Cryptonomicon

About WWII codebreaking, the reason this makes my ‘Best 5’ is that, besides being constantly inventive and informative, it’s also very funny. (I’m that shallow.)

There are similarities, I think, with Catch 22, in the plot’s intelligence, absurdity, and dreamlike turns.

I think Stephenson’s character Bobbie Shaftoe, a soldier who carries out counterintelligence deceptions, is hilarious. Also, Stephenson’s use of real historical characters–he presents believable portraits of Alan Turing, Douglas MacArthur, Karl Dönitz, and Hermann Göring, with a walk-on appearance by Albert  Einstein–gave me license to do so in my own fiction.

We’re clearly suckers for dual timeline books about geniuses solving near-impossible ciphers.

This one, by the dauntingly clever Neal Stephenson, is a heady mix of real history, invented history, and modern intrigue, all tied together by the field of cryptology. I knew absolutely nothing about code-breaking before I read this, and when I’d finished, I felt I’d earned a master's at the very least.

Although we’ll never compete with the Bletchley Park brains, we very much enjoy being thrown into the mix, pretending we can keep up!

Cryptonomicon is a sprawling saga of the obsessive nerds who shaped the 20th century.

The plot deftly intertwines the adventures of a handful soldiers and codebreakers in World War II, with a tech startup in the 2000s.

The plot is epic drama - sunken Nazi submarines, hidden gold, data havens, island-hopping warfare in the South Pacific - and Stephenson has a matchless gift for making the nerdiest subjects vastly entertaining.

This 1999 novel is what got me hooked on Stephenson. A book about cryptocurrencies and blockchain that came out a decade before they were even invented. Set both during World War II and the modern day, Stephenson writes a gripping page-turning action thriller in the style of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series, but about big ideas like how cryptography was crucial to winning World War II, and how cryptocurrencies teach us something about the true nature of money and how blockchains could be the key to saving democracy. (Also love it because the novel includes code written in perl, my… show more.

Neal Stephenson makes his readers think and learn. I love the complexity of the plot. The shifting timelines. The assorted and wildly different locales. And Neal doesn’t let his characters take themselves too seriously. There are many laugh-out-loud moments throughout his thriller.

My absolute favorite endorsement of my novel was a thoughtful comparison to Cryptonomicon. Such very high praise.