Beginning Cryptonomicon is a most daunting task.   When I first lay this colossal tome in front of me, the 918 pages lay mockingly, crying out, “You will never finish this novel.”   But I wasn’t worried.   Stephenson tends to read light, I told myself, remembering his second, 470 page novel Snow Crash which consisted mostly of easily read and enjoyable action scenes.   Stephenson did not have the reader’s ease at heart when he penned this novel, however; a maturation process noticeable in his third novel, The Diamond Age, has taken off along an exponential curve.   A casual reader, or one contending with distractions, must expect to set months aside to properly enjoy the opus known as Cryptonomicon.

In this book, Stephenson has adopted a denser style than his previous works, and it suits him well.   While there are some places where the novel drags a bit (perhaps due more to the psychological drag of reading page after page more than an actual drag within the text), these moments are beset by passages that approach poetical and contextual perfection.   The following is an example of Mr. Neal Stephenson’s new style from one of the first chapters:

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 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.

As nightmarishly lethal, memetically programmed death-machines went, these were the nicest you could ever hope to meet.

But from that passage, a second difficulty in reading Cryptonomicon becomes evident.   Within this novel, Stephenson employs a vocabulary that would challenge anyone.   If a reader is not familiar with computers, for instance, they might not be familiar with the term “spamming.”   Spam in this sense does not refer to the canned meat; it instead refers to messages that are used to flood the Internet.   Spam is a single advertisement sent over e-mail sent to hundreds or thousands of persons without their consent.   In the context above, spamming merely refers to vast reproduction (by organisms).   Another potentially perplexing word in the above passage is “memetically,” which refers to the concept of ideas as organisms (or minimally reproductive entities).   But this extended use of vocabulary is a double-edged sword, for while it might deter some, it is also a learning experience for those readers studious enough to keep a dictionary close at hand.   It must be said, however, the book is quite readable; even the most baffling words are quasi-understandable in the context, and the more baffling computer terms are explained in detail and a clear-cut fashion.

Another characteristic made evident by the above passage is Stephenson’s tendency to drift off in pursuit of the perfect paragraph, whether it has anything to do with the story or not.   From a practical standpoint, the sole intent of the above passage was to introduce a character.   But Stephenson obviously favored form over functionality when writing this story, and provides several fairly meaningless digressions which nonetheless leave the reader in awe.   These digressions will probably fast become favorite parts of the book.   Not only do they provide breath-taking prose, they also contribute something uniquely detached from the storyline, which allows readers to relate to the subject matter in their own experience.   Some of these passages seem quite worthy of repetition, should the reader be so inclined, and would make for interesting conversations.

The characterization in Cryptonomicon is phenomenal.   Stephenson possesses remarkable insight into the minds and mindsets of analytic characters in particular.   Some paragraphs are dedicated exclusively to revealing the character’s view of the world, and they are quite effective.   Adding to the realism of the WWII sections are cameos and minor roles by important figures of that era, like General MacArthur, Reagan, Turing, and Göring.   The only noticeable slip in characterization in the entire novel is in one of the villains, who nonetheless remains realistic until the last few pages (whereupon he goes over the top).   This seems to be a calculated slip, however, made to bring about an all-encompassing resolution, which the book does rather nicely.

The interweaving of the various settings is masterfully done.   For the majority of the book, simultaneous timelines unfold on two or three locations in two different time periods: the WWII era (in America, Europe, and Southeast Asia) and a modern or extremely near-future time period (in America and Southeast Asia).   The interplay between these timelines and locations enhance the plot.   At times something will be hinted at in the past storyline and finally revealed in the present one, or vice-versa.   There are also several cases of “echoing” from the past to present that serve to create a feeling of unity between the past and present.   This repetition helps solidify the unity of the settings, and is used to good effect.

The book’s focus on cryptology is well done.   Readers inherit a sense of both the past and present state of cryptology without endless soliloquies of highly technical jargon; he introduces it subtly and elegantly within the plot.   Cryptology is essentially the art of communicating secrets with no one’s knowledge, so it’s not surprising that secrets abound in this novel.   There are even secrets kept from the reader, adding to suspense and the satisfaction once a revelation comes.   Incredibly, a real encryption routine is used in the book, and is further explained in an eight-page appendix!   If willing to give it time and effort, readers of this book can encrypt their own messages using a deck of cards and this specialized system.   The level of depth in this novel makes it stand out above others with less developed themes and is Stephenson’s true mark as a writer.

Because of this method of storytelling, Cryptonomicon is a suspense novel.   “Suspense” is one of the few genre labels that fit this novel.   Stephenson’s accustomed literary ilk is sci-fi, but this piece is fairly clearly not.   In the place of theoretical technologies, advanced technological concepts of today are utilized for the story.   Ah, but “Techno-Suspense” won’t quite cut it either, as Cryptonomicon also engages in a realistic portrayal of the WWII era and its primary focus, overall, is on cryptology.   Resisting the ghastly notion of terming this book “cypherpunk” (the ugly trend that began with “cyberpunk” must be stopped), there’s really no label that fits this book.   And that’s how it should be, especially for novels over 900 pages long.

With all this praise behind, I must supply one final caveat, though it is an obvious one.   This is not a children’s book, as hinted at by the formidable vocabulary, and contains a few harsh words as well as a few instances of explicit subject matter.   However, if one would run all the adult language and themes back to back, it would probably amount to less than 10 pages, which is less than one-ninetieth of this book and probably far better than most movies (and comparable to most other books).

In the end, this 900 page epic is truly a wondrous work that supplies the reader with an alternate and interesting view of WWII, a sense of the cutting edge of today’s technology, wonderful story-telling, and meaty characters that will leave the reader enthralled.   Stephenson is already hard at work on a sequel, entitled Quicksilver (at least for the time being), which delves (I am told) further into the past of cryptology and further into the past of the families that supplied the protagonists of Cryptonomicon.   This “Book of Codes” marks a major breakthrough for Stephenson; it is indeed a step closer to the literary greatness any author aspires to.   It is a masterpiece.

To read a larger excerpt of the novel, go to: www.cryptonomicon.com for an authorized section of released text, from which my example passage was lifted.