Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by frasersimons
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
3.0
This is probably the most successful book I’ve read by Stephenson, but it still falls into the category of, well, technically you’ve written a novel territory. As a maxamilist effort, the thematic depth and range one wants from such a thing is not present. As usual, the character work dips into casual phobias, with the narrator somehow always attempting to be neutral but completely biased towards the characters’ thinking, and this dissonance distancing myself as the reader from any real suspension of disbelief.
If the goal is to show how the terrible milieu is the engine and catalyst both, for progress… it somewhat comes together, in the end. I think it could have been easily achieved, much more elegantly in hundreds of pages (easily) left off. Stephenson is fairly adroit at communicating more complex science and maths to a reader. But after reading something like, say, When We Cease To Understand the World, the comparison makes this feel like a very commercial work, and not a literary one. It doesn’t make it bad. It does make it less engaging, memorable, or impressive. In fact, that book communicates what this one does, much more to boot, and was an impactful, tremendous read.
I had this on my list only because it’s listed as cyberpunk (which it is not even remotely), and I’ve got an ongoing project to read that sub genre. This does feature cryptology and computers and various systems, but boy is it not punk, nor are the characters, even remotely. It has no hallmarks of the regular run or the post era, so I really don’t get that classification. I still own the sequel, Reamde, however. I wonder if that is and these get lumped in together, or something.
Regardless, this is more of the same from Stephenson, I think. If you already like him and you’re alright with his… quirks, I guess - you’ll probably like this, too. If, like me, you’ve never been impressed and actively disliked Snow Crash, I would advise you to move along, move along.
If the goal is to show how the terrible milieu is the engine and catalyst both, for progress… it somewhat comes together, in the end. I think it could have been easily achieved, much more elegantly in hundreds of pages (easily) left off. Stephenson is fairly adroit at communicating more complex science and maths to a reader. But after reading something like, say, When We Cease To Understand the World, the comparison makes this feel like a very commercial work, and not a literary one. It doesn’t make it bad. It does make it less engaging, memorable, or impressive. In fact, that book communicates what this one does, much more to boot, and was an impactful, tremendous read.
I had this on my list only because it’s listed as cyberpunk (which it is not even remotely), and I’ve got an ongoing project to read that sub genre. This does feature cryptology and computers and various systems, but boy is it not punk, nor are the characters, even remotely. It has no hallmarks of the regular run or the post era, so I really don’t get that classification. I still own the sequel, Reamde, however. I wonder if that is and these get lumped in together, or something.
Regardless, this is more of the same from Stephenson, I think. If you already like him and you’re alright with his… quirks, I guess - you’ll probably like this, too. If, like me, you’ve never been impressed and actively disliked Snow Crash, I would advise you to move along, move along.