Normally it takes a few recommendations on something for me to take them to heart especially if I don’t know the people doing the recommending. You can find someone out there to recommend anything it seems and I had heard of Stephenson off and on over the past few years. Most of the anecdotes revolved around him and his “tech” type fictional stories. Normally I don’t read that type of fiction but finally Pete recommended Crtyptonomicon so I decided to pick it up.
The story takes place in 3 major phases, two of which take place during world war II and one that takes place in the present day. All three stories are related to the origin of the personal computer as well as where currency derives it’s value and how that could change in a digital age.. The basis of the book is a present day company attempting to set up a data haven in the Philippines to be safe from government intervention and all traffic being heavily encrypted. At the same time the other two threads take place in somewhat parallel during World War II. The characters in the two time periods are family relation usually grandfather-grandson/granddaughter though this doesn’t play much role in the story other than they are dealing with similar subject matter across the generations.
The book is in the same vein as the Da Vinci Code in that it uses actual history as the basis for a fictional story and mixes true historical facts along with those made up for the story. One of the books characters is Alan Turing who was heavily involved with breaking German Cryptography during World War II and is credited with being one of the fathers of modern computing. In regards to Turing and other true historical characters and events the issue is that it can be difficult to know what is true and what is for the sake of the story.
I would recommend this book but under the caveat of a few things. This book jumps around a lot in a Lord of the Rings style. The story consists of multiple interweaving tales and can sometimes leave a thread for long periods. This can drop you out of the story while you are hoping the story returns to one of the more interesting tales. Also, Stephenson has a tendency to venture into R rated territory from time to time and it feels very unnecessary. The sections rarely add value to the story and it feels a lot like an adolescent boy trying to write realistic stories about sex before he has any real experiences to base them on.
Cryptonomicon is an intriguing story for those interested in technology and currency. I have already begun reading Stephenson’s trilogy The Baroque Cycle and the books in that series continue along the same vein.