed through the pages. One of those books where you need to get an epub version just for the sake of a ctrl-f function. One of those books that doubles as an encyclopedia for whatever kind of other universe the author lives in.
And I loved it.
Reading this book is exhilarating despite the lull in plot because it is in the incredibly precarious position of turning into a complete fucking joke. And yet is never does. Reading this book is fascinating because of the near conspiratorial way you need to thread all meaningless threads into show more a complete whole. Reading this book is engaging because it's such an honest look at more than just technical nonsense about number theory and cryptology, but the mind and inner workings of Stephenson himself.
Again, this is not at all for everybody. Every single negative review down below in this section (well not every one) is right on the money. It's way too much about a bunch of nonsense. That's why I love it. show less
I think I found my heroin.
Make no mistake, this is not a book for everybody. this is one of those books. One of those books where all the plot important stuff is localized to five chapters randomly distributed through the pages. One of those books where you need to get an epub version just for the sake of a ctrl-f function. One of those books that doubles as an encyclopedia for whatever kind of other universe the author lives in.
And I loved it.
Reading this book is exhilarating despite the lull in plot because it is in the incredibly precarious position of turning into a complete fucking joke. And yet is never does. Reading this book is fascinating because of the near conspiratorial way you need to thread all meaningless threads into show more a complete whole. Reading this book is engaging because it's such an honest look at more than just technical nonsense about number theory and cryptology, but the mind and inner workings of Stephenson himself.
Again, this is not at all for everybody. Every single negative review down below in this section (well not every one) is right on the money. It's way too much about a bunch of nonsense. That's why I love it. show less
Make no mistake, this is not a book for everybody. this is one of those books. One of those books where all the plot important stuff is localized to five chapters randomly distributed through the pages. One of those books where you need to get an epub version just for the sake of a ctrl-f function. One of those books that doubles as an encyclopedia for whatever kind of other universe the author lives in.
And I loved it.
Reading this book is exhilarating despite the lull in plot because it is in the incredibly precarious position of turning into a complete fucking joke. And yet is never does. Reading this book is fascinating because of the near conspiratorial way you need to thread all meaningless threads into show more a complete whole. Reading this book is engaging because it's such an honest look at more than just technical nonsense about number theory and cryptology, but the mind and inner workings of Stephenson himself.
Again, this is not at all for everybody. Every single negative review down below in this section (well not every one) is right on the money. It's way too much about a bunch of nonsense. That's why I love it. show less
Very possibly Stephenson's best book, and certainly part of it if it is taken as a component of The Baroque Cycle.
Like the cycle itself, this worries away at a "how did we get here?" question, but where Stephenson's later approach was to look at the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries for the birth of modernity -- in science and technology, in monetary and economic matters, in how we treat authority -- this is much closer to home, running a late 20th Century dot com boom narrative and a World War Two narrative in parallel, and taking cryptography (and, by extension, the entire computing revolution) as its unifying theme: the networking of the planet, chronicled in Stephenson's classic Wired article, "Mother Earth, Motherboard" is show more intertwined as well.
It showcases Stephenson's talents for what Frye calls "Menippean satire" -- a lengthy narrative where digression (among other things) is a structural element. It is fascinating, funny, and engrossing.
As a simple novel, as is common with Stephenson, it has structural weaknesses (principally, the action doesn't so much have a conclusion as just a simple stopping point). If one steps back and views it not as a novel but as a Menippean satire, this isn't an issue -- many such works are either unfinished or deliberately are open-ended (consider Tristram Shandy and The Tale of A Tub as extreme cases).
From a 2016 vantagepoint, it looks charmingly and naively optimistic: the idea that the Powers That Be would allow a secure data haven to be established as one is here looks like something out of another world: but it looked possible to many people at the time. Part of the appeal of the novel now is that it captures the excitement of the first internet boom in a way that few other works do. show less
Like the cycle itself, this worries away at a "how did we get here?" question, but where Stephenson's later approach was to look at the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries for the birth of modernity -- in science and technology, in monetary and economic matters, in how we treat authority -- this is much closer to home, running a late 20th Century dot com boom narrative and a World War Two narrative in parallel, and taking cryptography (and, by extension, the entire computing revolution) as its unifying theme: the networking of the planet, chronicled in Stephenson's classic Wired article, "Mother Earth, Motherboard" is show more intertwined as well.
It showcases Stephenson's talents for what Frye calls "Menippean satire" -- a lengthy narrative where digression (among other things) is a structural element. It is fascinating, funny, and engrossing.
As a simple novel, as is common with Stephenson, it has structural weaknesses (principally, the action doesn't so much have a conclusion as just a simple stopping point). If one steps back and views it not as a novel but as a Menippean satire, this isn't an issue -- many such works are either unfinished or deliberately are open-ended (consider Tristram Shandy and The Tale of A Tub as extreme cases).
From a 2016 vantagepoint, it looks charmingly and naively optimistic: the idea that the Powers That Be would allow a secure data haven to be established as one is here looks like something out of another world: but it looked possible to many people at the time. Part of the appeal of the novel now is that it captures the excitement of the first internet boom in a way that few other works do. show less
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You'd think such a web of narratives would be hard to follow. Certainly, it's difficult to summarize. But Stephenson, whose science-fiction novels Snow Crash (1992) and The Diamond Age (1995) have been critical and commercial successes despite difficult plotting, has made a quantum jump here as a writer. In addition to his bravura style and interesting authorial choices (Stephenson tells each show more of his narratives in the present tense, regardless of when they occur chronologically), the book is so tightly plotted that you never lose the thread.
But Stephenson is not an author who's content just to tell good stories. Throughout the book, he takes on the task of explaining the relatively abstruse technical disciplines surrounding cryptology, almost always in ways that a reasonably intelligent educated adult can understand. As I read the book I marked in the margins where Stephenson found opportunities to explain the number theory that underlies modern cryptography; "traffic analysis" (deriving military intelligence from where and when messages are sent and received, without actually decoding them); steganography (hiding secret messages within other, non-secret communications); the electronics of computer monitors (and the security problems created by those monitors); the advantages to Unix-like operating systems compared to Windows or the Mac OS; the theory of monetary systems; and the strategies behind high-tech business litigation. Stephenson assumes that his readers are capable of learning the complex underpinnings of modern technological life. show less
But Stephenson is not an author who's content just to tell good stories. Throughout the book, he takes on the task of explaining the relatively abstruse technical disciplines surrounding cryptology, almost always in ways that a reasonably intelligent educated adult can understand. As I read the book I marked in the margins where Stephenson found opportunities to explain the number theory that underlies modern cryptography; "traffic analysis" (deriving military intelligence from where and when messages are sent and received, without actually decoding them); steganography (hiding secret messages within other, non-secret communications); the electronics of computer monitors (and the security problems created by those monitors); the advantages to Unix-like operating systems compared to Windows or the Mac OS; the theory of monetary systems; and the strategies behind high-tech business litigation. Stephenson assumes that his readers are capable of learning the complex underpinnings of modern technological life. show less
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Author Information
80+ Works 118,775 Members
Neal Stephenson, the science fiction author, was born on October 31, 1959 in Maryland. He graduated from Boston University in 1981 with a B.A. in Geography with a minor in physics. His first novel, The Big U, was published in 1984. It received little attention and stayed out of print until Stephenson allowed it to be reprinted in 2001. His second show more novel was Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller was published in 1988, but it was his novel Snow Crash (1992) that brought him popularity. It fused memetics, computer viruses, and other high-tech themes with Sumerian mythology. Neal Stephenson has won several awards: Hugo for Best Novel for The Diamond Age (1996), the Arthur C. Clarke for Best Novel for Quicksilver (2004), and the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for The System of the World (2005). He recently completed the The Baroque Cycle Trilogy, a series of historical novels. It consists of eight books and was originally published in three volumes and Reamde. His latest novel is entitled The Rise and Fall of D. O. D. O. Stephenson also writes under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- Cryptonomicon
- Original title
- Cryptonomicon
- Original publication date
- 1999-05
- People/Characters
- Robert "Bobby" Shaftoe; Enoch Root; America "Amy" Shaftoe; Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse; Randy Lawrence Waterhouse; Avi Halaby (show all 33); Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe; Goto Dengo; Alan Turing; Rudolf "Rudy" von Hacklheber; Jean Nguyen (John Wayne); Andrew Loeb; Douglas MacArthur; Winston Churchill; Isoroku Yamamoto; Karl Dönitz; Albert Einstein; Ronald Reagan; Günter Bischoff; Earl Comstock; Julieta Kivistik; Otto Kivistik; Mary Waterhouse nee cCmndhd; Glory Altamira; Hermann Göring; Hubert Kepler; Eberhard Föhr; John Cantrell; Tom Howard; Beryl Hagen; Charlene; Wing; Günter Enoch Bobby "G.E.B." Kivistik
- Important places
- London, England, UK; Bletchley Park, Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, England, UK; Kinakuta (Island Nation); The Philippines; Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Tokyo, Honshū, Japan (show all 12); Manila, The Philippines; Norrsbruck, Sweden (Town); Pearl Harbor, O'ahu, Hawai'i, USA; New Guinea; Outer Qwghlm (island off the northwestern coast of Great Britain); Luzon, Philippines
- Important events
- World War II; Attack on Pearl Harbor; Guadalcanal Campaign; Battle of Midway; Hindenburg disaster
- Epigraph
- "There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the ... (show all)evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily." —Alan Turing
This morning [Imelda Marcos] offered the latest in a series of explanations of the billions of dollars that she and her husband, who died in 1989, are believed to have stolen during his presidency.
"It so coincided that Ma... (show all)rcos had money," she said. "After the Bretton Woods agreement he started buying gold from Fort Knox. Three thousand tons, then 4,000 tons. I have documents for these: 7,000 tons. Marcos was so smart. He had it all. It's funny; America didn't understand him." —The New York Times, Monday, 4 March, 1996 - Dedication
- To S. Town Stephenson,
who flew kites from battleships - First words
- Two tires fly. Two wail.
A bamboo grove, all chopped down.
From it, warring sounds. - Quotations
- He is disappointed because he has solved the problem, and has gone back to the baseline state of boredom and low-level irritation that always comes over him when he's not doing something that inherently needs to be done, like... (show all) picking a lock or breaking a code.
The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first.
This conspiracy thing is going to be a real pain in the ass if it means backing down from casual fistfights.
LET’S SET THE existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either... (show all) by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo—which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead.
Randy is a little bit turned around, but eventually homes in on a dimly heard electronic cacophony—digitized voices prophesying war—and emerges into the mall’s food court.
One of his minions eventually had Randy sign a legal disclaimer stipulating that it was perfectly all right if the oral surgeon decided to feed Randy’s entire body into a log chipper, but this, for once, seemed like just a ... (show all)formality and not the opening round in an inevitable Bleak House-like litigational saga.
"Filipinos are a warm, gentle, caring, giving people," Avi says, "which is a good thing since so many of them carry concealed weapons."
"I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a technocrat," Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person's language, maybe in an attempt to turn their weapons against them but more likely (he t... (show all)hinks, lying in bed at three A.M. in the Manila Hotel) out of an uncontrollable urge to be a prick.
This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with... (show all) military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)For a long time there is really nothing to be seen except steam; but after Golgotha's been burning for an hour or two, it becomes possible to see that underneath the shallow water, spreading down the valley floor, indeed right around the isolated boulder where Randy's perched, is a bright, thick river of gold.
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813/.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3569.T3868 C79
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