in the weeds

I am so far behind on computer and interaction type stuff it isn't even remotely funny. I am going to try to catch up, honest. With a 40 foot ladder I might reach the top of my email or perhaps even my f-list.

reading (Cryptonomicon)

I finished "Cryptonomicon" on Thursday night after reading it about continuously for two weeks. This is a long book with lots of detail. My copy of it passes 900 small print pages, giving "The Lord of the Rings" a run for its money. But Crypto isn't fantasy, it's a techno thriller with a historical bent.

Stephenson covers technical material in ways that make it possible for people with little or no technical background to understand what's going on. That is no small feat. I think he does a good job of it, occasionally dropping into an almost Star Trek exposition, but he's trying to explain cryptography or Unix or something else to the public who're almost certainly clueless in the area. I was amused by his renaming and occasional poetic license.

Stephenson's strong point is obviously ideas. There are a lot of concepts stuffed in here, there, and everywhere. He hits a lot of different disciplines in the process.

He gets away with a lot by populating the book almost entirely with socially inept misfits. Let's face it, geeks are not renowned for their social prowess, that comes in handy if you don't want to bother with a whole lot of dialog. The character with apparent Asperger's syndrome is a fun, disconcerting, and strange touch. It made me uncomfortable when I was reading it because I really was seeing things through what I perceived as a distorted lense. Disconcerting as it was I was disappointed that Stephenson wasn't able to keep it up throughout the book. My vision of the character is that he would learn to fake social interactions and memorized appropriate behavior, but the tone of the passages involving him change beyond that.

I think I found some plotholes, but considering the detail of the content some minor holes aren't all that surprising. I was actually delighted when I thought I spotted something. A couple of the smaller ones deal with specific technical bits, which I won't spell out here because it would take way too much background. The larger one deals with what one of the major badguys is doing at the endgame and why. None of these particularly distract from the action or resolution.

33. Neal Stephenson "Cryptonomicon"