Cryptonomicon

Not to be confused with Cyphernomicon.
Cryptonomicon

Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author Neal Stephenson
Country United States
Language English
Genre Speculative fiction
Publisher Avon
Publication date
1999
Media type Hardcover (first edition)
Pages 918 pp (first edition hardcover)
Awards Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2000)
ISBN 0-380-97346-4 (first edition hardcover)
OCLC 40631785
813/.54 21
LC Class PS3569.T3868 C79 1999

Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II-era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park(U.K.), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

Genre and subject matter

Cryptonomicon is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, Snow Crash and Diamond Age. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Isoroku Yamamoto, Karl Dönitz, Hermann Göring, and Ronald Reagan, as well as some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, with discussions of prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and Van Eck phreaking.

Title

According to Stephenson: The title is a play on Necronomicon, the title of a book mentioned in the stories of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft:

I wanted to give it a title a 17th-century book by a scholar would be likely to have. And that's how I came up with Cryptonomicon. I've heard the word Necronomicon bounced around. I haven't actually read the Lovecraft books, but clearly it's formed by analogy to that.[1]

The novel's Cryptonomicon, described as a "cryptographer's bible", is a fictional book summarizing America's knowledge of cryptography and cryptanalysis. Begun by John Wilkins (the Cryptonomicon is mentioned in Quicksilver) and amended over time by William Friedman, Lawrence Waterhouse, and others, the Cryptonomicon is described by Katherine Hayles as "a kind of Kabala created by a Brotherhood of Code that stretches across centuries. To know its contents is to qualify as a Morlock among the Eloi, and the elite among the elite are those gifted enough actually to contribute to it."[2]

Plot

The action takes place in two periods — World War II and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom and Asian financial crisis.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young United States Navy code breaker and mathematical genius, is assigned to the newly formed joint British and American Detachment 2702. This ultra-secret unit's role is to hide the fact that Allied intelligence has cracked the German Enigma code. The detachment stages events, often behind enemy lines, that provide alternative explanations for the Allied intelligence successes. United States Marine sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, a veteran of China and Guadalcanal, serves in unit 2702, carrying out Waterhouse's plans. At the same time, Japanese soldiers, including mining engineer Goto Dengo, an old friend of Shaftoe's, are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains in the Philippines as part of what turns out to be a literal suicide mission.

Circa 1997, Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson) joins his old role-playing game companion Avi Halaby in a new startup, providing Pinoy-grams (inexpensive, non-real-time video messages) to migrant Filipinos via new fiber-optic cables. The Epiphyte Corporation uses this income stream to fund the creation of a data haven in the nearby fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe, the son of Bobby Shaftoe, and his daughter Amy do the undersea surveying for the cables and engineering work on the haven is overseen by Goto Furudenendu, heir-apparent to Goto Engineering. Complications arise as figures from the past reappear seeking gold or revenge.

Characters

World War II storyline

Fictional characters

Historical figures

Fictionalized versions of several historical figures appear in the World War II storyline:

1990s storyline

The precise date of this storyline is not established, but the ages of characters, the technologies described, and certain date-specific references suggest that it is set in the late 1990s, at the time of the internet boom and the Asian financial crisis.

Both storylines

Technical content

Portions of Cryptonomicon are notably complex and may be considered somewhat difficult by the non-technical reader. Several pages are spent explaining in detail some of the concepts behind cryptography and data storage security, including a description of Van Eck phreaking.

Stephenson also includes a precise description of (and even Perl script for) the Solitaire (or Pontifex) cipher, a cryptographic algorithm developed by Bruce Schneier for use with a deck of playing cards, as part of the plot.

He also describes computers using a fictional operating system, Finux. The name is a thinly veiled reference to Linux, a kernel originally written by the Finnish native Linus Torvalds. Stephenson changed the name so as not to be creatively constrained by the technical details of Linux-based operating systems.[3]

Allusions/references from other works

An excerpt from Cryptonomicon was originally published in the short story collection Disco 2000, edited by Sarah Champion and published in 1998.

Stephenson's subsequent work, The Baroque Cycle, provides part of the backstory to the characters and events featured in Cryptonomicon. An excerpt of Quicksilver, Volume One of The Baroque Cycle, is included in later prints of the Mass Market Paperback edition.

The Baroque Cycle, set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, features ancestors of several characters in Cryptonomicon, as well as events and items which affect the action of the later-set book. The subtext implies the existence of secret societies or conspiracies, and familial tendencies and groupings found within those darker worlds.

The short story "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" appears to take place some time after the events of Cryptonomicon. In the story, the construction of the Crypt has triggered economic growth in Manila and Kinakuta, in which Goto Engineering, and Homa/Homer Goto, a Goto family heir, are involved. The IDTRO ("Black Chamber") is also mentioned.

Peter Thiel states in his book Zero to One that Cryptonomicon was required reading during the early days of PayPal.[5]

Literary significance and criticism

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Cryptonomicon

According to critic Jay Clayton, the book is written for a technical or geek audience.[6] Despite the technical detail, the book drew praise from both Stephenson's science fiction fan base and literary critics and buyers.[7][8] In his book Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture (2003), Jay Clayton calls Stephenson’s book the “ultimate geek novel” and draws attention to the “literary-scientific-engineering-military-industrial-intelligence alliance” that produced discoveries in two eras separated by fifty years, World War II and the Internet age.[6] In July 2012, io9 included the book on its list of "10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read".[9]

Awards and nominations

Award Year Result
Hugo Award for Best Novel 2000 Nominated[10]
Arthur C. Clarke Award 2000 Nominated[10]
Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 2000 Won[10]
Mir Fantastiki Award for Best Foreign Sci-Fi Novel 2005 Won[11]
Prometheus Hall of Fame Award 2013 Won[12]

Editions

See also

Notes

  1. "Neal Stephenson: Cryptomancer." Locus, August 1999
  2. N. Katherine Hayles (1 October 2005). My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. University of Chicago Press. pp. 140–141. ISBN 978-0-226-32148-6. Retrieved 31 May 2011.
  3. Stephenson, Neal (1999). "Old site". Retrieved 2015-04-09.
  4. United States. Patent Office (1886). Specifications and Drawings of Patents Relating to Electricity Issued by the U. S. pp. 80–81. In the new element there can be used advantageously as exciting-liquid in the first case such solutions as have in a concentrated condition great depolarizing-power, which effect the whole depolarization chemically without necessitating the mechanical expedient of increased carbon surface. It is preferred to use iron as the positive electrode, and as exciting-liquid nitro muriatic acid, (aqua regis,) the mixture consisting of muriatic and nitric acids. The nitro-muriatic acid, as explained above, serves for filling both cells. For the carbon-cells it is used strong or very slightly diluted, but for the other cells very diluted, (about one-twentieth, or at the most one-tenth.) The element containing in one cell carbon and concentrated nitro-muriatic acid and in the other cell iron and dilute nitro-muriatic acid remains constant for at least twenty hours when employed for electric incandescent lighting. (p. 80 at Google Books)
  5. Brown, Mick (September 19, 2014). "Peter Thiel: the billionaire tech entrepreneur on a mission to cheat death". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Jay Clayton (14 April 2006). Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture. Oxford University Press US. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-19-531326-0. Retrieved 8 May 2011.
  7. Berry, Michael (1999-05-09). "900 Pages + Lots of Math = Weird Fun". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  8. Bruinooge, Nathan (1999-06-23). "Review:Cryptonomicon". Slashdot. Retrieved 2007-08-27.
  9. Anders, Charlie Jane (July 10, 2012). "10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read (And Why You Should Actually Read Them)". io9. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
  10. 1 2 3 "2000 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-20.
  11. "Le Code Enigma (Cryptonomicon #1)". Bibliographic.Info. Retrieved May 19, 2014.
  12. "Prometheus Awards". Libertarian Futurist Society. Retrieved May 19, 2014.

External links

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