If you enjoyed Cryptonomicon and like Stephenson, don't read the Baroque cycle. Skip his work forward until Reamde.
I haven't read Anathem yet. Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age are also excellent, but getting away from hard sci fi.
I ran into it in my printing of Cryptonomicon at the end of the book... indeed extremely excellent!
Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Jennifer Government. Also, read through the thread. I saw Neuromancer recommended already :)
Is the book any good? I loved Snow Crash and especially Cryptonomicon.
I haven't read Reamde, yet. I've read lots of complaints about it on Goodreads, so I'm kind of on the fence about getting it.
In your opinion, how was Reamde compared to works like Anathem, Snow Crash, Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon? I'm asking because I like your ranking :)
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are probably in my top 5 favorite books of all time. Enjoy the read!
This reminds me of the Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) from Neal Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon (which I highly recommend reading).
I've always loved the idea. If you could somehow finance it with Bitcoin, it would be a perfect homage to Stephenson :)
All-time favorite: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Recent favorite: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
>> "Neal Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon is about twice the weight of The Hobbit."
>And how many times have you seen someone reading a book that size on the subway/bus/ferry? ;)
Good point. You may have convinced me.
I re-read
Cryptonomicon over vacation, and I agree with your recommendation.
I would also check out Quicksilver - there are significant tie-ins to Cryptonomicon. I've enjoyed it so far.
I'm from Manila, now working in Singapore. I've read Cryptonomicon two times already and enjoyed it immensely.
Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books of all time - I stared at that mushroom-shaped cave for the longest time trying to recall where I'd seen it!
Cryptonomicon -- 100% agreed. Further, it's an awesome story! Highly recommended.
Cryptonomicon is my favorite so far! Glad I am not the only one who enjoys his writing.
My e-reader copy of Cryptonomicon has a copy of this article at the end of the book... LOVE both of these pieces of writing!
If this article piqued your interest, be sure to read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
And I'm just reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
Amazing book.
Everytime I read a very good fiction book (or series) like Asimov's Foundation, Simmons' Hyperion Cantos or (currently reading) Stephenson's Cryptonomicon I think 'hey, this one is going to be my favorite'.
Haven't we all read Cryptonomicon and dreamed of having sovereignty over our very own impenetrable data-bunker?
This reminded me of a fragment from Cryptonomicon about collecting history of elevation of people walking around the city and trying to reconstruct a street map from it. While an interesting exercise, we just carry precise position beacons with us these days.
A good day to pick up a copy of Cryptonomicon and start reading it.
If anyone's interested in Bletchley Park, or the intersection between encryption and WWII, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is a fantastic book.
Finished Amusing Ourselves to Death a week ago, now reading Cryptonomicon.
Another great hacker fiction read: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
All of William Gibson and all of Neal Stephenson (especially Cryptonomicon and Baroque cycle series)
No need to have every book loaded, only the top 50000~ read by people who would use that method of passphrase generation should work fine (and be feasible for almost everyone). Cryptonomicon would probably be in that list.
I also disliked REAMDE and am struggling to get into D.O.D.O. Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, and Seveneves were great. Have't read Anathem.
I encourage the author to read Cryptonomicon :-)
Snow Crash is his best book. Imaginative and punchy as fuck.
Cryptonomicon is very good too. Should be a must read for people who want to make another Tor :)
Incomparison, Reamde is slow and boring.
I remember reading Cryptonomicon in high school, and being fascinated and terrified by the Perl implementation of this in the book. It was a perfectly rectangular, quarter page quote, with no spaces and a terrifying proliferation of sigils.
Those articles are so cool, loved reading them. It reminds me of the long explanations in the book Cryptonomicon about Intramuros/Manilla and how the bigger ballast stones that came from Europe ended as huge stair steps.
'96 article by Neal Stephenson. This should be interesting after just reading Cryptonomicon which has a good bit on under-sea fiber.
Snow Crash was always considered to be Stephenson's best work but I thought Cryptonomicon and Anathem were far better.
The characters in Seveneves feel like an afterthought that Stephenson needed to fill out a book about a cool idea he had. I personally found it uninteresting.
Cryptonomicon is my favorite work of his.
I liked it, but I am a big Stephenson fan. I skipped Anathem and the baroque cycle books, but Diamond Age is one of my favorite books and I also like Snow Crash and
Cryptonomicon a lot.
Reamde was pretty good, and this is an interesting setup.
Edit: Anathem not Anathema (thanks __david__ and lmm)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, while maybe not the "best" book ever written, is highly entertaining...
This should surprise nobody.
If I had my copy of Cryptonomicon at hand, I'd quote the bit about everybody being impressed Avi could let them sell out for roughly what they'd have made at a regular job.
Yes, even in the '90s, this was pretty well known.
Stephenson is my absolute favorite living author (RIP, DFW) when he's good (Anathem, Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash), but appallingly bad when he's bad (The Rise and Fall of DODO, REAMDE). You can safely give Seveneves a miss, and should go read the really good stuff first in any case.
Is that still true? Honest question.
Cryptonomicon did such a wonderful job of capturing a certain something from the 1990ies. I haven't enjoyed his more recent books as much. Seveneves was depressing. Dodge had really bad reviews and I haven't bothered with it.
Don't worry, Anathem's the only book where he renames things like that, and that's mainly because his construction necessitates it. He is rather self-indulgent though. Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon are good starts, and if you like them you should then upgrade to Diamond Age.
Anyone who's read Cryptonomicon knows what Van Eck phreaking is, and anyone who hasn't read it probably isn't worth talking to. :)
Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books of all time (I'm probably due for a re-read at this point).
I would also recommend "Seveneves", one of Neal Stephenson's most recent books. "Anathem" was also very enjoyable.
The Baroque cycle? Only if you thought
Cryptonomicon was regretfully short, and the final chapter was the crowning achievement of Stephensons writing.
Otherwise, I'd read pre-Cryptonomicon Stephenson.
Honestly, Cryptonomicon is probably my favourite novel. A bit hard going the first read through, but it's immensely re-readable.
Neal Stephenson tends to cram too many side stories into his books, some of them quite boring :/
I kind of regret that I slogged through Cryptonomicon and I would advise anyone to stop reading after 200 pages if bored, the next 700 won't really be better.
This scenario was enjoyably re-imagined in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Perhaps in tribute to the original codename, the dead "volunteer" was re-written as a deceased butcher by the name of PFC Gerald Hott (see Chapter 15: Meat).
One could ad Neal Stephenson books in general. Especially Snow Crash. Jointly, with Cryptonomicon, one of the best books I've ever read! In Snow Crash, the author envisioned stuf like Google Earth or Second Life, only in a much more advanced way. The book was written in 1992 :-)
"Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" seemed pretty accessible to me, much more so than "The Baroque Cycle." I think it's marketing aimed at getting readers who were turned off by TBC to pick up the new book.
> To be honest
Cryptonomicon is the only NS book which I really and wholeheartedly recommend.
We're on the same page then, I agree with you. I really enjoyed Cryptonomicon. Diamond Age was interesting but tended to read like the script for an over-the-top sci-fi movie.
Thats kind of the definition of good fiction [or good art, even highly abstract art]...
eg. Neal Stephensons Young ladies illustrated primer or Cryptonomicon strike me that way - they make you think even more about what is real.
Id also recommend
Cryptonomicon by Stephenson. Undersea cables is a major subject in the novel. It also touches on many things that have become relevant today despite the book being written 1999 (cryptocurrency, encryption, etc).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38897904Did you know that Neal Stephenson wrote Cryptonomicon mostly with a fountain pen? Seems to work well for some people.
This is how Cryptonomicon was for me. Anathem, I read after that, and I kinda understood what I was getting into, so I got through it much more more quickly.
Similarly, his book Cryptonomicon is quite long and likely would only hold ones interest if they had an interest in Cryptography.
Interesting pattern - Reamde also provides an example. Of course, in Cryptonomicon there is also a literal Nordic Voyage, from the coast of Norway to the Swedish coast, but he skips over it entirely, only giving the highlights retrospectively from the perspective of his least reliable narrator.
I read Snow Crash once a year (usually I listen to the audiobook these days) but I'm thinking of switching up to the Baroque Cycle. I'm glad there's finally an unabridged Cryptonomicon audiobook - for a long time there was not.
Did you mean the "Light of Other Days"?
Fascinating list, I just finished reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Quite an epic. Everyone I know who has read it says that Cryptonomicon is a better book by Neal. Looking fwd to getting it!
Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books and recommend it highly. I felt less thrilled by Anathem however. I absolutely loved the first ~200 pages, but was disappointed by the rest.
To paraphrase Stephenson in Cryptonomicon, men can apply a laser focus to something, to the exclusion of everything else, whereas women tend to be able to keep track of the big picture more easily.
Cryptonomicon was my first contact with Stephenson, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It also opened my eyes to WW2 crypto and a whole lot of other very interesting things!
Reminds me of some side passages in Cryptonomicon which talk about how a clever person could extract so much information from side channels.
That was one bit of Cryptonomicon that bothered me - the Sultan simply decided one day to guarantee anonymity, but he was an absolute monarch so he could just as easily decide one day to remove anonymity.
[Mind you, that is a minor niggle - Cryptonomicon is one of my favourite novels]
There is also a really good book called Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson that has a lot to do with Bletchley Park and WW2 in general. Less informative but more entertaining.
I'd recommend some of Stephenson's earlier works: Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Reamde, Anathem are all great. I actually think Seveneves is one of his weakest books.
Cryptonomicon really hammered home how very much we depend on undersea cables to power the internet. Great read for those who have not had the pleasure. Plus you get to learn something.
Anathem is the last book of his I read, and my favorite so far, partly because he suddenly remembered how to write endings. Does his later stuff continue that trend, or does he return to the "just sort of stops" style of Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon?
I just thought of Cryptonomicon first, mostly because I've been rereading the Baroque Cycle. I think it also matches the original poster's request better, though, because it covers life in a raw startup.
I liked Snow Crash, Diamond Age,
Cryptonomicon, Interface, Zodiak and even REAMDE and The Big U and cobweb (to an extent). I never finished the Baroque cycle though, despite buying the first book in hardback in day one.
I also never quite finished Dodge in Hell either but probably will some day.
I don't remember that part of Snow Crash. Did you mean Cryptonomicon? That book was a huge disappointment to me, so unbelievably tedious to read.
Tangent, but
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson[1] is a good novel that touches on WWII cryptography topics really well, going decently mathematically deep into the mechanics of how they work. I'm about 75% of the way through.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash were great. Others you might:
- The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (superb short story that Arrival was based on)
- The Three Body-Problem (Cixin Liu)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler)
- Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven)
- The Kundalini Equation (Steven Barnes)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
Especially one episode, and if you've read the book, you probably can guess, which one.
(The rest of the books were already mentioned above.)
I think the version in Cryptonomicon was based on actual sound waves (in tubes filled with air) rather than in mercury as the book mentions to noise coming from his laboratory.
"
Cryptonomicon" - Neal Stephenson
"Expecting Better" - Emily Oster
"The 9/11 Commission Report" - National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
"Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS" - Joby Warrick
"Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency" - Charlie Savage (not finished yet)
This! Cryptonomicon turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read. I had to wait a bit though. In my early 20s I wasn't ready. Now 20 years later I enjoyed every page.
Honestly, I didn't find REAMDE to be worth the time. Re-reading Cryptonomicon would be time better spent.
Inspired by Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon, I do Aikido sword kata with a 2cm x 30cm steel bar. I move rather slowly, and don't put much momentum into the bar. So the practice forces good form, in addition to maintaining strength.
Edit: Yes, Snow Crash.
Of all of the Stephenson books I think Zodiac or Cryptonomicon
(both somewhat grounded) would adapt the best - Snow Crash has this dyed in the wool early 90s escapist VR vision of the internet that doesn't really make sense today, along with a ton of religious overtones and weird, rapey bits.
Would recommend the bit in
Cryptonomicon with a similar challenge. Actually, the entire book
But as a formal challenge it would be super neat to try to do. The sneaky hackathon
Both Neuromancer and
Cryptonomicon are about "social, cultural and economic dynamics", and they are very good books to boot.
Try as I might, I can't remember any mocking of Turing in the Cryptonomicon. I'm quite confident Neal Stephenson is not a homophobe.
Of those 3 I was only somewhat happy with Anathem. I couldn't finish REAMDE and Seveneves convinced me that I may not read another one of his books again, unless it debuts to unanimous critical acclaim or something similar. I thought the ending of Cryptonomicon was pretty weak but the rest of the novel leading up to it was so fantastic that I didn't care. Honestly I found the Baroque Cycle to have the best ending of any of his works, and I would describe it as the one time I was happy with both the journey and the destination of a Stephenson novel.
RE #3: They could also already have the data and simply be querying Facebook to establish a "backwards chain of evidence".
Hilariously, I'm reading Cryptonomicon right now and that's exactly what Sergent Shafto and crew do by pretending they're finding German submarine secrets.
This article is listed high among the Best Magazine Articles Ever
http://kk.org/cooltools/best-magazine-articles-everAnd rightly so.
Neal Stephenson has also written some of the best geek books ever. My personal favourite: Cryptonomicon which is in the same general vein as the article.
This concept was described in Cryptonomicon (1999). I have seen no proof of concept for such an application as of yet, but it would indeed be simple.
To anyone who hasn't read Neal Stephenson's work: Go and do it! It's science fiction written by a man who is a hacker at heart.
Start with Cryptonomicon, a tale of WWII codebreakers, cryptography, and modern-day data freedom. How can you not love the sound of that that?
I should clarify: I don't mean to say I want pricing to be flat by any means, even if my original post implied it. What I meant to say is that the ebook is not cheaper than the paperback or the hardcover.
Example: Cryptonomicon is $8.99 as a softcover, but, the ebook version is $10.99
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. An easily digestible summary of information and key figures in its history.
Turing's Cathedral (or as my brothers call it: Von Neumann's Cathedral). An awesome account of the history of computation, and the obstacles that had to be overcome.
Cryptonomicon. Hilarious
The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo. A biography of delightfully awkward Paul Dirac.
The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges. Thought provoking and profound.
A couple of days ago I've decided to not finish Seveneves after having been disappointed by REAMDE already. Are there any recent book releases anyone can recommend to people who love Cryptonomicon, Anathem and Snow Crash but aren't really into REAMDE and Seveneves?
Snowcrash is fun but doesn't have anyhere near the depth of his later books. Cryptonomicon is fantastic, you shouldn't let the first one of the System of the World put you off, and I love Anathem. Unfortunately Neal Stephenson is terrible at ending books; but the journey is def. worth it.
There's a great passage in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon about the problems of moving pallets of gold that are sitting undefended in the middle of the jungle.
The Diamond Age as the follow-up to Snow Crash is also a great piece of sci-fi.
Cryptonomicon is fun, I re-read that recently. I wouldn't really call it sci-fi, though. More like historical fiction..
I used to think this too, primarily because I read Cryptonomicon and it states as much. But it’s simply a myth, and one that I wish would die.
Math is quite fun, and exciting. But often it is taught in schools in a very poor manner which destroys any of the fun aspects of it. Read, say, Cryptonomicon or Diamond Age and tell me math isn't fun.
Some authors and a rec or two for each.
DFW - Infinite Jest
Pynchon - Really anything, but in particular Against the Day, V, and Gravity's Rainbow.
Rushdie - Shame and Satanic Verses, a lot of good other ones.
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Gaddis - JR, hence my name.
Heller - Catch-22
Anathem was Stephenson's first book that I read; I was absolutely mind blown. It's a slow burn (like most of his books), but the ending is more than worth it. Later I picked up Cryptonomicon, and it's a big reason why I'm doing a PhD in crypto now.
This essay set me off on an Odyssey of discovery and exploration. I learned emacs, Bash, gained an appreciation for abstractions in a mindset strongly influenced by this philosophy.
If you enjoyed his essay, it is well worth reading Neal Stephenson's novels. I would start with Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash.
I just took a road trip and looked at one of Bill Gates previous favorite books list, and picked "Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012". I've always wanted to know more about Mr. Buffet, so I thought this would be a great choice.
I almost drove off the road listening to him talking about bonds vs stocks and percentages. It was interesting, but definitely not a road trip book.
That said, I finished Snow Crash on the trip, and it was a great book. I think I preferred Cryptonomicon a bit more, but some of the theories in Snow Crash were incredible, and way before their time. Hiro Protagonist and YT are also awesome characters.
I found Cryptonomicon a painfully long slog. I enjoyed it overall, but only read it because of having read Snow Crash and Zodiac first. I love Stephenson's humor with technical issues. I suppose I should read some of his longer, er, later books.
I remember reading about such attacks for the first time in Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon under the term "Van Eck Phreaking". Looks like its gotten a lot easier in recent years!
Cryptonomicon was my first thought when I saw the headline. I can't help but wonder if it was the inspiration for this.
Were women really the first computers, or just happened to be in WWII? This is far from cite-able, but I remember reading in Cryptonomicon mentions of Japanese "computers," people calculating trajectories for weapons. I imagine this was done by men as well. (maybe I'm being too literal)
I've been reading
Cryptonomicon recently. There's an entertaining bit where one of the characters asserts that beards are "totems of the white male patriarchal privilege".
It's a bit silly. But it is interesting to note that every bearded person mentioned in this article is white.
Non-fiction
- 'The Selfish Gene' - Richard Dawkins
Grokking the concept changed the way I thought about life forever.
- 'Quantum Reality' - Nick Herbert
One of the best introductory level books on quantum physics mysteries. No nonsense.
- Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
The book that introduced me to Kant, Hume and philosophy of science. Just for that, I'm forever indebted to it.
Some favorite fiction books -
- Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Loved 'Snowcrash' too.
- 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' - Robert Heinlein
- Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, Somerset Maugham
Agreed... I read
Cryptonomicon first, then Diamond Age (my favorite from him) then Snow Crash, and I found the third book a lot less mature and dated (I read it in 2001, almost a decade after it was published).
Diamond Age painted a very deep and rich tapestry of future vision.
> It is not an economic injustice that the ebook
Cryptonomicon costs more than the softcover.
No, but perhaps it is a sign of a screwy market. Or simply a new market that hasn't really stabilized yet.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that article - I think that it's actually printed in the back of some ebook versions of Cryptonomicon now. It's a great read.
All of this makes me want to re-read Cryptonomicon very soon.
Cool, there is a scene in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon where the protagonist programs his keyboard lights to play back messages to him in Morse Code. I had no idea it had been implemented IRL.
> One of my favorite elements of The Laundry Files series, is the old spook who only uses a Memex machine because of van Eck phreaking.
There is a scene in Neal Stephensons novel Cryptonomicon (1999), where the protagonist accesses his laptops data by manipulating the scroll-lock LED using Morse-code, as he is fairly certain he is being van-eck phreaked.
That's true, I don't even remember the ending to Snow Crash which I read some ~6 years ago. The unraveling premise that comes about in the ~3rd quarter of the book is what stuck with me. Think it'll be the same for Cryptonomicon.
True. That one always blew my mind as it really created a link between the two books. I was half expecting some of the characters to reappear when Cryptonomicon came out (didn't happen but Cryptonomicon has some linkage to the Baroque chronicles)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson should be on there as well! THAT is a book that made me sorry I had finished it. I had lived in it half a year, reading a bit every night before sleeping.
Interesting. I've loved most of Stephenson's books and
Cryptonomicon easily holds the title of most re-read book in my collection.
Seveneves, on the other hand, I absolutely loathed in basically every regard. My loathing for it makes it memorable enough to be my most hated book (there are plenty of books out there that are 'worse', but are also unmemorable -- Seveneves is viscerally memorable)
Read all but Anathem. I'm still convinced
Cryptonomicon is the pinnacle of his writing, and it's downhill from there. The story in Baroque Cycle was great, but good god, that thing needed an editor to do some serious cutting.
REAMDE was quick and entertaining, but it was the equivalent of a Tom Clancy novel. Or, fine, Michael Crichton.
All my recommendations happen to be mentioned on this list, so I'll mention them here:
- Stealing the Network, a collection of short stories. One of those stories was written by Fyodor of nmap and is available online: http://insecure.org/stc/ -- this sort of works like a tutorial for nmap and networking security. :-D
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
I'm not hugely fond of the earlier books but I loved
Cryptonomicon and all of the later novels apart from Reamde - Fall, or Dodge in Hell is pretty good in my view and ties up some loose ends from earlier books in satisfying ways.
I still think The Baroque Cycle would make a wonderful sprawling multi-series show (Jack Shaftoe being one of my favourite fictional characters).
A: It's a scam, and it works by scamming people.
The text as written on this site describes a conspiracy to commit tax and securities fraud. I have no idea if it will ever be prosecuted as such, but that is what is being proffered here.
The subtext is that a bunch of finance quants read Cryptonomicon and think the blockchain is the answer to their dream of becoming the gangster bosses of the anarcho-capitalist hellscape from Snow Crash.
I am inordinately proud of the fact that I discovered neal stephenson all by myself -- and I read
Cryptonomicon at one of those formative ages where it bakes itself into your head at a pretty deep level.
Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco.
edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.
I found Cryptonomicon a bit shallow and absurdly hyperactive, but then I read it more or less back to back with Le Carre's Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.
I didn't say "flat". I said "fiat". As in, there's a marketwide rule about what book prices "should" be.
It is not an economic injustice that the ebook Cryptonomicon costs more than the softcover.
I think I've read all his books. But his work is pretty diverse, so you get to pick and choose based on taste and preference.
There was a time when I thought Snow Crash was the best. There was a time when Cryptonomicon was a lot of fun (still is). Nowadays I incline slightly more towards the 'philosophical opus' type of vibe that Anathem gives off.
Anyway, all his books are pretty good representatives of one sub-genre or another. He's a very good author, and he wrote in a lot of different keys through his career so far.
Good to see Alan Turing getting his due. There's a great book about what was happening during WWII there called Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's about a lot more than that, but a good chunk is about Bletchley Park. It's a fictionalized account, but I'd highly recommend it to the HN crowd that is interested in Turing, encryption, WWII, etc.
I was pleasantly surprised to see two Neal Stephenson books on the list, but why did the second have to be Anathem? I thought
Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle were much better books. Anathem's plot seemed like book-nerd wish fulfillment.
Of course I still read all thousand pages of Anathem in, like, four days. :)
I have to admit that the first time I got really aware of Bletchley Park was while I was reading Cryptonomicon from Stephenson and started looking into its actual history. One of the few monuments in reality the digital age actually has. Nice to see it preserved.
I'm curious to know if you erased all of modern civilization (governments, laws, et. all) and replaced it with decentralized apps and a blockchain-based currency, would it work? I read Snow Crash and I can see how fascinating the concepts are to libertarian technocrats, but I would like to see a rebuttal to it.
I know the transition to this model seems impossible and this is what most people in the blockchain-space blissfully ignore.
> The subtext is that a bunch of finance quants read Cryptonomicon and think the blockchain is the answer to their dream of becoming the gangster bosses of the anarcho-capitalist hellscape from Snow Crash.
This made my day, it's a shame it's too long to tweet
Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon does a pretty good job, in places, of calling out some of the more terrifying and gruesome aspects of WW2 in the Pacific. It reads so distinctly removed from the Hollywood version but this piece is a good reminder of the depth and length of the discomfort and terror the ground troops endured.
I found this to be a fun reference when reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
Funny anecdote, from an article about the novel
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson:
> One of the noteworthy features of the novel CRYPTONOMICON is that it contains a
new cryptosystem invented by Bruce Schneier, called Solitaire. [...] Since Solitaire
is strong enough to be subject to U.S. laws governing export of crypto
technology, this means that when the text of the novel is rendered in electronic
form it becomes an export-controlled good.
They relaxed that restriction shortly afterward, so Neal got to have his cake (having his ebook classified as weapons-grade), and eat it too (sell it anyway).
Highly recommend James Clavell's Asian Saga starting with Shogun. Also Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson might be one of my favorites
During this past year, I’ve been inhaling books like nobody’s business and, in particular, re-discovering my love of science fiction.
Anathem was by far my favorite discovery of the whole year in any genre, highly highly recommended. (I much preferred it to Cryptonomicon actually.) I found it beautiful and deep and entertaining on every level.
If you are interested in that sort of thing, I highly recommend the novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson - it is partly about the activities of a joint British/American counterintelligence unit whose mission is to make sure the Axis does not figure out that the Allies have broken their codes. It's also a great read in general.
My favorite books of 2016 was, and I can recommend all of them:
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Honorable mention from 2015: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I have just started Homo Deus and my first impression is that is is a worthy sequel.
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
It's the story of Pixar and there's so many things I enjoyed about this book. It helped validate for me many of my instincts in running a creative business.
The Martian by Andy Weir
I very much enjoyed the story and how it was all approached.
Seven Eves by Neil Stephenson
Similar to his other books (Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon) I've gifted these a few times. I really enjoy his method of storytelling and his stories appeal to the geek in me as well.
Cryptonomicon is a long but very good read. There's enough technical details to keep us hackers intrigued without scaring away the non techie folks. My dad read it and even though he didn't get some of the more subtle crypto jokes he very much enjoyed it without having any history of computing or security.
I enjoyed all of Anathem and would have happily read another 500 pages of it. Not sure if Stephenson is the best example, his long book style is quite unique. Usually it works for me (Anathem, Cryptonomicon, I've read both at least twice) other times it doesn't (The baroque series I haven't finished). Snow crash and Zodiac are examples of him writing shorter good books too.
> the only other Stephenson book I've read so far is
CryptonomiconAbsolutely recommend "Diamond Age" and to a lesser extent (but more fun) "Snowcrash". I started "Cryptonomicon" right after reading Singh's "The Code Book", and it just felt like Stephenson did a sub-par job with the subject material (perhaps especially because "The Code Book" isn't fiction, but almost reads like it).
Did start "Seveneves" when there was a free teaser out, but haven't gotten around to it yet -- it's on my list. I'm hoping it's a bit tighter than most of the stuff since "Diamond Age".
I find that reading fiction on vacation really stimulates my programming brain. There's a lot to be said for letting your mind roam free for a bit. I believe PG talks about the value of letting your mind roam in one of his essays (or possibly Hackers and Painters). In particular, I've found Neal Stephenson's books to be great for this purpose. If you haven't read Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, or Diamond Age, I would suggest reading one of them. It will satisfy your need for some "geek" content on vacation, without being all business.
Two books come to mind (while excluding the obvious absolute classics like Neuromancer (William Gibson) and Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson):
"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. It goes from WW2 to modern time.
"Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner - Read it aeons ago so working from long term memory. 3 real world stories of famous hackers and their "crimes" (Kevin Mitnick, Pengo, Robert Morris).
Came here to make sure someone mentioned these. Might not qualify as
great fiction imnho - but the technical detail more than makes up for it. And the books
are entertaining.
I see people's mentioned Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" - while I loved "diamond age" and like "snowcrash" - I much prefer Singh's "the codebook" on a similar theme. Thrilling non-fiction.
On the more fiction side, I enjoyed Bruce Sterling's "The Zenith Angle" a lot.
And second the recommendations for Mitnick's books - both the autobiography "ghost in the wires" and the more free form "made up examples" in "the art of deception" (like many of the stories in the stealing the network books, "inspired" by true events...).
Other than that there's of course:
https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
(and to a lesser extent "homeland").
And others mentioned the non-fiction book detailing operation sun devil:
"THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier",
Bruce Sterling
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101
[ed: I think maybe "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge deserves a mention too. And maybe "speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon]
Hmm... Favorite is hard. Maybe Cryptonomicon Because it was funny, meditative, and the research into WWII crypto was interesting. Or Maybe Stranger in a Strange Land, for the insights into correct action, the nature of humor, love, and understanding, and for giving us 'grok'. Or Maybe the Illuminatus Trilogy, for crazy awesomeness insight into the 1970's. I've loaned out all three, and I couldn't consider a book a favorite unless I'd tried to get people to read it.
I loved Snow Crash (top 5 personal favourite book) and
Cryptonomicon (I haven't read Seveneves yet), but I didn't like Anathem that much?
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)
Especially the sort of quantum-ex-machina "twist" near the end was kind of off-putting to me. Everything so far was very well crafted and researched, but this part was a lot like "yeah multiple universes or something", but I'm not sure if it even works that way, if true.
Also I found the constant back-translating of scientific discoveries and theorems with-a-different-name kind of tedious. I caught a lot of them, but many also not and I kept feeling like I was missing out on some cool references. Even though (IMHO) I have a pretty broad general knowledge of most important scientific/math theorems.
There were some other bits I didn't like but that's personal taste. I loved the humour in Snow Crash (so much better reading than Neuromancer) and the hi-tech thriller action stuff in Cryptonomicon. Anathem seemed kind of slow, building a whole world and such (as I said, matter of taste, I don't get quite as excited about world-building in fiction/fantasy books, unlike many people).
Makes me want to re-read Cryptonomicon again. The Imitation Game movie was a disappointment to me, after having read that book -- but I have to admit I don't remember if the Polish contribution was mentioned in the book!
Interesting - your bringing up operational security in the context of trying to spot anomalies in data reminds me of the information warfare concepts in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where the challenge for some of the World War II era characters was to try to prevent Nelson-pattern-like deviations from normal randomness turning up in data available to the enemy, so they wouldn't suspect that their cryptosystems had been cracked.
If you reread some of Neal Stephenson's novels right now (namely Cryptonomicon and Reamde) it's remarkable how well he conceptualized cryptocurrencies long before their arrival. He obviously got the specifics wrong - his cybercurrencies always rely on an authoritative 3rd party, for instance - but he got the use cases, the culture and the impact spot on.
Simon Prebble has narrated a lot of the books I have in my Audible library, notably The System of the World (all the Daniel Waterhouse bits) and Endurance.
I also liked William Dufris who narrated Cryptonomicon and parts of Anathem.
I find new narrators tend to be very grating the first time I start listening, then over time I get used to them.
Some books
do pay off after the slog. Anathem after about 200 pages.
Cryptonomicon after 100. The Baroque Cycle after most of the first book.
Some don't.
The rule of thumb fails.
If someone has reason to know that the book does get better, then great. But it's no reason to grant every book that much leeway.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
I just finished reading Neal Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon (very good book), and this article was included at the end of the E-Book version (literally finished reading it this morning).
As someone who's interested in technology (obviously) and boats / the ocean, this article hit an unexpected confluence of interests, on an unexpectedly complex subject. I definitely recommend reading it.
I can’t second this enough. Snow Crash and Diamond Age were fun page-turners. I slogged through
Cryptonomicon, but beyond that I haven’t been able to finish anything else.
I’ve heard good things about Seveneves, but I’m a little hesitant to pick it up given that it’s huge and there are thousands of other books to read.
I'm looking forward to it being a critical success and then to watch them search for other works by the author to videoize and either grab
Cryptonomicon or, even better, the Baroque Cycle...
Actually, Seveneves would be a kind of amazing long running serial if they just ran a chunk of anthologies during the portion of history the book skips between stabilizing the asteroid and recolonizing earth.
> I have a first printing hardcover
Cryptonomicon sitting in front of me, that I haven't cracked opened yet.
Cryptonomicon is very easy to start, you meet Alan Turing right in the first pages, and things progress nicely. The book is long, and jumps randomly between several different storylines, so finishing it is another matter. But it is easy to start.
And because it is essentially just a collection of stories, finishing it is not even really important. Just keep on reading as long as you enjoy.
As has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, most of Neil Stephenson's work is just great.
Cryptonomicon is my favorite, but The Baroque Cycle (three books) is very good as well.
If you're into crime/mystery fiction, the recently deceased Elmore Leonard was one of the best. A few of his books have been made into movies (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, The Big Bounce) with mixed results, but I do I highly recommend reading the books, which are numerous.
For a different sort of fiction, James Clavell's Shogun, Taipan, and Noble House are great. In fact, Noble House very well be my favorite book. It's a long (~1400 page) book about business dealings, political intrigue, and more. All set in the context of 1963 Hong Kong.
Those who like a touch of historical fiction could take a look at Conn Uggulden. One of his series, The Conqueror, which is about the rise and fall of the Mongol empire is pretty interesting. The books are a light read, and not particularly complicated, but it's entertaining and has some neat historical bits.
I'm about a third of the way through Daemon by Daniel Suarez, and enjoying it immensely. Nothing has made me cringe yet.
Unlike Frederick Forsyth's "The Fox", which I had to put down after about three chapters, as it appears he used a 16yo BTEC ICT student as his tech expert.
As others have commented, Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books, as is most of the Stephenson catalogue. He certainly know how to set up mind blowing worlds, plots and characters, even if he tends to leave the reader a little unfulfilled when the story abruptly ends.
Love all the recommendations in this thread. You've given me months worth of reading material to start exploring.
Thanks.
Ted Chiang's
Stories of Your Life and Others is the best, single-author collection of short stories I've ever read. If you like that, you might also enjoy
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, an absolutely heartbreaking novella about simulated children, and his follow-up collection
Exhalation.
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is fantastic, and it's follow-up, Speaker for the Dead is even better, and my favorite science fiction novel of all time. They won back to back Hugo and Nebula awards. Card is a polarizing figure for his outspoken political opinions, but if ever the art should be separated from the artist, it's Speaker, which is an incredible exploration of empathy and responsibility, in addition to being a gripping, action-packed, science-literate read. Many more in this series, if you get into it.
John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is fantastic, if you're into military science-fiction, or even if you're not. Smart, funny, engaging and accessible, and reminiscent of Heinlein at his prime, minus the weird incest fetish. Redshirts, a Star Trek parody, rivals Galaxy Quest and only falls short because Galaxy Quest is so goddamn brilliant. Agent to the Stars is less appreciated, but in my opinion his finest novel, rising way above its goofy premise by taking it seriously, exploring the consequences and treating the characters with empathy and respect. Also hilarious.
Seconding Dune, which is a classic for a reason, and Stranger in a Strange Land (though I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a better place to start with Heinlein). Also Neal Stephenson, though I'd suggest Cryptonomicon over Diamond Age.
Agreed. I wasn’t a big fan of seveneves.
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are must reads. Anathem is a beast that I just couldn’t get into, though I tried several times.
It's interesting seeing how many of my touchstone books turn up in other people's lists. Here are some I didn't see yet:
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. My favorite Le Guin (the Dispossessed is pretty good too). Shockingly original when it was published in 1969; the portrait of the society and culture on Gethen still feels unique. A slow burn at the beginning, but builds to a dramatic conclusion.
Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey-Maturin series. Probably the best historical fiction ever written. Rich tapestry of life during the Napoleonic Wars. Set in the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail, but that description doesn't do it justice; O'Brian's great inspiration was Jane Austen, and the focus is on characters and people, particularly the brilliantly contrasting personalities of the two main characters.
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, but set in Russia during WWII. Explores the dark heart of the 20th century (the Battle of Stalingrad, concentration camps, the gulag) through the eyes of a wide cast of characters from different walks of life. Grossman wrote about Stalingrad from firsthand experience as a war journalist, and is able to uncover moments of hope and human kindness amid horrifying world-historical events.
Books others have already mentioned:
* Tolstoy, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
* Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (interesting how several people mention this one; I used to think it was my own private discovery).
* Neal Stephenson, especially Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle
And the obligatory Tolkien and Douglas Adams that I read and re-read as a teenager.
This is precisely one of the reasons why OpenBSD was developed in Canada (crypto). No such regulations barring import/export of crypto.
In the end, it's impossible to police the use of strong encryption. Things like Waste and many others saw this coming back in the "Clipper chip" and PGP trouble days. What would end up happening is people just start appealing to OTP. Well-designed OTP is very resistant to attack.
This all reminds me of Neal Stephenson's seminal book, Cryptonomicon, one of the best IT fiction books ever written. If you have an interest in encryption, coding, data havens, currency, etc., this is the book for you. It's a veritable tome.
* Editing to say that despite Cryptonomicon being written in 1999, I still think it holds its own even now. Kind of a timeless classic as far as IT goes.
I'll be honest - I couldn't finish the Baroque Cycle. (Maybe I'll try again someday.) But when Anathem came out I thought I'd give it a chance, as I so enjoyed Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash that giving up Stephenson altogether didn't seem like the right thing to do. Anathem starts out slowly but it gets much better and I'm definitely glad I read it. If you can get through the first few chapters you will be rewarded. (IMHO, anyway.)
Heh, yeah. Tron 2 was disapointing to day the least.
Stephenson's novels in general are like this, although Cryptonomicon for one certainly has better character development than Snow Crash: they're a disorderly jumble of whatever ideas Stephenson thought were interesting at the time, wrapped in a skin of plot, and enfleshed in the characters that surround, encounter, and explore them. Stephenson sometimes jumps the rails entirely, writing long monologues, dialogues, and digressions that barely refer to the characters or plot at all, just because he thought the ideas were neat (most of Randy and Pontifex's discussions in prison, The mathematics of Alan's bicycle chain, a good stretch of Hiro's discussions with the Librarian (although nowhere near all of them), and Hiro's adventures in Flatland on the raft (you can just feel the seeds of In The Beginning Was The Command Line, struggling to get out)), or for reasons known only to him (probably because he thought it was funny) (the TP memo, the stockings/Van Eck... thing). To some people this may be seen as a disjointed, overhyped, overcomplicated mess, but to the right sort of mind, it's an almost magical experience.
Curiously, these sorts of people tend to be heavily into computing, which is why Stephenson pervades that culture.
Or that's wrong, and I'm just completely mad. That's also a possibility.
My biggest problem with Stephenson's works is that he doesn't really finish his books, he either just stops abruptly (e.g. "Diamond Age" or "Snow Crash") or winds down gently, but anticlimactically (e.g. "
Cryptonomicon" or "Anathem").
I still love his books, because they're full of awesomeness and the ending doesn't make the rest of the book crap (unlike what BioWare did to Mass Effect with the original ME3 ending).
Sure, and my breadth of reading of and connection with Stephenson‘s work, especially considering his popularity, are such that I wouldn’t claim anything like authority on the matter. Just offering another view in case anyone’s in here looking for reading advice or recommendations, for which I think I have
just enough experience and perspective to offer something that might help someone, at least so far as defending
Cryptonomicon as, to the right reader, a highlight among Stephenson’s books, and maybe not just for crypto nerds (I wouldn’t count myself as one). Lots and lots of people really like the three of his books that struck me as so-so to poor, so plenty of folks surely think I’m wrong there.
Snow Crash could definitely make a good series. Of the three I’ve read but didn’t like much, I’d say it’s the one I’d be most likely to enjoy as a show even if it barely deviated from the book, in fact. Hell, it has a better shot in that format than Cryptonomicon would. And anyway, Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.
Since these equations are something I've never studied and certainly don't hear about on a day to day basis, the thing they bring to mind is the scene in Cryptonomicon when Waterhouse doesn't get that a simple question on an army test is actually a simple question and starts in on some complex math. It's an entertaining read.
The first book I ever read from Neal was
Cryptonomicon and I absolutely LOVED it. I think I heard about Van Eck phreaking at some point, heard it was in the book, and was intrigued. I read Snow Crash after and was blown away. It's so different from
Cryptonomicon but the tangents are fantastic.
When I think about all the books I've read in my lifetime, Snow Crash has given me the coolest and most fun mental images out of all books. I'm 40+ years old, and when I'm stuck in traffic, I still think about latching on to cars in front of me and escaping the grid I'm sitting in.
> just finished
Cryptonomicon (which I really liked—probably my favorite of the three).
I pretty much gave up Stephenson after I got half way through "Cryptonomicon". (Really enjoyed "Snowcrash" and loved "Diamond Age"). But then I read (half of) it after I'd just finished Singh's "The Code Book".
It just felt like Stephenson's science and drama subtracted from the real-world science and drama the book was inspired by.
My theory was that after "Diamond Age" he couldn't get an editor that dared cut his manuscripts in half any more. But I'm willing to give some of his newer books a chance -- I see they're quite well received by people that seem to like other good books :-)
If you enjoyed "Snow Crash", you might also enjoy (or hate...) Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the Net".
I have a first printing hardcover Cryptonomicon sitting in front of me, that I haven't cracked opened yet. Bought it prior to reading Snowcrash, which I thought was the most overrated drivel that I've ever come across. Awesome beginning, that turned into ancient religious programming nonsense. I'm afraid to even begin that monster, if the writing is anything like that.
It's from
Cryptonomicon - a thousand pages about wargold, allied codes, enigma, cryptanalysis, startups, datahavens and money perfectly weaved together as only Neal Stephenson can.
One of the main stories in the book is about Avi and Randy that are trying to get a datahaven startup off the ground, and Avi, the sly businessman, is constantly on about enhancing shareholder value. There's an excellent and humorous description of writing businessplans where it's all about "doing X to enhance shareholder value."
This is also where the term "fuck you money" comes from. Fuck you money is the amount that will allow you to economically say fuck you to anyone for the rest of your life. Basically total financial freedom. Avi, again the businessman, keeps an updated excel spreadsheet that calculates exactly how much money fuck you money is at the moment, since it's obviously dependant on exchange rates, stockprices, real estate prices, etc.
It's a great read.
Cryptonomicon’s the only one of his four books I’ve read that I thought held up for the whole length. Anathem was interesting but spent too much time treading water, then fizzled out. The Diamond Age was one of my favorite first thirds of a sci-fi book that ended up being one of the most frustrating books I’ve finished. I’ve rarely been angry at a book but that one did it, so, that’s something I guess. I’ve read an actual book of Sumerian texts in translation so my Can Tolerate Boring cred is legit, but the mythology sections of Snow Crash—which are a lot of the book—were a real slog. Cryptonomicon? Consistent and fine throughout, and even has a real ending that might have been thought out from near the beginning.
Haven't read a fiction book in over two months and I'm thinking of trying one out. Cryptonomicon has been in my Kobo for ages so it is going to be the next book I tackle after the current book I am reading. I guess I will be kind of cheating since Neil Stephenson's books tend to be well researched :) Hoping I can learn a few things from it. A lot of pages though :(
I'm glad that this called out systemd in the very first section, because it told me that the rest of it probably wasn't going to actually talk about anything actually meaningful for security.
Edit: Oh god I hadn't even gotten to the end of that same section where it recommends Gentoo???? This article is written for people who read Cryptonomicon and took it a little too seriously.
It seems to me that Stephenson just likes East Asia a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out he lived there. E.g.
Cryptonomicon has detailed geography and economics of the region in play, many of the other novels have events set in there―and in the pretty recent “Reamde” he again spends plenty of story time in Xiamen and some in Manila, even though the book is set in the present and there's little cyberpunkish about it.
I'm actually sort of learning from these books about the vibe of the region, some scraps of relevant history, and the area's economic relations with the US. Because otherwise it's mostly fantasy land to me.
There is a section in the novel Cryptonomicon where the protagonist is in a jail cell and monitored 24/7. He communicates with another person via a deck of cards, with all of the cryptography performed in the two people's minds. It's annoying to do but should certainly be possible if the fate of the world is at stake.
Excellent, I was hoping that this article serves as a kind of precursor or preview of material that Neal is working on. Given that undersea cabling is discussed in some detail in Cryptonomicon (published three years later in 1999) then that means we can probably look forward to interesting space travel discussed in Neal's next tale. Anathem touched on a Project Orion type spacecraft, but this article is definitely covering a different slant.
Randy was forever telling people, without rancor, that they were full
of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took
it personally.
Charlene's crowd most definitely did take it personally. It wasn't
being told that they were wrong that offended them, though. It was the
underlying assumption that a person could be right or wrong about _anything_.
So on the Night in Question the night-- of Avi's fateful call -- Randy had done
what he usually did, which was to withdraw from the conversation.In the
Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf.
Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent
a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of
Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war ax for a while
to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits
(i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of
mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in
academia, these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to
him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously
for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and
looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious
like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
-- Cryptonomicon, 1999.
Every time I read a Stephenson novel I have to break through that first quarter to a third before I'm fully taken in. It's like a dog or cat finding a comfortable position to sleep in. Snow Crash, The Diamond Age,
Cryptonomicon, all require me to push through that first part before I can get comfortable.
I had tried (and failed) to read Crypto about 3 times before I finally broke through and realised his plotting wasn't bad, he just couldn't set it up right, or something.
Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age.
Newer: Ancillary Justice. Really interesting ideas about the self. Over the years: Octavia Butler. Some very challenging ideas.
Honestly, though, I think 14-year-olds should read a lot of random crap from the library. Legal thrillers and historical romance and linguistics texts and home repair manuals and history of Thailand and books about sneakers, and the Tao Te Ching and that famous book about Buddha. Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. That blew me away in 9th grade.
I just finished Snow Crash and found it too pretentious and convoluted, like the turn that Diamond Age does towards the ending. Besides that, it introduces a few interesting concepts, but I feel that similar ideas are developed much better in DA.
For me, Stephenson's masterpiece is Diamond Age, hands down -- minus the ending, if that could be a thing. The last chapters are too obscure just for the sake of obscurity, I've read it three times and I can't get any "deep" meaning to it, just a bunch of wow-cool-but-irrelevant text.
Regarding Cryptonomicon, the first three books, they're straigtforward, interesting, and with a lot of references and trivia but it doesn't try too hard like the "Gods" part of Snow Crash. I really, really enjoyed them.
Unfortunately, I found the Cryptonomicon prequels a nice adventure book in the traditional sense, but the characters were too flat and un-relatable, and it bored me.
Anyway, that's my opinion. Diamond Age introduced me to cyberpunk and, to date, it's my favorite novel of the genre. I've recommended it to many people and they've always liked it. I still dream of the day when we have matter compilators, and victorians look like a bunch of hipsters to me, which is both funny and very realistic. In a world full of technology, rich people will want to go back to a more... simple and comfortable age. It blew my mind.
I can strongly recommend the
Baroque Cycle which is a set of prequels for
Cryptonomicon set in the 17th and early 18th centuries and
Fall; or, Dodge in Hell which, while not a direct sequel, shares at least on character and the Waterhouse family foundation.
NB The audiobook versions of all of these are really good.
Edit: Jack Shaftoe is probably one of my favourite fictional characters...
As a huge fan of Neal Stephenson I found Seveneves to be one of his worst books.
Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Snow Crash; some of my favorite books so the length of the book has nothing to do with it. The characters were flat, unbelievable and unlikable. The dialogue was weak and awkward. The scenario felt contrived and uninspired (the moon blew up, earth had to evacuate; yep, Cowboy Bebop already set a high bar for this story).
I listened to this one in the car (10+ hours for books a week thanks to my drive). Maybe it was a rough week but I had to stop halfway through because it completely lost me. Maybe it gets better but having read the spoilers I really can't imagine how.
But hey, your mileage may vary.
There needs to be rules, there needs to be consistency. Which more or less means my kind of story has to masquerade as some kind of realism. So ... science fiction of the reasonably hardboiled kind, certain kinds of mainstream literature - doesn't need much of a plot if it's worth reading for the humour and the language. I do read
some stuff considered
de rigueur in nerdy circles. Neal Stephenson yes, as in
Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle (but - you guessed it - disliked Snow Crash enough never to finish it, and found REAMDE tacky and movie scriptish). Heinlein, Gregs Bear and Benford, that kind of stuff. Quite a few British writers, as long as they're not Tolkien og Lewis.
I should probably escort myself out of here. I never did get into computer games either...
I'm currently re-reading Seveneves again. Great book. I even like the third part which many people have criticized. However, that might have actually planted the seed for this new book.
This book looks like it might be a bit in the same spirit in the sense that our home planet is abused a bit. Part three of Seveneves is about the aftermath of essentially terra forming Earth in the distant future after it gets destroyed in part 1.
People think about other planets when it comes to terra forming but of course our home planet might be the easiest one to practice on and doing so might get a bit urgent as we seem to be destroying it. Great premise for a near future science fiction novel.
If you are looking for recommendations. Ian Banks can be a bit hard to read but can be very entertaining. Arthur C Clarke wrote some awesome science fiction. More recently, The Martian (Andy Weir) was great. And Andy Weir just published another book that's on my list to read soon. The expanse series of books (James S. A. Corey) is a good read. 2312 (Stanley Robinson) is also worth a look.
And of course if you at all enjoyed Seveneves, you might want to read the rest of what NS wrote. Anathem is great. Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon are classics at this point.
Mostly scifi and fantasy. I've never been much of a reader, so I'm trying to catch up on classics.
* Hunger games 1-3 -- not bad, would probably recommend
* Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy -- good, surprised how short it was. really liked the style of writing, fun to read. recommended
* Stranger in a Strange Land -- currently reading this one, interesting, but nothing ground breaking. one character seems to dominate the book. don't know if I'd recommend.
* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep -- interesting, a bit boring. I kept comparing it to the movie, and in the end I like the movie better. they each focus on different subjects, but I like the movie's subject better, and it felt more professional/solid. would recommend.
* Ringworld -- pretty good. the 'Teela problem' is fascinating to me and got me thinking a lot outside of reading, which to me is a sign of a good book. the 'spacey stuff' in the book was not that great. even the ringworld itself was not that interesting. would recommend.
* The Mote in God's Eye -- my favorite book of the year. so much to think about (moral problems/dilemmas). the realistic part of the space travel was new to me (like the consideration of g-forces in constant acceleration), and so that was more to think about. definitely recommend.
* Cryptonomicon -- a close second. Neal Stephenson goes into wicked detail in his books and always blows my mind (never heard of Van Eck Phreaking before this book, how is that possible?). definitely recommend.
> Randy closes up all of the books and looks at them peevishly for a while. They are all nice new books with color photographs on the covers. He picked them off the shelf because (getting introspective here) he is a computer guy, and in the computer world any book printed more than two months ago is a campy nostalgia item. Investigating a little more, he finds that all three of these shiny new books have been personally autographed by the authors, with long personal inscriptions: two addressed to Doug, and one to Amy. [...]
> He concludes that these are all consumer-grade diving books written for rum-drenched tourists, and furthermore that the publishers probably had teams of lawyers go over them one word at a time to make sure there would not be liability trouble. That the contents of these books, therefore, probably represent about one percent of everything that the authors actually know about diving, but that the lawyers have made sure that the authors don't even mention that. [...]
> Randy does a sorting procedure on the diving books now: he ignores anything that has color photographs, or that appears to have been published within the last twenty years, or that has any quotes on the back cover containing the words stunning, superb, user-friendly, or, worst of all, easy-to-understand. He looks for old, thick books with worn-out bindings and block-lettered titles like DIVE MANUAL. Anything with angry marginal notes written by Doug Shaftoe gets extra points.
-- Neal Stephenson, _Cryptonomicon_
I know what you are talking about, despite being on the opposite end of that spectrum. Snow Crash / Diamond Age are cyberpunk/post-cyberpunk ala Gibson and completely different from Stephenson's other books.
I couldn't even get through Cryptonomicon, and Jack Shaftoe did not strike me as a believable genius, nor his story. Anathem kind of strafed the line - it had SOME character development, and SOME action, but was mainly world-building / intellectual exploration. Stephenson's other books fall too far on that spectrum for me.
I'm currently reading
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and it's quite lengthy at 1300+ pages. Not only that, but there are some interesting digressions along the way, some which have gotten me interested in very basic cryptography (or at least the history). For instance:
https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/about/cryptologic-h...So I don't see how in a case like this, I could finish this book (and any related materials of interest) in the allotted time, to reach the goal of 200 books a year. That's just unrealistic.
I haven't tried Anathem yet (though I have it) but I never got past the first part of Baroque cycle, and I loved Snow Crash (probably my all time favorite novel), Cryptonomicon, and even Diamond Age. I've heard once you make it past the initial Wodehouse moment it gets better, but my god he bored me to tears with that. Considering how much I ate up all the insanity in Snow Crash that's saying a lot ;).
I'm reading Cryptonomicon of Neal Stephenson and I discovered this attack some days ago. It's mind blowing
My opinion on Stephenson:
Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp.
Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good.
The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good.
REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.
Reminds me of the book Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, where the character writes some code to redirect stdout to blink the num/scroll/capslock status LEDs in Morse code.
To your last comment, I bought Snow Crash, based on a lot of recommendations, and hated it, for the stated reasons. It completely put me off Neal Stephenson. Then, much later, I relented and got
Cryptonomicon, and it is one of my favorite books ever.
I have since dabbled a bit with Stephenson, and amazingly his other books fall along the same divide for me. Zodiac is amazing, the Victorian sci-fi series (Diamond Age?) are unreadable. One book, Seveneves, the first part is amazing Neal Stephenson, the second is lazy, naive and dumb Neal Stephenson. Super puzzling, almost as if he has (really bad) ghost writers.
I have since gone back to Snow Crash (could not finish it the first time), and with some overbearing, it is not entirely unlikable.
Ooof. Stephenson is among my favorite authors. Before Seveneves that wouldn't have had a qualifier.
I re-read
Cryptonomicon every year or two, the baroque cycle about half that frequently, and Anathem a couple times now. I own Snow Crash and The Diamond Age in first editions. I cannot imagine re-reading Seveneves; it was both not a totally flawed plot (a quality I can ordinarily forgive in a Stephenson novel -- I love a good yarn) and it killed everyone I know and love, in an immediate near future sense, on the page in front of me.
It was, for lack of a better description, a callous novel.
I've been chewing through some Neil Stephenson books lately. I think a lot of his earlier work was somewhat prescient (in terms of general themes) and some of his newer work bring up some interesting societal points especially about the role of government with regards to technology. Another theme that I feel is particularly relevant lately is the bifurcation of the technically skilled (or even aware) and the technically unskilled. He puts up an interesting split in Anathema which wittingly or not might well represent a lot of the current hacker/tech-elite discussion in society at large. Anathema is well worth a read and Cryptonomicon is just plain fun (perhaps more relevant lately than it was in its own time).
Seveneves is one of my favorites, even though it gets mixed reactions from a lot of others who've read titles like Anathem. I can't compare it to Anathem (the only other Stephenson book I've read so far is
Cryptonomicon; looking to change that), but I can say I love the technical depth. Perhaps it's because it helps me suspend disbelief much more easily, though Bill's point that "if you’re the sort of reader who doesn’t care how such a thing might work, you will find yourself skimming parts of Seveneves" is probably true for most lay readers.
The only thing that somewhat frustrated me about it, as I suspect is the case for most people, is the fact that the last third of the book feels like it could (should?) stand on its own. That being said, there's enough room for Stephenson to explore in more depth some of the events leading up to the third act in subsequent novels... so here's hoping. I figure explaining why I feel this way would be a bit of a spoiler. Bill does enough to allude to it.
Anyway, thumbs up from me. I enjoyed every bit of it, and Bill's review does a good job of selling the book without spoiling it.
All the Ian M Banks Culture series.
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, every three years or so.
Appears to be from Cryptonomicon (which I haven't yet read), for anyone else who was wondering.
I'm reminded of the section in Cryptonomicon where the protagonist is imprisoned with his laptop and needs to hack with the screen turned off, for security reasons
All I have to say is don’t wait, read Cryptonomicon now!
Probably an unpopular opinion here, but maybe I'll watch Snow Crash now that I won't have to wade through the awful word vomit "let me prove how smart I am" never-ending-sentences that Neal Stephenson used in that book.
I've also read Cryptonomicon, and he dials it down a lot more in that one (although it's still present), and I found it a lot more readable.
Makes me wonder if the author of Cryptonomicon had heard of Parsons while researching for his book.
After reading the review I was afraid that it was going to be primarily about in-game action - but was relieved when I read it that the online game was mostly a backdrop and only a few scenes actually occur there. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has played a MMORPG for more than a few hours and enjoyed the concept of it - even if you were never addicted. It is not a masterpiece like Cryptonomicon or Anathem but a very enjoyable read.
The Evolution of Cooperation - Robert Axelrod
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Informant - Kurt Eichenwald
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte
Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
I love
Cryptonomicon but I don't think it would be adaptable in any way that bears more than a superficial similarity to the book. Though actually I feel the same way about Snow Crash, so we'll see.
As far as adaptability of Stephenson goes, I could see Zodiac, or maybe REAMDE, that would work in a way that resembles the books. Maaaybe Seveneves, though you have to deal with the significant separation between Part 2 and Part 3.
The rest of his books, including Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, are too intertwined with "theoretical" concepts to make much sense in an adaptation. I mean, yes: you can have a show or movie about a pizza deliverer/hacker named Hiro Protagonist who swordfights in the metaverse; or Jack and Eliza's Adventures in Enlightenment Europe; or whatever. But the real underpinnings of the story aren't going to make it in and that's what makes Stephenson's books interesting.
Worldview indoctrination is a fun game, I suppose. A mix of fiction and biography is probably about right:
Fiction:
Douglas Copeland's "Microserfs"
Neal Stephenson, "Snow Crash" and perhaps especially "Cryptonomicon" (the early randy chapters and anything about Eiphphyte in particular)
Real Genius (the film).
Nonfiction:
Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. All the elder gods are here.
Cliff Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg.
You probably read about it in
Cryptonomicon (I know that's where I read about it), but I don't know if Stephenson made it up or not.
As to practically It seems quite unfeasible. First of all since magnetic forces fall off according to the inverse square law, you're going to need a seriously large magnet to for it work at say 1 meters distance or so. You're basically going to have seriously retrofit your entire house, and it's going to be very hard to hide. Secondly and more importantly even the most powerful commercial hard drive degaussers require that the drive be in contact with the magnet for up to 10 seconds to guarantee that all the data is erased, so someone just walking through a door isn't going to be in the field for anywhere near enough time.
Yeah, I would skip this and read Cryptonomicon again.
The Bible
and
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon
Diamond Age is one of my favourite books. Alongside
Cryptonomicon, American Gods and Rainbows End.
Reamde was a dud for me as well.
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
I recommend reading some nonfiction too.
Cryptonomicon is one of my all-time favourite books, but I feel by focusing on it alone it's a little bit of a disservice to the reality of Bletchley.
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers and The Secret Life of Bletchley Park are both great reads, both by Sinclair MacKay, and Hodges' Turing biography is fascinating and, as we all know, heartbreaking in the end.
Bletchley wasn't just about Turing, though he certainly deserves his due, and then some. Tommy Flowers, for example, who built Colossus -- or Mavis Batey, who broke a coded message that led to reverse engineering the Enigma.
I highly recommend visiting if you can. Really drove home to me the people aspect of the whole thing, and the somewhat frightening (and yet a tiny bit wistful!) realization that had we all been born a few decades earlier, and taken similar paths through life, Bletchley may well be where many if us spent a good chunk of our years.
The Selfish Gene - Dawkins, The Red Queen - Ridley
I've read these books midway through high school, already interested in biology and medicine. The depth and complexity of how life forms handle evolutionary pressure is mind blowing. Why you favor relatives over strangers, the competition between mother and child, progress through collaboration of genes etc. You see the world completely differently (after reading many more books on geology, genetics, anthropology, anatomy, cellular biology etc) afterwards.
For a novel: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson,
Truely changed how I look at computers and encryption as a not mathematically inclined reader. Building a computer out of church pipe organ components etc.
Um, no. I rarely quit reading books, but I never got past the first couple chapters of Anathem and read about a third of
Cryptonomicon. So over-wrought! Otoh, Snow Crash is a cyberpunk classic.
I want to like Stephenson, but Anathem and Cryptonomicon only seem to appeal to a very narrow range of readers whom I don't understand.
I really don't like Snow Crash much.
Firstly, it's dated quite badly, since it was written in the recent past about roughly-now. He gets the technology pretty much right, but the speculation about how that technology will change society pretty much all wrong.
Secondly, Mr Protagonist, as a protagonist, annoys me in that he seems more like the kind of character that a fourteen-year-old boy would think was awesome (greatest swordfighter in the world, for no good reason!) than somebody I want to read a book about.
Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, is a must-read. I don't really even like science fiction that much, but Cryptonomicon is a must-read.
The Codebreakers by David Kahn,
The Road to Reality Roger Penrose,
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
So, it's been more than half of your sentient life since you tried reading a book that was written 200 years ago... and you're prepared to write off all of fiction as a waste of time? I am begging you to see if perhaps you might have a better experience today with a more contemporary book that frankly isn't kind of dull.
I urge you to try audiobooks. There still exists a stigma that it's not "real" reading, but that is like discussion of "real" men - absurd. Audiobooks are a joy.
My personal favourite is Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, but heck, Ready Player One, Recursion, Delta-V, Walkaway by Cory Doctorow... just give it a shot.
This do reminded me of
Cryptonomicon I felt I still have to post this comment even though I realized there were others like me.
In 1996 I was a little kid, but one of the first books I read on my PC somewhere around 2000 was Cryptonomicon. Back then I didn't have dialup, what I had instead was a cherished copy of a CD full of pirated books, called something like Pocket Library.
If only my parents realized back then how much ... questionable material was there, I would probably have been banned access to that PC forever.
But Cryptonomicon was fine.
Do you have any further references about what exact military installation was doing this and when? I’m reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and one of the main characters builds a mercury-based data analysis machine that reads punch cards to analyze communication data in WWII and this sounds eerily similar.
I'll second The Baroque Cycle (or
Cryptonomicon: it doesn't matter which). But might I also suggest the works of Terry Pratchett, particularly Discworld? Sir Pterry's work is among the best I've ever read.
If you're looking for something a bit fluffier than the above, then I would suggest The Dresden Files. Sure, it's mindless fluff, but man, it's good mindless fluff. The same applies to The Codex Alera (which apparently resulted from a bet that the author couldn't make a good book from an awful idea: the idea given was the lost roman legion crossed with Pokemon).
I can also suggest Ready Player one in this category. Ready Player One is essentially geek culture (especially gaming culture) furiously... well, you know. Giving itself one. But it's a fun ride (unlike Armada. But that's another story).
Finally, I can reccomend The Laundry Files. Do you like computing? Do you like lovecraftian nightmares? Go buy these now. The first book is okay, but has a rather nasty problem, sort of: It keeps winking at the audience incessantly. I didn't mind too much, myself, but I know others have been put off by it. Don't worry, the winking lessens to a manageable rate (although never quite fully goes away: after all, this is a series about a CS Student turned Sysadmin turned hunter of unspeakable monstrosities named Bob Oliver Francis Howard. Think about that for a second). And it is one of very few horror series that I have enjoyed. Take that as you will.
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
What's interesting to me is that we're in a constant war between the technologies used by governments to control their people and the technologies used by people to uproot their governments. There's a post below about mesh networking, I can see in a few years cell phones being powerful enough to broadcast network over a large enough area that they'll be ad hoc networks without a central kill switch.
One thing I fear is that eventually we'll reach a point where a dictatorship will establish itself and be so cruel and effective that it'll represent a permanent power which will dictate until it's own will to govern expires. North Korea seems like a close enough approximation but with the weapons and technology of the modern world it doesn't take that much creativity for a psychopath to imagine a world where that can occur.
Perhaps it's time I re-read Cryptonomicon.
Try the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, or Atlas Shrugged. Her works seem to polarize her readers into those that love and those that hate her work, but both works were the first that came to mind based on your request. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon would also satisfy your request, and is a fun story to read loaded with interesting plot – it is definitely targeted at a tech-oriented reader, which may or may not be what you're looking for.
Cryptonomicon is great if you haven't read it. I think it's a canonical piece of scifi. It's two generations of nerds from a family. One is a WW2 codebreaker, and his grandson is a startup tech guy. The book tells the story by switching between 1940s and 1990s. Lots of historical people, alternate timeline stuff. Lots of interesting ideas about economics and information. A great read.
I believe the story you recall was from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon novel.
OP: Just finished Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson. It was excellent and very inspiring. Currently reading Markets Not Capitalism, a collection of essays by multiple authors on the necessity of markets and the interference of central control on said markets, which is obviously heavy but very informative. My next book is The Known World by Edward P. Jones. It is about slaves. It is supposed to be rough on the emotions but well done.
I've never understood how people can read that fast. Cryptonomicon is 918 pages; you read it at maybe 30 seconds a page. I've been reading for a long time (though I didn't get into books until my late teens), and I still read English at about 5 minutes per page. It took me weeks to get through Cryptonomicon.
* If you've already read
Cryptonomicon (see more here:
http://jseliger.com/2006/11/29/cryptonomicon ), you're going in the right direction, but you should skip the Baroque cycle and Anathem.
* David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk deals extensively with math (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/the-indian-clerk).
* Joel Spolsky's The Best Software Writing isn't fiction but is worth reading.
* I'll reiterate Tom Wolf's The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full.
* Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is nominally aimed at adolescents, but people of any age can enjoy it.
* Michael Tolkin's The Player is partially about the business of film, as is its sequel, The Return of the Player.
If you're curious about more, send me an e-mail; I write a book blog at http://jseliger.com , and a lot of the reviews/commentaries would probably be of interest to hackerish types.
If you enjoyed "Snow Crash" and "Diamond Age", I'd recommend "Islands in the Net" (if you can get hold of a copy) and "Holy Fire" by Bruce Sterling. Or for something newer, "the Zenith Angle" by same.
I've also enjoyed all of Willam Gibsons books, including the latest trilogy "Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country" and "Zero History".
If you bothered to read through "Cryptonomicon" you'll either love "the Code Book" by Simon Singh more than I did, or hate it :-)
Assuming you've picket through the classics shelf, you might have missed out on Samuel Delany - "The Einstein Intersection" might be a good one to try on for size -- although I actually found "Neveryóna" to be maybe his most interesting book (of the ones I've been able to get hold of) [edit: After "Dhalgren", that is. But I think "Dhalgren" is a bit like Joyce's "Ulysses" -- a classic I haven't gotten around to yet. I spent the better part of ten (10!) years reading through "Dhalgren", picking it up on odd holidays - never loosing touch with the intricate unreality within, readily satisfied after reading a few pages or a chapter -- like nibbling on a choice ham that didn't spoil. It's rather more complex than any of the other books I've listed here].
Also worth mentioning in the "might be overlooked" section is Jerry Pournelle's "Falkenberg's Legion" (republished as "the Prince").
I'm afraid I've been mostly digging through second hand books lately, so the only other semi-recent book I could recommend would be "Broken Angels" by Richard Morgan (technically it's number two in a trilogy -- but I find it stands better on its own).
I stand corrected on the latest one, which I haven't read. I've picked it up in the bookstore a few times but the combination of a thousand pages of thickness and a less-than--compelling blurb on the back (
wasn't this a Michael Douglas movie?) have failed to convince me. Thanks for the anti-recommendation... a thousand-page book is a serious time commitment and there's a lot of other things I want to read.
To be honest Cryptonomicon is the only NS book which I really and wholeheartedly recommend. Diamond Age and Anathem are definitely interesting and I'm glad I read them but they have their flaws, Snow Crash comes across as juvenile, and the Baroque Cycle is approximately five hundred pages of a fantastic book bound at random with twelve hundred pages of boring.
During the past six months I have been challenged intellectually and aesthetically by these works:
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger
Diary by Witold Gombrowicz
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk
Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito
L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler
The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition
Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías
The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech
Earning The Rockies by Kaplan
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Nature Stories by Jules Renard
Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas
Olinger Stories by John Updike
Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett
At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson
Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
I started my first programming job back in 2000 and was reading
Cryptonomicon at the time and came across this little gem in the book:
"When Randy gets back to his cell, he sits crosslegged on his bed with the Walkman and begins dealing out the CDs like cards in a solitaire game. The selection is pretty reasonable: a two-disc set of the Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of Bach organ fugues (nerds have a thing about Bach)"
So I thought 'why not' and got a two-disc set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. And sixteen years later I still listen to it when I'm working and have never tired of it. Great music for focus.
I read
Cryptonomicon a month or two ago and really enjoyed it. Seemingly serendipitously, a post about encrypting email turned up on Slashdot the other day:(
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/20/0158227/do-slashdotte...) and I realized that with everyone basically using webmail services now, the chance for something like Ordo to take hold at-large is even less (given that fewer and fewer people actually use email
clients anymore).
I'd like to fantasize that there could be a way to use a social network like Facebook with a tool like Ordo -- that is, most the data (photos, in this case) you upload to FB is encrypted, and only people who you've approved can decrypt it. Using steganography this is probably already possible with FB, probably not practical, though.
Snow crash is a terrible book. It is, imho, a fantastic collection of vignettes with the same characters that are vaguely related. Some of them are simple decapitation scenes featuring beer and vr googles, while others are deeper questions about the value of pay toilets.
snow crash was impressive, to me, because of the sheer quantity of new concepts, tightly integrated. Stephenson created a plausible future that dealt with what people would deal with in all conceptual scales, from highfalutin cultural organization of government and religion all the way down to teenagers interests in food and clothing. I feel, he did a pretty great job of avoiding the mundane that's pretty much the same as today, while highlighting stuff that's different, like skate wheels.
Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. It's not a good book, not like coherent like Vonnegut, or even Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but it is indeed a window to the future. Neromancer was written on a typewriter, and snowcrash was written in flatland.
SP: Two-thirds of the way into your novel,
Seveneves – in fact, on page 569 – you do
something kind of crazy. The story suddenly
skips ahead 5,000 years. What’s the idea here?
It took me maybe a week to read the first 2/3's of the book, and about three weeks to read the last 1/3. In many ways, these two parts feel like completely different books, one of which is significantly better than the other.
Also, I was occasionally distracted at the beginning when snippets of dialog from Anathem were reused in the form of exposition in Seveneves.
But, that said, I think the book is worth reading, especially the first 2/3's.
My personal, quick, rough ranking of Stephenson's bibliography:
* Anathem
* Snow Crash
* The Diamond Age
* Seveneves
* Cryptonomicon
* The Baroque Cycle
* Zodiac
* Reamde
* The Interface
* The Big U
Haven't Read
* The Cobweb
* The Mongoliad
Adam Hall's Quiller series. Good to revisit every few years and the mechanism of building to a crisis, then starting after the resolution and backing up is fun. Not for everyone though as it's cold war vintage spy stuff. Feels real though, not like Hollywood versin of Bond.
Banks of course, Use of Weapons is great.
Just hit 51 and finally reading Dune now, so keep that in mind, but would also suggest Cryptonomicon as i have started it several times, put it down and then come back and had to start again several times.... but i find it interesting enough to keep trying!
I think these could stand up to that list:
The Diamond Age (1995)
Cryptonomicon (1999)
I wish I could read for even one 3 hour period each day. When I sit down with a book or my ereader and start reading, I start feeling sleepy after ten or fifteen minutes. I'll also find that I'm scanning the sentences, but not really absorbing, so I turn back a few pages and start reading again.
I fare much better if I take notes as I read. I'm starting to think that maybe writing a chapter synopsis after every chapter I read would fix my problem. Plus then I could put them online and maybe get some feedback from other readers.
I'm halfway through Cryptonomicon right now and find myself reading Steve Russillo's page on the book to remind myself what just happened. My brain might not be good enough for passive reading anymore.
Edit: BTW, Russillo's page is a warm reminder to me of what first made me fall in love with the web. Check it out: http://russillosm.com/index.html
Yes, we all read Cryptonomicon too.
I haven’t read that one but another science fiction book I read a couple of years ago after seeing it mentioned on HN a few times is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. If you feel like reading another science fiction book in the future I recommend that you read Cryptonomicon. It was a good book that had a lot to offer.
I love as a book
Cryptonomicon but
...Spoilers....
the specific near-future tech product that Stephenson suggested in it never happened – he didn’t in 1999 predict ubiquitous smartphones even though they were less than a decade away. In contrast, Reamde still seems ‘right’ but that’s because it doesn’t contain technology predictions.
I downloaded the article to see if see if it also contained predictions, and if so, whether they were accurate. In classic Stephenson style, the article is a long (60 page) discursive essay, so my check might take a while….
Yes, Gibson's writing style requires some getting used to. Once it all "clicks" though it is usually a fun ride. That being said, these days I prefer writers who write in a much more straightforward style. For instance I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and despite the fact that the book is large and the content rather technical it is an effortless read.
The Baroque Cycle is an undertaking, since my first read of it I have moved on to the audio books, subway listening being easier than subway reading.
Cryptonomicon I am at about 15 reads (including audio book listens a few more), and maybe a handful for Snow Crash, Anathem and Reamde.
My book of choice for re-reading is Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, by Jeffrey Archer. I must be at 50 re-reads of that now, and I own two first editions. Strange what catches your mind!
I cannot disagree with any of this, really. The man seems to get into a mode sometimes, and forgets where the ESC key is.
Still, I mostly enjoyed reading "Fall, or Dodge n Hell". Not as much as Cryptonomicon, mind you, and less than Seveneves; Anathem is stronger than any of these.
Although I have to work to get past the 100-page chunks that fill his book, it does not put me off reading about a book a year. Quicksilver is on my list, for example.
All of this is to say that he is a flawed writer, but that there is much to be gained by reading his work.
>Finishing an amazing story, you feel a let down afterwords; the characters were not real and you can never interact with them.
For whatever reason I've never heard anyone say this before but that's exactly the experience I had after I went and saw James Cameron's "Avatar" (2009) in 3D at the cinema back when it came out. I think I may have had that same feeling after finishing a couple of books as well -- probably after Catch-22 and after Cryptonomicon -- and likely some other movies too but Avatar is the one that I remember having had that feeling after.
Anyway, thanks for making me aware that others have felt the same way about fiction. Of course, I don't believe that any of my feelings are unique in the way that nobody else has felt the same but I hope you get what I mean. Also, when I say that I remember the feeling, I don't mean mean to say that I still keep wishing I could travel to Pandora or interact with the blue catpeople -- the feeling itself faded within a few hours or days or something like that, but the memory of having had that feeling stuck with me :)
While I agree BC was dense, I still think it was very good. I'm not really into heavy reading like that but I've still been through the trilogy twice. I whole heartedly recommend any Neal Stephenson. (I wasn't completely enamored with Diamond Age, but I realize I'm in a minority there.)
On a related note, I recommended Cryptonomicon to a co-worker who was complaining how much she spent on books (she typically buys one hardback per week) and how much storage space she had devoted to books. I lent her my copy of Cryptonomicon and it took her about 4-5 weeks to finish. She was in for a good bit of teasing about the apparent 'quality' of her normal fare. IIRC, the term 'bodice-ripper' was tossed about. ;-)
Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author.
Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better.
That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to life.
Whether he's writing for Wired about expats in South East Asia (which dove tails nicely with Cryptonomicon) or extra dimensional aliens in Anathem, he makes the world come alive and the technology and methodologies clear.
He also makes me laugh out loud. Very few books have done that.
If you enjoyed Snow Crash, I would definitely encourage you to look into Stephenson's other books if you haven't already.
REAMDE is very good and is also partially set in VR.
Anathem is an interesting exploration of the distant future and alternate universes.
Cryptonomicon has so much going on it's hard to know where to start, but it's a lot of fun.
I was also a big fan of Stranger in a Strange Land! I'll have to check out Scythe and Thunderhead.
From Neal Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon, describing Britain during WWII (all emphasis mine):
"The British gas masks have a squat round fitting on the front to allow exhalation, which looks exactly like the snout of a pig, and no woman would be caught dead in such a thing if the models in the gas mask posters were not such paragons of high-caste beauty."
But maybe he invented this -- I've never seen a copy of such a poster. (Edit: I've found at last something related, just a photo, not a poster, and a "South African": (1) ) What's certain is that there were mask "issues" around 1918 in the US, at the time of another pandemics:
https://www.history.com/news/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-r...
1) https://www.alamy.com/a-female-of-the-south-african-air-forc...
>
"Do people use iPads standing up or something?"Not much, because it's too heavy to use standing up. Or rather, in the usual stand-up use cases (e.g., on a bus, boat, or train) you usually want to one-hand the device, and its weight prevents you from doing so.
> "The amount of time I spend using it while I have to hold it unsupported is minimal."
Is that because tablets naturally don't have "unsupported" use cases, or because the current implementation fulfills said use cases poorly, and therefore you don't use them that way?
> "Do people find the weight of hardcover books difficult to hold for long periods of time?"
While standing or one-handing it? Yes.
> "Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is about twice the weight of The Hobbit."
And how many times have you seen someone reading a book that size on the subway/bus/ferry? ;)
I’m currently re-reading Seveneves, and will probably tuck into Cryptonomicon (for the third time) in the next few months. Neal Stephenson’s books are rich enough that I usually get a different vibe from them when I read them again. For instance, on first read I liked the second part of Seveneves better than the first part, and now it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s due to the fact that on first read I get sucked in by the plot twists and on later reads I can enjoy the scenery and pick up different themes.
Books I like that contain things that are kinda computer-sciency:
Permutation City, by Greg Egan -- a bit of a mind-uploady brain-simluation story. Fairly philosophical, but not impenetrable.
Accelerando, by Charles Stross -- Focused on the technical singularity brought about by increasing computing power. Somewhat cheeky, a little frenetic.
Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin -- Algorithms and game theory plots regarding solving a civilsation-destroying puzzle.
Diaspora, by Greg Egan -- Post-trans-humanist shenanigans.
Other things of note:
Neal Stephenson writes a lot of cyberpunk computer-adjacent fiction. Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon all come to mind. The Baroque Cycle is a fiction series about the beginnings of computation and cryptography. He does have a propensity to navel-gaze though.
Vernor Vinge was a computer science professor. Rainbow's End and The Peace War are worth reading. Anything else he writes is worth reading too, actually.
Anything else by Stross, not just Accelerando, will have a bit of a tech bent to it, but is often not very serious and a bit handwavey.
The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet has an AI character with a backstory that forms a significant chunk of the book, but isn't super computer-sciencey.
somewhat related - excerpt from
Cryptonomicon -
The percussionist stands up. "Every radio operator has a distinctive style of keying—we call it his fist. With a bit of practice, our Y Service people can recognize different German operators by their fists—we can tell when one of them has been transferred to a different unit, for example."
and this article by Schneier - Identifying People By Their Writing Style - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/identifying_p...
My first experience with Stephenson was Snow Crash, and it was an abomination. I tried
Cryptonomicon next, and while slightly more coherent, it was the end of the line for me and this guy. Stephenson likes to write like he's smarter than he really is, plots that are literally everywhere, and characters I really don't care about. Let's not forget the third person present tense writing style.
Regarding Gibson, I only read Neuromancer, and enjoyed the writing. Obviously the concepts were ahead of its time, so reading it much later didn't have the same impact. But neat story.
Anathem is probably Stephenson's best novel, and I say that as a huge fan of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash.
I've actually found his last few novels lacking, still struggling to finish The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and REAMDE. I do wish he'd stop trying to reverse-engineer RPG settings and got back to his post-cyberpunk roots.
Reminds me of Cryptonomicon
>
And 5 years before Cryptonomicon there was Tim May's Cyphernomicon (which obviously inspired the title and theme of Stephenson's book).Actually, no, according to Stephenson. From the appendix of my copy of Cryptonomicon:
"It has been pointed out that the word "Cryptonomicon" bears obvious similarities to "Cyphernomicon," which is the title of a Cyperpunk FAQ document by Tim May. This leads to the question: am I committing some form of plagiarism, or rendering homage, or what? The answer, strangely enough, is niether. I was completely unaware of the existence of Tim May's Cyphernomicon at the time I came up with "Cryptonomicon."
Ever since reading Cryptonomicon in the lat 90s I have wished that something like this would become widely adopted. Alas, as it was with eGold, once a digital alternative currency gets on the radar of the Feds, it will be wiped from the face of the earth. Of course, by that time it will already have been taken over by carders and scammers. Sigh...
The "sci fi" distributions channels that you're describing were taken over by the "horror/moneymaking" people. I wouldn't even call most of that science fiction.
For more recent works, you might like:
Vernor Vinge
"Rainbow's End" -- more near term and what you describe
"A Fire Upon the Deep" & "A Deepness in the Sky"
David Brin
"Earth" -- again, more near term, although with a fantastic ending
The Uplift Trilogy (a bit more fantastic, but very well done, particularly the 2nd and 3rd novels)
There are many "classic" authors and novels. One novel that receives somewhat less attention/accolades, but which I think speaks to some of what you ask, is:
Arthur C. Clarke
"The City and the Stars"
Neal Stephenson'
The Diamond Age might also resonate. And while both more "near term" and historical, his
Cryptonomicon has some very worthy reflections and speculations.
And I guess I really can't pass up suggesting Carl Sagan's Contact. Superb.
As for films, I'm not the most versed, but the following, more "real" science fiction films come to mind:
GATTACA
Blade Runner (yeah, yeah, but I just re-watched it)
And I'll mention that Star Trek (particularly, for me, The Next Generation), is now on or coming to Netflix
P.S. And of course, William Gibson's
Neuromancer and, was it the next one or the next two novels? His short story collection, "Burning Chrome", fits well into these two or three.
And as for a certain pragmatic perspective on human psychology, behavior, and possible near term societal/political developments, the classic Heinlein ouvre, while perhaps sexist or interpretable as such, and also in other ways somewhat "archaic", is nonetheless insightful.
Probably not what you're looking for, but now that I've rambled on, there it is.
P.P.S. I found Asimov's original "Robot" trilogy a very insightful allegory for the competing demands of public knowledge and privacy in the modern world. Set aside the robotic aspect, per se, and look at how the different societies lead there lives and social conduct.
I was chatting to a friend about this the other day who felt the same way. He will have moments in his books that will come across as such powerful theologies and ideas that you will spend years thinking about it. The problem is for every mind blowing idea he explores, he has 15 chapters of the wordiest words I've ever worded. I'm reading Cryptonomicon and he spent 19 pages - 19 PAGES - describing a guy eating cereal. Combine that with the fact that he will frequently use words that I don't think anybody but him knows (The whole reason I bought a e-reader was so I can use the definition function to understand what the hell he is talking about) and it feels like I'm reading the literary equivalent of Dark Souls. I really love the ideas he writes about, I just wish he didn't have a burning hatred for the reader.
>The weight of the 3 is really difficult to hold for long periods of time.
I have to say I've never really understood this complaint. Do people use iPads standing up or something? I have the iPad in my lap or on my chest if reading in bed. The amount of time I spend using it while I have to hold it unsupported is minimal.
The iPad 3&4 weigh about the same as a large hardcover book. Do people find the weight of hardcover books difficult to hold for long periods of time? The Hobbit is about 1.2 pounds, the iPad 4 is about 1.44 pounds. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is about twice the weight of The Hobbit.
Interesting question. I guess it all depends on how much he jumps around between files and different parts of files.
There's a scene in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson which is similar to this problem. The protagonist is in jail with a laptop which has the location of treasure on it encrypted by a WWII Enigma machine. However, the bad guys can see his screen at all times, so he needs to write the code to crack the cipher without looking at the data. I won't spoil how he does it because I recommend reading the book.
I'm reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson for the third time, and understanding it more than the second time. It has wonderful technical digressions that seem aimed precisely at geeks/hackers. In fact, on the the main characters is a programmer, and another is a code-breaker in the military who sees an opportunity for geeky analysis in everything he sees. (There are also many accounts of military battles from a soldier's point of view to break the talking up.)
I'm mostly just a vast store of useless information. Your comment brought up the association with the earlier story. I couldn't tell you the first place I encountered it, probably in some juvenile archive of war / spy stories, it's stuck with me through the years.
As for things to read: I'm generally interested in, well, a lot of things, but crypto, security, organizational and national aspects of both, and the like. Schneier's Cryptography and his more recent works (most of which focus increasingly on human factors), comp.risks, The Art of War, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, random linkage through Wikipedia (highly underrated). Actually, for that last, I should probably write intentional linkage. Find some topic you're interested in, search for a few base articles, and follow the links out to other related aspects. Particularly case studies / people, and the like.
If you're going to study WWII, I have to recommend Daniel Yergin's The Prize (either the book or the video series, I've viewed the latter and confess only skimmed through bits of the former, it's voluminous). The relationship of oil to the events of the 20th century simply cannot be overstated.
I hoped, HOPED, this story would end with a link to YouTube where a man in a trenchcoat performs a strange dance while lip-syncing to very concerning lyrics about a man that would never give her up, never let her down...
Yes, I earned the downvotes, have at it.
Anyway this made me want to read Cryptonomicon for the 5th time and gift it to some younguns.
Coincidentally, this article came up while I'm listening to the audio book Cryptonomicon where they are talking about Turing's bike with a bent spoke and weak link in the chain, and relating it to how the Enigma works, while they're taking a bike ride at Bletchley Park. My fourth time through the book, this time with my daughter reading it.
I've been reading
Cryptonomicon (Stephenson),
Code Complete 2 (McConnel), and
Algorithms: A Functional Programming Approach (Rabhi, Lapalme). Those first two are well-known and commonly recommended; the last one I just happened upon recently, and have really enjoyed it. It's the first algorithms/data structures text that I've seen targeting functional languages.
I've been meaning to read Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter) for awhile now, but I'm not sure if/when I'll get around to it. Next on my list are some introductory number theory texts.
I think they've read
Cryptonomicon one too many times.
http://ask.metafilter.com/47531/What-would-be-a-good-way-to-calculate-fuckyou-money
This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you money." It was not a fixed constant, however, but rather a cell in a spreadsheet linked to any number of continually fluctuating economic indicators. Sometimes when Avi is working at his computer he will leave the spreadsheet running in a tiny window in the corner so that he can see the current value of "fuck-you money" at a glance.
I would say it's only depressing if you don't plan on working hard.
I listed six here:
http://jseliger.com/top-five-books :
These books are worth reading immediately:
1. Lord of the Rings
2. All the King’s Men
3. High Fidelity
4. Get Shorty
5. Cryptonomicon
6. Almost anything by Robertson Davies, though I recommend starting with The Deptford Trilogy and skipping The Salterton Trilogy
There's a great joke about this in Stephenson's
CryptonomiconI remember getting a borrowed 19" Sony CRT running at some insane resolution for the time, probably 1280x1024, and hearing that worrying thunk changing modes, then reading this book and reconsidering the wisdom of my custom modelines..
> One night at 3 a.m. Pekka caused this to happen, and
> immediately after the screen went black and made that
> clunking noise, it exploded in his face. The front of the
> picture tube was made of heavy glass (it had to be, to
> withstand the internal vacuum) which fragmented and spread
> into Pekka's face, neck and upper body. The very same
> phosphors that had been glowing beneath the sweeping
> electron beam, moments before, were now physically
> embedded in his flesh.
That's Stephenson in a nutshell: long winded openings and abrupt endings. I haven't read any of his stuff since Cryptonomicon (have them all lined up though) but the single glaring flaw I always found in his books was how rushed the endings were. I don't need all the loose ends neatly tied up, but always got the feeling he was using some sort of lossy compression scheme for the last few pages.
1. Nexus (Ramez Naam)
2. Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
3. The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)
4. The Sin of Certainty (Peter Enns)
5. The Bible Tells Me So (Peter Enns)
6. Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations
7. Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
8. Elantris (Brandon Sanderson)
9. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami)
10. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami)
11. Freedom TM (Daniel Suarez)
12. Lightning (Dean Koontz)
13. Daemons (Daniel Suarez)
14. Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov)
15. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
16. Fear and Loathing in Las Veges (Hunter S. Thompson)
17. Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov)
18. The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)
19. Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
20. Tortilla Flat (John Steinbeck)
21. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
I do this too. I basically am a non-functioning writer unless I am on a computer. I guess I'm lucky I was born when I was.
Side note.
Neal Stephenson wrote the Baroque Cycle out long hand. This post (http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/01/the-entire-terr.html) was from last month ago but I also remember 3 other pictures from several years ago.
http://www.nealstephenson.com/photos.htm
I was completely dumbfounded when I first saw that stack of paper because I can barely manage to write a one line note to my wife without scratching something out. To undertake something as large as the Baroque cycle trilogy is really beyond my comprehension.
I don't know if he wrote Cryptonomicon this way also but my first edition is full of typos. Something I imagine could happen if you turn over several hundred hand written pages with edits to a typist.
Oh the "simple" questions... reminds me of the fragment from Cryptonomicon where Lawrence Waterhouse answering the usual trivial math question about boat going from A to B with some speed X while the water moves with speed Y. He failed, even though he decided the answer cannot be that trivial and wrote a long solution involving analysing the flow of the water using partial differential equations (later published in a paper).
lallysinghonFeb 8, 2021
mklonSep 10, 2019
jtmsonApr 13, 2020
FnoordonSep 10, 2019
nicbouonJuly 5, 2020
CodeMageonJune 19, 2015
In your opinion, how was Reamde compared to works like Anathem, Snow Crash, Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon? I'm asking because I like your ranking :)
dylanzonNov 10, 2017
npxonOct 15, 2013
I've always loved the idea. If you could somehow finance it with Bitcoin, it would be a perfect homage to Stephenson :)
britknightonJan 28, 2015
Recent favorite: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
atmosxonNov 10, 2013
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
thoughtsimpleonDec 12, 2012
>And how many times have you seen someone reading a book that size on the subway/bus/ferry? ;)
Good point. You may have convinced me.
fbuilesvonNov 11, 2012
sc68calonDec 26, 2012
I would also check out Quicksilver - there are significant tie-ins to Cryptonomicon. I've enjoyed it so far.
arvinonNov 10, 2013
mdangeronSep 19, 2012
chrisweeklyonJune 28, 2019
sourc3onDec 29, 2013
jtmsonApr 7, 2014
dsirijusonJune 19, 2012
tuzemeconNov 23, 2012
Amazing book.
simanyayonOct 12, 2009
JonnieCacheonMar 31, 2011
viraptoronJuly 2, 2014
alanfalcononJune 23, 2011
ekanesonFeb 4, 2015
simanyayonSep 1, 2009
samgonAug 17, 2009
bockrisonDec 4, 2007
luiscarloscbonSep 23, 2017
loegonSep 22, 2017
wlievensonApr 14, 2009
epsonJune 14, 2021
Cryptonomicon is very good too. Should be a must read for people who want to make another Tor :)
Incomparison, Reamde is slow and boring.
krakensdenonDec 11, 2012
FtuukyonJuly 4, 2018
euroclydononJan 5, 2015
statictypeonMar 1, 2011
RUG3YonSep 22, 2017
Cryptonomicon is my favorite work of his.
Negative1onMar 25, 2016
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon had a whole section on it that was fantastic.
nissimkonApr 13, 2015
Reamde was pretty good, and this is an interesting setup.
Edit: Anathem not Anathema (thanks __david__ and lmm)
fizzbaronJune 6, 2013
qwertyuiop924onSep 11, 2016
If I had my copy of Cryptonomicon at hand, I'd quote the bit about everybody being impressed Avi could let them sell out for roughly what they'd have made at a regular job.
Yes, even in the '90s, this was pretty well known.
pklausleronSep 21, 2017
davidwonMar 24, 2021
Cryptonomicon did such a wonderful job of capturing a certain something from the 1990ies. I haven't enjoyed his more recent books as much. Seveneves was depressing. Dodge had really bad reviews and I haven't bothered with it.
sid0onSep 19, 2011
onion2konSep 3, 2018
DavertrononJuly 20, 2018
I would also recommend "Seveneves", one of Neal Stephenson's most recent books. "Anathem" was also very enjoyable.
groby_bonFeb 5, 2015
Otherwise, I'd read pre-Cryptonomicon Stephenson.
AlisdairOonMar 27, 2013
ahartmetzonSep 5, 2020
I kind of regret that I slogged through Cryptonomicon and I would advise anyone to stop reading after 200 pages if bored, the next 700 won't really be better.
jpm_sdonSep 12, 2016
Shadow84onMay 26, 2008
TYPE_FASTERonSep 19, 2011
adriandonJune 15, 2012
We're on the same page then, I agree with you. I really enjoyed Cryptonomicon. Diamond Age was interesting but tended to read like the script for an over-the-top sci-fi movie.
gordonNov 3, 2009
eg. Neal Stephensons Young ladies illustrated primer or Cryptonomicon strike me that way - they make you think even more about what is real.
jds375onApr 4, 2019
anaphoronSep 18, 2013
zhengyi13onApr 13, 2015
strictneinonMar 9, 2018
jameshartonSep 22, 2017
vitamenonFeb 10, 2015
wicknicksonSep 21, 2012
Fascinating list, I just finished reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Quite an epic. Everyone I know who has read it says that Cryptonomicon is a better book by Neal. Looking fwd to getting it!
fogusonSep 21, 2012
BMarkmannonDec 11, 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
pavel_lishinonSep 21, 2011
grimmanonJune 19, 2015
chillacyonJan 6, 2019
arethuzaonMar 27, 2013
[Mind you, that is a minor niggle - Cryptonomicon is one of my favourite novels]
duckmuckonNov 1, 2016
shpongledonJune 14, 2021
troxwaltonMar 11, 2019
PhasmaFelisonSep 22, 2017
metageekonJan 4, 2011
alasdair_onSep 9, 2020
I also never quite finished Dodge in Hell either but probably will some day.
ataturkonFeb 14, 2019
emsalonFeb 1, 2021
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
physicsyogionJuly 15, 2018
- The Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (superb short story that Arrival was based on)
- The Three Body-Problem (Cixin Liu)
- Dune (Frank Herbert)
- The Parable of the Sower (Octavia Butler)
- Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven)
- The Kundalini Equation (Steven Barnes)
walskonMar 28, 2017
Especially one episode, and if you've read the book, you probably can guess, which one.
(The rest of the books were already mentioned above.)
phirealonDec 5, 2012
bryogeniconDec 23, 2015
"Expecting Better" - Emily Oster
"The 9/11 Commission Report" - National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
"Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS" - Joby Warrick
"Power Wars: Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency" - Charlie Savage (not finished yet)
nuclidonJune 13, 2021
sanderjdonJan 8, 2018
mirimironApr 4, 2020
Edit: Yes, Snow Crash.
nutshell89onMay 15, 2020
(both somewhat grounded) would adapt the best - Snow Crash has this dyed in the wool early 90s escapist VR vision of the internet that doesn't really make sense today, along with a ton of religious overtones and weird, rapey bits.
c0nfusedonJan 25, 2020
But as a formal challenge it would be super neat to try to do. The sneaky hackathon
_0ffhonOct 17, 2012
Try as I might, I can't remember any mocking of Turing in the Cryptonomicon. I'm quite confident Neal Stephenson is not a homophobe.
jgononFeb 1, 2021
echohackonAug 27, 2013
Hilariously, I'm reading Cryptonomicon right now and that's exactly what Sergent Shafto and crew do by pretending they're finding German submarine secrets.
stblackonApr 6, 2014
And rightly so.
Neal Stephenson has also written some of the best geek books ever. My personal favourite: Cryptonomicon which is in the same general vein as the article.
CompuHackeronJune 3, 2021
mhansenonNov 2, 2009
Start with Cryptonomicon, a tale of WWII codebreakers, cryptography, and modern-day data freedom. How can you not love the sound of that that?
cullenkingonAug 31, 2010
Example: Cryptonomicon is $8.99 as a softcover, but, the ebook version is $10.99
fiddyschmittonFeb 3, 2018
Turing's Cathedral (or as my brothers call it: Von Neumann's Cathedral). An awesome account of the history of computation, and the obstacles that had to be overcome.
Cryptonomicon. Hilarious
The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo. A biography of delightfully awkward Paul Dirac.
The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges. Thought provoking and profound.
teamhappyonApr 25, 2018
smazeroonOct 3, 2010
trafficlightonAug 25, 2011
noduermeonJune 14, 2021
Cryptonomicon is fun, I re-read that recently. I wouldn't really call it sci-fi, though. More like historical fiction..
intopiecesonJune 18, 2020
InclinedPlaneonApr 11, 2012
JackGibbsonMay 11, 2013
DFW - Infinite Jest
Pynchon - Really anything, but in particular Against the Day, V, and Gravity's Rainbow.
Rushdie - Shame and Satanic Verses, a lot of good other ones.
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
Gaddis - JR, hence my name.
Heller - Catch-22
Ar-CurunironOct 9, 2016
zwassonSep 11, 2016
If you enjoyed his essay, it is well worth reading Neal Stephenson's novels. I would start with Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash.
dylanzonDec 13, 2013
I almost drove off the road listening to him talking about bonds vs stocks and percentages. It was interesting, but definitely not a road trip book.
That said, I finished Snow Crash on the trip, and it was a great book. I think I preferred Cryptonomicon a bit more, but some of the theories in Snow Crash were incredible, and way before their time. Hiro Protagonist and YT are also awesome characters.
RoboprogonSep 10, 2011
2sk21onJune 23, 2017
LordKanoonMay 6, 2015
lukejduncanonApr 11, 2011
xjaonJan 12, 2017
It's a bit silly. But it is interesting to note that every bearded person mentioned in this article is white.
mp_cnbonOct 3, 2010
- 'The Selfish Gene' - Richard Dawkins
Grokking the concept changed the way I thought about life forever.
- 'Quantum Reality' - Nick Herbert
One of the best introductory level books on quantum physics mysteries. No nonsense.
- Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
The book that introduced me to Kant, Hume and philosophy of science. Just for that, I'm forever indebted to it.
Some favorite fiction books -
- Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Loved 'Snowcrash' too.
- 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' - Robert Heinlein
- Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera, Somerset Maugham
r00fusonSep 9, 2011
Diamond Age painted a very deep and rich tapestry of future vision.
davidwonAug 31, 2010
No, but perhaps it is a sign of a screwy market. Or simply a new market that hasn't really stabilized yet.
leggomylibroonOct 13, 2016
tripleeonMar 13, 2019
alex_honJune 29, 2013
satori99onApr 13, 2018
There is a scene in Neal Stephensons novel Cryptonomicon (1999), where the protagonist accesses his laptops data by manipulating the scroll-lock LED using Morse-code, as he is fairly certain he is being van-eck phreaked.
emsalonFeb 2, 2021
tristan_louisonOct 31, 2011
babygenieonSep 14, 2011
jsolsononMay 15, 2020
Seveneves, on the other hand, I absolutely loathed in basically every regard. My loathing for it makes it memorable enough to be my most hated book (there are plenty of books out there that are 'worse', but are also unmemorable -- Seveneves is viscerally memorable)
groby_bonFeb 7, 2015
REAMDE was quick and entertaining, but it was the equivalent of a Tom Clancy novel. Or, fine, Michael Crichton.
sshineonAug 13, 2018
- Stealing the Network, a collection of short stories. One of those stories was written by Fyodor of nmap and is available online: http://insecure.org/stc/ -- this sort of works like a tutorial for nmap and networking security. :-D
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
- Neuromancer by William Gibson
arethuzaonMay 15, 2020
I still think The Baroque Cycle would make a wonderful sprawling multi-series show (Jack Shaftoe being one of my favourite fictional characters).
skywhopperonJuly 3, 2017
The text as written on this site describes a conspiracy to commit tax and securities fraud. I have no idea if it will ever be prosecuted as such, but that is what is being proffered here.
The subtext is that a bunch of finance quants read Cryptonomicon and think the blockchain is the answer to their dream of becoming the gangster bosses of the anarcho-capitalist hellscape from Snow Crash.
hprotagonistonOct 13, 2017
Judging by their business decisions, I have come to believe that a bunch of other would-be Secret Admirers work at some but not all tech companies, and this does inform my choice of services. I bet you $5 there were Tombstone jokes at Apple during the san bernadino fiasco.
edit: and people like Moxie are doing their very best John Cantrell impersonations and I am extremely grateful for this.
keithpeteronAug 9, 2014
tptacekonAug 31, 2010
It is not an economic injustice that the ebook Cryptonomicon costs more than the softcover.
Florin_AndreionDec 16, 2014
There was a time when I thought Snow Crash was the best. There was a time when Cryptonomicon was a lot of fun (still is). Nowadays I incline slightly more towards the 'philosophical opus' type of vibe that Anathem gives off.
Anyway, all his books are pretty good representatives of one sub-genre or another. He's a very good author, and he wrote in a lot of different keys through his career so far.
kylelibraonAug 7, 2014
jtbigwooonSep 9, 2011
Of course I still read all thousand pages of Anathem in, like, four days. :)
pmr_onOct 5, 2011
hudononJuly 3, 2017
I know the transition to this model seems impossible and this is what most people in the blockchain-space blissfully ignore.
> The subtext is that a bunch of finance quants read Cryptonomicon and think the blockchain is the answer to their dream of becoming the gangster bosses of the anarcho-capitalist hellscape from Snow Crash.
This made my day, it's a shame it's too long to tweet
hinathanonMay 26, 2012
marzellonSep 5, 2017
knodi123onJune 20, 2020
> One of the noteworthy features of the novel CRYPTONOMICON is that it contains a
new cryptosystem invented by Bruce Schneier, called Solitaire. [...] Since Solitaire
is strong enough to be subject to U.S. laws governing export of crypto
technology, this means that when the text of the novel is rendered in electronic
form it becomes an export-controlled good.
They relaxed that restriction shortly afterward, so Neal got to have his cake (having his ebook classified as weapons-grade), and eat it too (sell it anyway).
JonasJSchreiberonJuly 13, 2018
bogdanovanonJune 14, 2021
Anathem was by far my favorite discovery of the whole year in any genre, highly highly recommended. (I much preferred it to Cryptonomicon actually.) I found it beautiful and deep and entertaining on every level.
fazzoneonDec 30, 2013
neiconDec 22, 2016
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Honorable mention from 2015: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I have just started Homo Deus and my first impression is that is is a worthy sequel.
davidtpateonAug 8, 2016
It's the story of Pixar and there's so many things I enjoyed about this book. It helped validate for me many of my instincts in running a creative business.
The Martian by Andy Weir
I very much enjoyed the story and how it was all approached.
Seven Eves by Neil Stephenson
Similar to his other books (Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon) I've gifted these a few times. I really enjoy his method of storytelling and his stories appeal to the geek in me as well.
xcallmejudasxonJune 19, 2012
jibonDec 12, 2015
e12eonMay 18, 2016
Absolutely recommend "Diamond Age" and to a lesser extent (but more fun) "Snowcrash". I started "Cryptonomicon" right after reading Singh's "The Code Book", and it just felt like Stephenson did a sub-par job with the subject material (perhaps especially because "The Code Book" isn't fiction, but almost reads like it).
Did start "Seveneves" when there was a free teaser out, but haven't gotten around to it yet -- it's on my list. I'm hoping it's a bit tighter than most of the stuff since "Diamond Age".
JunkDNAonAug 17, 2009
harelonAug 13, 2018
"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. It goes from WW2 to modern time.
"Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner - Read it aeons ago so working from long term memory. 3 real world stories of famous hackers and their "crimes" (Kevin Mitnick, Pengo, Robert Morris).
mindcrimeonApr 4, 2011
Another couple of possibilities might be:
The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164...
The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage - Clifford Stoll
http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionag...
Hackers & Painters - Paul Graham (yes, that Paul Graham)
http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp...
e12eonAug 13, 2018
I see people's mentioned Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" - while I loved "diamond age" and like "snowcrash" - I much prefer Singh's "the codebook" on a similar theme. Thrilling non-fiction.
On the more fiction side, I enjoyed Bruce Sterling's "The Zenith Angle" a lot.
And second the recommendations for Mitnick's books - both the autobiography "ghost in the wires" and the more free form "made up examples" in "the art of deception" (like many of the stories in the stealing the network books, "inspired" by true events...).
Other than that there's of course:
https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
(and to a lesser extent "homeland").
And others mentioned the non-fiction book detailing operation sun devil:
"THE HACKER CRACKDOWN
Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier",
Bruce Sterling
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101
[ed: I think maybe "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge deserves a mention too. And maybe "speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon]
lsiebertonOct 17, 2012
tripzilchonSep 21, 2017
(POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW)
Especially the sort of quantum-ex-machina "twist" near the end was kind of off-putting to me. Everything so far was very well crafted and researched, but this part was a lot like "yeah multiple universes or something", but I'm not sure if it even works that way, if true.
Also I found the constant back-translating of scientific discoveries and theorems with-a-different-name kind of tedious. I caught a lot of them, but many also not and I kept feeling like I was missing out on some cool references. Even though (IMHO) I have a pretty broad general knowledge of most important scientific/math theorems.
There were some other bits I didn't like but that's personal taste. I loved the humour in Snow Crash (so much better reading than Neuromancer) and the hi-tech thriller action stuff in Cryptonomicon. Anathem seemed kind of slow, building a whole world and such (as I said, matter of taste, I don't get quite as excited about world-building in fiction/fantasy books, unlike many people).
gardanoonFeb 17, 2016
jameshartonJuly 31, 2015
wrinkl3onNov 26, 2017
wycxonFeb 21, 2016
I also liked William Dufris who narrated Cryptonomicon and parts of Anathem.
I find new narrators tend to be very grating the first time I start listening, then over time I get used to them.
dredmorbiusonJuly 3, 2018
Some don't.
The rule of thumb fails.
If someone has reason to know that the book does get better, then great. But it's no reason to grant every book that much leeway.
Avenger42onOct 12, 2009
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
emilecantinonNov 6, 2017
As someone who's interested in technology (obviously) and boats / the ocean, this article hit an unexpected confluence of interests, on an unexpectedly complex subject. I definitely recommend reading it.
peatmossonJune 11, 2018
I’ve heard good things about Seveneves, but I’m a little hesitant to pick it up given that it’s huge and there are thousands of other books to read.
munk-aonDec 16, 2019
Actually, Seveneves would be a kind of amazing long running serial if they just ran a chunk of anthologies during the portion of history the book skips between stabilizing the asteroid and recolonizing earth.
FnoordonOct 6, 2017
The world of Snow Crash, where a few corporations own the entire world with a very tiny government, is also the basis of the book Jennifer Government [2] by Max Barry.
I found that book a bit easier to read. Diamond Age, I can't get through it yet. Cryptonomicon, also by Neil Stephenson is on my list, as well as Neuromancer by Gibson.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age#Snow_Crash
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government
sampoonJuly 28, 2016
Cryptonomicon is very easy to start, you meet Alan Turing right in the first pages, and things progress nicely. The book is long, and jumps randomly between several different storylines, so finishing it is another matter. But it is easy to start.
And because it is essentially just a collection of stories, finishing it is not even really important. Just keep on reading as long as you enjoy.
kyzylonSep 15, 2013
If you're into crime/mystery fiction, the recently deceased Elmore Leonard was one of the best. A few of his books have been made into movies (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, The Big Bounce) with mixed results, but I do I highly recommend reading the books, which are numerous.
For a different sort of fiction, James Clavell's Shogun, Taipan, and Noble House are great. In fact, Noble House very well be my favorite book. It's a long (~1400 page) book about business dealings, political intrigue, and more. All set in the context of 1963 Hong Kong.
Those who like a touch of historical fiction could take a look at Conn Uggulden. One of his series, The Conqueror, which is about the rise and fall of the Mongol empire is pretty interesting. The books are a light read, and not particularly complicated, but it's entertaining and has some neat historical bits.
MarcScottonSep 30, 2019
Unlike Frederick Forsyth's "The Fox", which I had to put down after about three chapters, as it appears he used a 16yo BTEC ICT student as his tech expert.
As others have commented, Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books, as is most of the Stephenson catalogue. He certainly know how to set up mind blowing worlds, plots and characters, even if he tends to leave the reader a little unfulfilled when the story abruptly ends.
Love all the recommendations in this thread. You've given me months worth of reading material to start exploring.
Thanks.
ZannionJan 20, 2021
Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is fantastic, and it's follow-up, Speaker for the Dead is even better, and my favorite science fiction novel of all time. They won back to back Hugo and Nebula awards. Card is a polarizing figure for his outspoken political opinions, but if ever the art should be separated from the artist, it's Speaker, which is an incredible exploration of empathy and responsibility, in addition to being a gripping, action-packed, science-literate read. Many more in this series, if you get into it.
John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is fantastic, if you're into military science-fiction, or even if you're not. Smart, funny, engaging and accessible, and reminiscent of Heinlein at his prime, minus the weird incest fetish. Redshirts, a Star Trek parody, rivals Galaxy Quest and only falls short because Galaxy Quest is so goddamn brilliant. Agent to the Stars is less appreciated, but in my opinion his finest novel, rising way above its goofy premise by taking it seriously, exploring the consequences and treating the characters with empathy and respect. Also hilarious.
Seconding Dune, which is a classic for a reason, and Stranger in a Strange Land (though I think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a better place to start with Heinlein). Also Neal Stephenson, though I'd suggest Cryptonomicon over Diamond Age.
ryanSrichonJune 14, 2021
Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash are must reads. Anathem is a beast that I just couldn’t get into, though I tried several times.
libraryofbabelonMar 29, 2020
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness. My favorite Le Guin (the Dispossessed is pretty good too). Shockingly original when it was published in 1969; the portrait of the society and culture on Gethen still feels unique. A slow burn at the beginning, but builds to a dramatic conclusion.
Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey-Maturin series. Probably the best historical fiction ever written. Rich tapestry of life during the Napoleonic Wars. Set in the Royal Navy during the Age of Sail, but that description doesn't do it justice; O'Brian's great inspiration was Jane Austen, and the focus is on characters and people, particularly the brilliantly contrasting personalities of the two main characters.
Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, but set in Russia during WWII. Explores the dark heart of the 20th century (the Battle of Stalingrad, concentration camps, the gulag) through the eyes of a wide cast of characters from different walks of life. Grossman wrote about Stalingrad from firsthand experience as a war journalist, and is able to uncover moments of hope and human kindness amid horrifying world-historical events.
Books others have already mentioned:
* Tolstoy, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
* Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (interesting how several people mention this one; I used to think it was my own private discovery).
* Neal Stephenson, especially Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle
And the obligatory Tolkien and Douglas Adams that I read and re-read as a teenager.
stirfrykittyonJune 28, 2019
In the end, it's impossible to police the use of strong encryption. Things like Waste and many others saw this coming back in the "Clipper chip" and PGP trouble days. What would end up happening is people just start appealing to OTP. Well-designed OTP is very resistant to attack.
This all reminds me of Neal Stephenson's seminal book, Cryptonomicon, one of the best IT fiction books ever written. If you have an interest in encryption, coding, data havens, currency, etc., this is the book for you. It's a veritable tome.
* Editing to say that despite Cryptonomicon being written in 1999, I still think it holds its own even now. Kind of a timeless classic as far as IT goes.
tesseractonApr 25, 2009
qwertyuiop924onSep 7, 2016
Stephenson's novels in general are like this, although Cryptonomicon for one certainly has better character development than Snow Crash: they're a disorderly jumble of whatever ideas Stephenson thought were interesting at the time, wrapped in a skin of plot, and enfleshed in the characters that surround, encounter, and explore them. Stephenson sometimes jumps the rails entirely, writing long monologues, dialogues, and digressions that barely refer to the characters or plot at all, just because he thought the ideas were neat (most of Randy and Pontifex's discussions in prison, The mathematics of Alan's bicycle chain, a good stretch of Hiro's discussions with the Librarian (although nowhere near all of them), and Hiro's adventures in Flatland on the raft (you can just feel the seeds of In The Beginning Was The Command Line, struggling to get out)), or for reasons known only to him (probably because he thought it was funny) (the TP memo, the stockings/Van Eck... thing). To some people this may be seen as a disjointed, overhyped, overcomplicated mess, but to the right sort of mind, it's an almost magical experience.
Curiously, these sorts of people tend to be heavily into computing, which is why Stephenson pervades that culture.
Or that's wrong, and I'm just completely mad. That's also a possibility.
CodeMageonAug 21, 2012
I still love his books, because they're full of awesomeness and the ending doesn't make the rest of the book crap (unlike what BioWare did to Mass Effect with the original ME3 ending).
karatestomponMay 15, 2020
Snow Crash could definitely make a good series. Of the three I’ve read but didn’t like much, I’d say it’s the one I’d be most likely to enjoy as a show even if it barely deviated from the book, in fact. Hell, it has a better shot in that format than Cryptonomicon would. And anyway, Cryptonomicon’s more speculative elements are probably not aging very well since I read it—too much of it’s become ordinary and mundane.
davidwonDec 20, 2019
dylanzonMay 15, 2020
When I think about all the books I've read in my lifetime, Snow Crash has given me the coolest and most fun mental images out of all books. I'm 40+ years old, and when I'm stuck in traffic, I still think about latching on to cars in front of me and escaping the grid I'm sitting in.
e12eonJune 20, 2015
I pretty much gave up Stephenson after I got half way through "Cryptonomicon". (Really enjoyed "Snowcrash" and loved "Diamond Age"). But then I read (half of) it after I'd just finished Singh's "The Code Book".
It just felt like Stephenson's science and drama subtracted from the real-world science and drama the book was inspired by.
My theory was that after "Diamond Age" he couldn't get an editor that dared cut his manuscripts in half any more. But I'm willing to give some of his newer books a chance -- I see they're quite well received by people that seem to like other good books :-)
If you enjoyed "Snow Crash", you might also enjoy (or hate...) Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the Net".
overcastonJuly 27, 2016
lsiebertonApr 1, 2012
has many of the recommendations I'd make. I especially recommend Cryptonomicon if you want some pseudocode. I'll add a few newer books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(technothriller_series)
However, have you considered some free nonfiction? http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html The Hacker Crackdown
http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelTAZ Temporary Autonomous Zones
You might also like scifi short stories: http://www.flurb.net/
mixmaxonSep 3, 2011
One of the main stories in the book is about Avi and Randy that are trying to get a datahaven startup off the ground, and Avi, the sly businessman, is constantly on about enhancing shareholder value. There's an excellent and humorous description of writing businessplans where it's all about "doing X to enhance shareholder value."
This is also where the term "fuck you money" comes from. Fuck you money is the amount that will allow you to economically say fuck you to anyone for the rest of your life. Basically total financial freedom. Avi, again the businessman, keeps an updated excel spreadsheet that calculates exactly how much money fuck you money is at the moment, since it's obviously dependant on exchange rates, stockprices, real estate prices, etc.
It's a great read.
karatestomponMay 15, 2020
stuxnet79onFeb 17, 2016
SebgueronDec 31, 2020
Edit: Oh god I hadn't even gotten to the end of that same section where it recommends Gentoo???? This article is written for people who read Cryptonomicon and took it a little too seriously.
aasasdonFeb 8, 2019
I'm actually sort of learning from these books about the vibe of the region, some scraps of relevant history, and the area's economic relations with the US. Because otherwise it's mostly fantasy land to me.
alasdair_onAug 2, 2021
alanfalcononFeb 3, 2011
hprotagonistonDec 14, 2017
of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took
it personally.
Charlene's crowd most definitely did take it personally. It wasn't
being told that they were wrong that offended them, though. It was the
underlying assumption that a person could be right or wrong about _anything_.
So on the Night in Question the night-- of Avi's fateful call -- Randy had done
what he usually did, which was to withdraw from the conversation.
In the
Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf.
Tolkien's Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical characters who spent
a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g. Rings of
Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war ax for a while
to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits
(i.e., Charlene's friends), had actually done a lot for Randy's peace of
mind over the years. He knew perfectly well that if he were stuck in
academia, these people, and the things they said, would seem momentous to
him. But where he came from, nobody had been taking these people seriously
for years. So he just withdrew from the conversation and drank his wine and
looked out over the Pacific surf and tried not to do anything really obvious
like shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
-- Cryptonomicon, 1999.
tech2onDec 10, 2019
I had tried (and failed) to read Crypto about 3 times before I finally broke through and realised his plotting wasn't bad, he just couldn't set it up right, or something.
kaitaionMar 27, 2015
Newer: Ancillary Justice. Really interesting ideas about the self. Over the years: Octavia Butler. Some very challenging ideas.
Honestly, though, I think 14-year-olds should read a lot of random crap from the library. Legal thrillers and historical romance and linguistics texts and home repair manuals and history of Thailand and books about sneakers, and the Tao Te Ching and that famous book about Buddha. Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. That blew me away in 9th grade.
carlesfeonSep 7, 2016
For me, Stephenson's masterpiece is Diamond Age, hands down -- minus the ending, if that could be a thing. The last chapters are too obscure just for the sake of obscurity, I've read it three times and I can't get any "deep" meaning to it, just a bunch of wow-cool-but-irrelevant text.
Regarding Cryptonomicon, the first three books, they're straigtforward, interesting, and with a lot of references and trivia but it doesn't try too hard like the "Gods" part of Snow Crash. I really, really enjoyed them.
Unfortunately, I found the Cryptonomicon prequels a nice adventure book in the traditional sense, but the characters were too flat and un-relatable, and it bored me.
Anyway, that's my opinion. Diamond Age introduced me to cyberpunk and, to date, it's my favorite novel of the genre. I've recommended it to many people and they've always liked it. I still dream of the day when we have matter compilators, and victorians look like a bunch of hipsters to me, which is both funny and very realistic. In a world full of technology, rich people will want to go back to a more... simple and comfortable age. It blew my mind.
arethuzaonJuly 13, 2021
NB The audiobook versions of all of these are really good.
Edit: Jack Shaftoe is probably one of my favourite fictional characters...
Negative1onSep 21, 2017
I listened to this one in the car (10+ hours for books a week thanks to my drive). Maybe it was a rough week but I had to stop halfway through because it completely lost me. Maybe it gets better but having read the spoilers I really can't imagine how.
But hey, your mileage may vary.
interfixusonOct 30, 2017
I should probably escort myself out of here. I never did get into computer games either...
jillesvangurponJune 14, 2021
This book looks like it might be a bit in the same spirit in the sense that our home planet is abused a bit. Part three of Seveneves is about the aftermath of essentially terra forming Earth in the distant future after it gets destroyed in part 1.
People think about other planets when it comes to terra forming but of course our home planet might be the easiest one to practice on and doing so might get a bit urgent as we seem to be destroying it. Great premise for a near future science fiction novel.
If you are looking for recommendations. Ian Banks can be a bit hard to read but can be very entertaining. Arthur C Clarke wrote some awesome science fiction. More recently, The Martian (Andy Weir) was great. And Andy Weir just published another book that's on my list to read soon. The expanse series of books (James S. A. Corey) is a good read. 2312 (Stanley Robinson) is also worth a look.
And of course if you at all enjoyed Seveneves, you might want to read the rest of what NS wrote. Anathem is great. Snow Crash, the Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon are classics at this point.
borlakonDec 25, 2012
* Hunger games 1-3 -- not bad, would probably recommend
* Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy -- good, surprised how short it was. really liked the style of writing, fun to read. recommended
* Stranger in a Strange Land -- currently reading this one, interesting, but nothing ground breaking. one character seems to dominate the book. don't know if I'd recommend.
* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep -- interesting, a bit boring. I kept comparing it to the movie, and in the end I like the movie better. they each focus on different subjects, but I like the movie's subject better, and it felt more professional/solid. would recommend.
* Ringworld -- pretty good. the 'Teela problem' is fascinating to me and got me thinking a lot outside of reading, which to me is a sign of a good book. the 'spacey stuff' in the book was not that great. even the ringworld itself was not that interesting. would recommend.
* The Mote in God's Eye -- my favorite book of the year. so much to think about (moral problems/dilemmas). the realistic part of the space travel was new to me (like the consideration of g-forces in constant acceleration), and so that was more to think about. definitely recommend.
* Cryptonomicon -- a close second. Neal Stephenson goes into wicked detail in his books and always blows my mind (never heard of Van Eck Phreaking before this book, how is that possible?). definitely recommend.
tesseractonNov 19, 2020
> He concludes that these are all consumer-grade diving books written for rum-drenched tourists, and furthermore that the publishers probably had teams of lawyers go over them one word at a time to make sure there would not be liability trouble. That the contents of these books, therefore, probably represent about one percent of everything that the authors actually know about diving, but that the lawyers have made sure that the authors don't even mention that. [...]
> Randy does a sorting procedure on the diving books now: he ignores anything that has color photographs, or that appears to have been published within the last twenty years, or that has any quotes on the back cover containing the words stunning, superb, user-friendly, or, worst of all, easy-to-understand. He looks for old, thick books with worn-out bindings and block-lettered titles like DIVE MANUAL. Anything with angry marginal notes written by Doug Shaftoe gets extra points.
-- Neal Stephenson, _Cryptonomicon_
throw1234651234onJuly 23, 2021
I couldn't even get through Cryptonomicon, and Jack Shaftoe did not strike me as a believable genius, nor his story. Anathem kind of strafed the line - it had SOME character development, and SOME action, but was mainly world-building / intellectual exploration. Stephenson's other books fall too far on that spectrum for me.
futureproofdonOct 15, 2019
So I don't see how in a case like this, I could finish this book (and any related materials of interest) in the allotted time, to reach the goal of 200 books a year. That's just unrealistic.
runevaultonSep 20, 2011
AlexTraskonMay 14, 2020
metaphormonDec 12, 2016
Cryptonomicon is fun, Baroque Cycle is great, Anathem is his best work (from a literary perspective), and Seveneves is 2/3rds awesome 1/3rd bad scifi pulp.
Snow Crash is how most people first encounter him. It's a warmed over cyberpunk book that repeats a lot of what Gibson did, but is also good.
The Diamond Age is one of the best pieces of speculative fiction written in the last 20 years except that it fails badly to have a coherent story with an ending that makes sense. Which is a shame considering the ideas in the book are so good.
REamde is shit and should never have been published. Dude was playing too much World of Warcraft at the time and decided to write a novel about playing too much World of Warcraft. Bad book. Avoid.
52-6F-62onNov 10, 2017
Also, the movie for Ready Player One is coming out and the book is alright, too. Though it's a little heavy on the hipster/nostalgic wankery, it's still a good story. Kept me reading. It's also an interesting take on overpopulation, class divides, and the future role of VR. Steven Spielberg is directing the movie, so I'm kind of looking forward to seeing it.[1][2]
---
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One_(film)
kungtotteonOct 11, 2018
sfjailbirdonMay 15, 2020
I have since dabbled a bit with Stephenson, and amazingly his other books fall along the same divide for me. Zodiac is amazing, the Victorian sci-fi series (Diamond Age?) are unreadable. One book, Seveneves, the first part is amazing Neal Stephenson, the second is lazy, naive and dumb Neal Stephenson. Super puzzling, almost as if he has (really bad) ghost writers.
I have since gone back to Snow Crash (could not finish it the first time), and with some overbearing, it is not entirely unlikable.
jsolsononApr 25, 2018
I re-read Cryptonomicon every year or two, the baroque cycle about half that frequently, and Anathem a couple times now. I own Snow Crash and The Diamond Age in first editions. I cannot imagine re-reading Seveneves; it was both not a totally flawed plot (a quality I can ordinarily forgive in a Stephenson novel -- I love a good yarn) and it killed everyone I know and love, in an immediate near future sense, on the page in front of me.
It was, for lack of a better description, a callous novel.
BWStearnsonSep 14, 2013
eganistonMay 18, 2016
The only thing that somewhat frustrated me about it, as I suspect is the case for most people, is the fact that the last third of the book feels like it could (should?) stand on its own. That being said, there's enough room for Stephenson to explore in more depth some of the events leading up to the third act in subsequent novels... so here's hoping. I figure explaining why I feel this way would be a bit of a spoiler. Bill does enough to allude to it.
Anyway, thumbs up from me. I enjoyed every bit of it, and Bill's review does a good job of selling the book without spoiling it.
muninonDec 31, 2013
I would recommend the following books:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743217349
http://www.amazon.com/dp/006097771X/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892
http://www.amazon.com/dp/068486780X/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452287472
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452206120/
chrismathesononJune 9, 2020
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
ajstilesonJune 9, 2020
mwcampbellonAug 26, 2018
tripleseconOct 22, 2016
veggieburglaronDec 29, 2019
cableshaftonSep 29, 2017
I've also read Cryptonomicon, and he dials it down a lot more in that one (although it's still present), and I found it a lot more readable.
dforrestwilsononAug 27, 2017
singlowonOct 8, 2012
gensymonDec 4, 2007
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Informant - Kurt Eichenwald
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte
Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis
acherononSep 29, 2017
As far as adaptability of Stephenson goes, I could see Zodiac, or maybe REAMDE, that would work in a way that resembles the books. Maaaybe Seveneves, though you have to deal with the significant separation between Part 2 and Part 3.
The rest of his books, including Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, are too intertwined with "theoretical" concepts to make much sense in an adaptation. I mean, yes: you can have a show or movie about a pizza deliverer/hacker named Hiro Protagonist who swordfights in the metaverse; or Jack and Eliza's Adventures in Enlightenment Europe; or whatever. But the real underpinnings of the story aren't going to make it in and that's what makes Stephenson's books interesting.
hprotagonistonMay 15, 2020
Fiction:
Douglas Copeland's "Microserfs"
Neal Stephenson, "Snow Crash" and perhaps especially "Cryptonomicon" (the early randy chapters and anything about Eiphphyte in particular)
Real Genius (the film).
Nonfiction:
Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. All the elder gods are here.
Cliff Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg.
dagwonJan 23, 2015
As to practically It seems quite unfeasible. First of all since magnetic forces fall off according to the inverse square law, you're going to need a seriously large magnet to for it work at say 1 meters distance or so. You're basically going to have seriously retrofit your entire house, and it's going to be very hard to hide. Secondly and more importantly even the most powerful commercial hard drive degaussers require that the drive be in contact with the magnet for up to 10 seconds to guarantee that all the data is erased, so someone just walking through a door isn't going to be in the field for anywhere near enough time.
tyu100onAug 13, 2018
stirfrycatsonFeb 5, 2019
and
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon
tormehonApr 13, 2015
Reamde was a dud for me as well.
smcleodonFeb 4, 2017
RandomBacononDec 5, 2019
jleesonAug 7, 2014
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers and The Secret Life of Bletchley Park are both great reads, both by Sinclair MacKay, and Hodges' Turing biography is fascinating and, as we all know, heartbreaking in the end.
Bletchley wasn't just about Turing, though he certainly deserves his due, and then some. Tommy Flowers, for example, who built Colossus -- or Mavis Batey, who broke a coded message that led to reverse engineering the Enigma.
I highly recommend visiting if you can. Really drove home to me the people aspect of the whole thing, and the somewhat frightening (and yet a tiny bit wistful!) realization that had we all been born a few decades earlier, and taken similar paths through life, Bletchley may well be where many if us spent a good chunk of our years.
jepperonJune 7, 2015
I've read these books midway through high school, already interested in biology and medicine. The depth and complexity of how life forms handle evolutionary pressure is mind blowing. Why you favor relatives over strangers, the competition between mother and child, progress through collaboration of genes etc. You see the world completely differently (after reading many more books on geology, genetics, anthropology, anatomy, cellular biology etc) afterwards.
For a novel: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson,
Truely changed how I look at computers and encryption as a not mathematically inclined reader. Building a computer out of church pipe organ components etc.
turk184onSep 22, 2017
I want to like Stephenson, but Anathem and Cryptonomicon only seem to appeal to a very narrow range of readers whom I don't understand.
hughonJuly 2, 2008
Firstly, it's dated quite badly, since it was written in the recent past about roughly-now. He gets the technology pretty much right, but the speculation about how that technology will change society pretty much all wrong.
Secondly, Mr Protagonist, as a protagonist, annoys me in that he seems more like the kind of character that a fourteen-year-old boy would think was awesome (greatest swordfighter in the world, for no good reason!) than somebody I want to read a book about.
Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, is a must-read. I don't really even like science fiction that much, but Cryptonomicon is a must-read.
moksonApr 9, 2015
The Road to Reality Roger Penrose,
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
petefordeonJan 5, 2020
I urge you to try audiobooks. There still exists a stigma that it's not "real" reading, but that is like discussion of "real" men - absurd. Audiobooks are a joy.
My personal favourite is Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson, but heck, Ready Player One, Recursion, Delta-V, Walkaway by Cory Doctorow... just give it a shot.
wildyliononJuly 23, 2019
In 1996 I was a little kid, but one of the first books I read on my PC somewhere around 2000 was Cryptonomicon. Back then I didn't have dialup, what I had instead was a cherished copy of a CD full of pirated books, called something like Pocket Library.
If only my parents realized back then how much ... questionable material was there, I would probably have been banned access to that PC forever.
But Cryptonomicon was fine.
jds375onMay 16, 2019
qwertyuiop924onDec 24, 2016
If you're looking for something a bit fluffier than the above, then I would suggest The Dresden Files. Sure, it's mindless fluff, but man, it's good mindless fluff. The same applies to The Codex Alera (which apparently resulted from a bet that the author couldn't make a good book from an awful idea: the idea given was the lost roman legion crossed with Pokemon).
I can also suggest Ready Player one in this category. Ready Player One is essentially geek culture (especially gaming culture) furiously... well, you know. Giving itself one. But it's a fun ride (unlike Armada. But that's another story).
Finally, I can reccomend The Laundry Files. Do you like computing? Do you like lovecraftian nightmares? Go buy these now. The first book is okay, but has a rather nasty problem, sort of: It keeps winking at the audience incessantly. I didn't mind too much, myself, but I know others have been put off by it. Don't worry, the winking lessens to a manageable rate (although never quite fully goes away: after all, this is a series about a CS Student turned Sysadmin turned hunter of unspeakable monstrosities named Bob Oliver Francis Howard. Think about that for a second). And it is one of very few horror series that I have enjoyed. Take that as you will.
osullivjonApr 17, 2019
dyonJan 28, 2011
One thing I fear is that eventually we'll reach a point where a dictatorship will establish itself and be so cruel and effective that it'll represent a permanent power which will dictate until it's own will to govern expires. North Korea seems like a close enough approximation but with the weapons and technology of the modern world it doesn't take that much creativity for a psychopath to imagine a world where that can occur.
Perhaps it's time I re-read Cryptonomicon.
zackhamonOct 11, 2009
LPTSonMay 25, 2008
anveoonMay 22, 2014
classicsnootonJan 20, 2015
sesquonAug 16, 2010
jseligeronApr 25, 2009
* David Leavitt's The Indian Clerk deals extensively with math (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2007/12/14/the-indian-clerk).
* Joel Spolsky's The Best Software Writing isn't fiction but is worth reading.
* I'll reiterate Tom Wolf's The Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full.
* Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is nominally aimed at adolescents, but people of any age can enjoy it.
* Michael Tolkin's The Player is partially about the business of film, as is its sequel, The Return of the Player.
If you're curious about more, send me an e-mail; I write a book blog at http://jseliger.com , and a lot of the reviews/commentaries would probably be of interest to hackerish types.
e12eonAug 8, 2012
I've also enjoyed all of Willam Gibsons books, including the latest trilogy "Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country" and "Zero History".
If you bothered to read through "Cryptonomicon" you'll either love "the Code Book" by Simon Singh more than I did, or hate it :-)
Assuming you've picket through the classics shelf, you might have missed out on Samuel Delany - "The Einstein Intersection" might be a good one to try on for size -- although I actually found "Neveryóna" to be maybe his most interesting book (of the ones I've been able to get hold of) [edit: After "Dhalgren", that is. But I think "Dhalgren" is a bit like Joyce's "Ulysses" -- a classic I haven't gotten around to yet. I spent the better part of ten (10!) years reading through "Dhalgren", picking it up on odd holidays - never loosing touch with the intricate unreality within, readily satisfied after reading a few pages or a chapter -- like nibbling on a choice ham that didn't spoil. It's rather more complex than any of the other books I've listed here].
Also worth mentioning in the "might be overlooked" section is Jerry Pournelle's "Falkenberg's Legion" (republished as "the Prince").
I'm afraid I've been mostly digging through second hand books lately, so the only other semi-recent book I could recommend would be "Broken Angels" by Richard Morgan (technically it's number two in a trilogy -- but I find it stands better on its own).
planetguyonJune 15, 2012
To be honest Cryptonomicon is the only NS book which I really and wholeheartedly recommend. Diamond Age and Anathem are definitely interesting and I'm glad I read them but they have their flaws, Snow Crash comes across as juvenile, and the Baroque Cycle is approximately five hundred pages of a fantastic book bound at random with twelve hundred pages of boring.
vo2maxeronNov 6, 2019
Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol 1-3, by Werner Jaeger
Diary by Witold Gombrowicz
Computer Science: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Sedgewick
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Linux Programming Interface by Michael Kerrisk
Tomie: No Use Escaping by Junji Ito
L’homme aux cercles by Fred Vargas
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong.
The Weird by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
The Federalist Papers, ed. by Kesler
The Anti-Federalist Papers, ed. by Ketcham
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, new translation by John Woods
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman
Loren Eiseley in the Library of America Edition
Tu rostro mañana by Javier Marías
The Complete Essays by Michel De Montaigne, translation by Screech
Earning The Rockies by Kaplan
Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert
Nature Stories by Jules Renard
Mac y su contratiempo by Enrique Vila-Matas
Olinger Stories by John Updike
Greek Science in Antiquity by Marshall Clagett
At The Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell
100 Diagrams That Changed The World by Scott Christianson
Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire by Peter Wilson
Alec "The Years Have Pants" by Eddie Campbell
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
darmokonNov 1, 2016
"When Randy gets back to his cell, he sits crosslegged on his bed with the Walkman and begins dealing out the CDs like cards in a solitaire game. The selection is pretty reasonable: a two-disc set of the Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of Bach organ fugues (nerds have a thing about Bach)"
So I thought 'why not' and got a two-disc set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. And sixteen years later I still listen to it when I'm working and have never tired of it. Great music for focus.
jordan0dayonDec 21, 2011
I'd like to fantasize that there could be a way to use a social network like Facebook with a tool like Ordo -- that is, most the data (photos, in this case) you upload to FB is encrypted, and only people who you've approved can decrypt it. Using steganography this is probably already possible with FB, probably not practical, though.
jfoutzonJune 15, 2012
snow crash was impressive, to me, because of the sheer quantity of new concepts, tightly integrated. Stephenson created a plausible future that dealt with what people would deal with in all conceptual scales, from highfalutin cultural organization of government and religion all the way down to teenagers interests in food and clothing. I feel, he did a pretty great job of avoiding the mundane that's pretty much the same as today, while highlighting stuff that's different, like skate wheels.
Snowcrash is a cartoon, it is a caricature of a future with new stuff. It's not a good book, not like coherent like Vonnegut, or even Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, but it is indeed a window to the future. Neromancer was written on a typewriter, and snowcrash was written in flatland.
aaronbrethorstonJune 19, 2015
It took me maybe a week to read the first 2/3's of the book, and about three weeks to read the last 1/3. In many ways, these two parts feel like completely different books, one of which is significantly better than the other.
Also, I was occasionally distracted at the beginning when snippets of dialog from Anathem were reused in the form of exposition in Seveneves.
But, that said, I think the book is worth reading, especially the first 2/3's.
My personal, quick, rough ranking of Stephenson's bibliography:
Haven't Read
aboweronJune 9, 2020
Banks of course, Use of Weapons is great.
Just hit 51 and finally reading Dune now, so keep that in mind, but would also suggest Cryptonomicon as i have started it several times, put it down and then come back and had to start again several times.... but i find it interesting enough to keep trying!
RetriconNov 22, 2009
criddellonNov 3, 2017
I fare much better if I take notes as I read. I'm starting to think that maybe writing a chapter synopsis after every chapter I read would fix my problem. Plus then I could put them online and maybe get some feedback from other readers.
I'm halfway through Cryptonomicon right now and find myself reading Steve Russillo's page on the book to remind myself what just happened. My brain might not be good enough for passive reading anymore.
Edit: BTW, Russillo's page is a warm reminder to me of what first made me fall in love with the web. Check it out: http://russillosm.com/index.html
acherononMay 15, 2013
nanexcoolonMay 10, 2009
http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/00605...
codetrotteronDec 5, 2018
KineticLensmanonAug 16, 2019
...Spoilers....
the specific near-future tech product that Stephenson suggested in it never happened – he didn’t in 1999 predict ubiquitous smartphones even though they were less than a decade away. In contrast, Reamde still seems ‘right’ but that’s because it doesn’t contain technology predictions.
I downloaded the article to see if see if it also contained predictions, and if so, whether they were accurate. In classic Stephenson style, the article is a long (60 page) discursive essay, so my check might take a while….
stuxnet79onMay 31, 2016
rkroondotnetonFeb 10, 2015
Cryptonomicon I am at about 15 reads (including audio book listens a few more), and maybe a handful for Snow Crash, Anathem and Reamde.
My book of choice for re-reading is Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, by Jeffrey Archer. I must be at 50 re-reads of that now, and I own two first editions. Strange what catches your mind!
bluenose69onMar 12, 2020
Still, I mostly enjoyed reading "Fall, or Dodge n Hell". Not as much as Cryptonomicon, mind you, and less than Seveneves; Anathem is stronger than any of these.
Although I have to work to get past the 100-page chunks that fill his book, it does not put me off reading about a book a year. Quicksilver is on my list, for example.
All of this is to say that he is a flawed writer, but that there is much to be gained by reading his work.
eriknstronNov 16, 2016
For whatever reason I've never heard anyone say this before but that's exactly the experience I had after I went and saw James Cameron's "Avatar" (2009) in 3D at the cinema back when it came out. I think I may have had that same feeling after finishing a couple of books as well -- probably after Catch-22 and after Cryptonomicon -- and likely some other movies too but Avatar is the one that I remember having had that feeling after.
Anyway, thanks for making me aware that others have felt the same way about fiction. Of course, I don't believe that any of my feelings are unique in the way that nobody else has felt the same but I hope you get what I mean. Also, when I say that I remember the feeling, I don't mean mean to say that I still keep wishing I could travel to Pandora or interact with the blue catpeople -- the feeling itself faded within a few hours or days or something like that, but the memory of having had that feeling stuck with me :)
bockrisonApr 25, 2009
On a related note, I recommended Cryptonomicon to a co-worker who was complaining how much she spent on books (she typically buys one hardback per week) and how much storage space she had devoted to books. I lent her my copy of Cryptonomicon and it took her about 4-5 weeks to finish. She was in for a good bit of teasing about the apparent 'quality' of her normal fare. IIRC, the term 'bodice-ripper' was tossed about. ;-)
pragmaticonSep 9, 2011
Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon are great books but each has their own style and you would think it was a different author if you didn't know better.
That's why I like Stephenson so much. He takes a topic and researches it so much that he brings it to life.
Whether he's writing for Wired about expats in South East Asia (which dove tails nicely with Cryptonomicon) or extra dimensional aliens in Anathem, he makes the world come alive and the technology and methodologies clear.
He also makes me laugh out loud. Very few books have done that.
gibspauldingonDec 13, 2018
REAMDE is very good and is also partially set in VR.
Anathem is an interesting exploration of the distant future and alternate universes.
Cryptonomicon has so much going on it's hard to know where to start, but it's a lot of fun.
I was also a big fan of Stranger in a Strange Land! I'll have to check out Scythe and Thunderhead.
acqqonMay 26, 2020
"The British gas masks have a squat round fitting on the front to allow exhalation, which looks exactly like the snout of a pig, and no woman would be caught dead in such a thing if the models in the gas mask posters were not such paragons of high-caste beauty."
But maybe he invented this -- I've never seen a copy of such a poster. (Edit: I've found at last something related, just a photo, not a poster, and a "South African": (1) ) What's certain is that there were mask "issues" around 1918 in the US, at the time of another pandemics:
https://www.history.com/news/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-r...
1) https://www.alamy.com/a-female-of-the-south-african-air-forc...
potatoliciousonDec 12, 2012
Not much, because it's too heavy to use standing up. Or rather, in the usual stand-up use cases (e.g., on a bus, boat, or train) you usually want to one-hand the device, and its weight prevents you from doing so.
> "The amount of time I spend using it while I have to hold it unsupported is minimal."
Is that because tablets naturally don't have "unsupported" use cases, or because the current implementation fulfills said use cases poorly, and therefore you don't use them that way?
> "Do people find the weight of hardcover books difficult to hold for long periods of time?"
While standing or one-handing it? Yes.
> "Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is about twice the weight of The Hobbit."
And how many times have you seen someone reading a book that size on the subway/bus/ferry? ;)
laurentlonApr 24, 2018
hugonJan 2, 2020
Permutation City, by Greg Egan -- a bit of a mind-uploady brain-simluation story. Fairly philosophical, but not impenetrable.
Accelerando, by Charles Stross -- Focused on the technical singularity brought about by increasing computing power. Somewhat cheeky, a little frenetic.
Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin -- Algorithms and game theory plots regarding solving a civilsation-destroying puzzle.
Diaspora, by Greg Egan -- Post-trans-humanist shenanigans.
Other things of note:
Neal Stephenson writes a lot of cyberpunk computer-adjacent fiction. Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon all come to mind. The Baroque Cycle is a fiction series about the beginnings of computation and cryptography. He does have a propensity to navel-gaze though.
Vernor Vinge was a computer science professor. Rainbow's End and The Peace War are worth reading. Anything else he writes is worth reading too, actually.
Anything else by Stross, not just Accelerando, will have a bit of a tech bent to it, but is often not very serious and a bit handwavey.
The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet has an AI character with a backstory that forms a significant chunk of the book, but isn't super computer-sciencey.
fauxfauxpasonJune 15, 2015
The percussionist stands up. "Every radio operator has a distinctive style of keying—we call it his fist. With a bit of practice, our Y Service people can recognize different German operators by their fists—we can tell when one of them has been transferred to a different unit, for example."
and this article by Schneier - Identifying People By Their Writing Style - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/08/identifying_p...
overcastonDec 12, 2016
Regarding Gibson, I only read Neuromancer, and enjoyed the writing. Obviously the concepts were ahead of its time, so reading it much later didn't have the same impact. But neat story.
wrinkl3onSep 21, 2017
I've actually found his last few novels lacking, still struggling to finish The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and REAMDE. I do wish he'd stop trying to reverse-engineer RPG settings and got back to his post-cyberpunk roots.
cstejereanonFeb 7, 2008
losvedironMar 27, 2013
Actually, no, according to Stephenson. From the appendix of my copy of Cryptonomicon:
"It has been pointed out that the word "Cryptonomicon" bears obvious similarities to "Cyphernomicon," which is the title of a Cyperpunk FAQ document by Tim May. This leads to the question: am I committing some form of plagiarism, or rendering homage, or what? The answer, strangely enough, is niether. I was completely unaware of the existence of Tim May's Cyphernomicon at the time I came up with "Cryptonomicon."
paultonOct 11, 2010
pasbesoinonAug 21, 2011
For more recent works, you might like:
There are many "classic" authors and novels. One novel that receives somewhat less attention/accolades, but which I think speaks to some of what you ask, is:
Neal Stephenson' The Diamond Age might also resonate. And while both more "near term" and historical, his Cryptonomicon has some very worthy reflections and speculations.
And I guess I really can't pass up suggesting Carl Sagan's Contact. Superb.
As for films, I'm not the most versed, but the following, more "real" science fiction films come to mind:
P.S. And of course, William Gibson's Neuromancer and, was it the next one or the next two novels? His short story collection, "Burning Chrome", fits well into these two or three.
And as for a certain pragmatic perspective on human psychology, behavior, and possible near term societal/political developments, the classic Heinlein ouvre, while perhaps sexist or interpretable as such, and also in other ways somewhat "archaic", is nonetheless insightful.
Probably not what you're looking for, but now that I've rambled on, there it is.
P.P.S. I found Asimov's original "Robot" trilogy a very insightful allegory for the competing demands of public knowledge and privacy in the modern world. Set aside the robotic aspect, per se, and look at how the different societies lead there lives and social conduct.
laserDinosauronAug 22, 2012
thoughtsimpleonDec 12, 2012
I have to say I've never really understood this complaint. Do people use iPads standing up or something? I have the iPad in my lap or on my chest if reading in bed. The amount of time I spend using it while I have to hold it unsupported is minimal.
The iPad 3&4 weigh about the same as a large hardcover book. Do people find the weight of hardcover books difficult to hold for long periods of time? The Hobbit is about 1.2 pounds, the iPad 4 is about 1.44 pounds. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is about twice the weight of The Hobbit.
alexrsononNov 19, 2013
There's a scene in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson which is similar to this problem. The protagonist is in jail with a laptop which has the location of treasure on it encrypted by a WWII Enigma machine. However, the bad guys can see his screen at all times, so he needs to write the code to crack the cipher without looking at the data. I won't spoil how he does it because I recommend reading the book.
roryokaneonSep 1, 2009
dredmorbiusonDec 31, 2013
As for things to read: I'm generally interested in, well, a lot of things, but crypto, security, organizational and national aspects of both, and the like. Schneier's Cryptography and his more recent works (most of which focus increasingly on human factors), comp.risks, The Art of War, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, random linkage through Wikipedia (highly underrated). Actually, for that last, I should probably write intentional linkage. Find some topic you're interested in, search for a few base articles, and follow the links out to other related aspects. Particularly case studies / people, and the like.
If you're going to study WWII, I have to recommend Daniel Yergin's The Prize (either the book or the video series, I've viewed the latter and confess only skimmed through bits of the former, it's voluminous). The relationship of oil to the events of the 20th century simply cannot be overstated.
touisteuronAug 23, 2020
Yes, I earned the downvotes, have at it.
Anyway this made me want to read Cryptonomicon for the 5th time and gift it to some younguns.
linsomniaconSep 25, 2018
reverttsonAug 8, 2009
I've been meaning to read Godel, Escher, Bach (Hofstadter) for awhile now, but I'm not sure if/when I'll get around to it. Next on my list are some introductory number theory texts.
omouseonJune 15, 2007
http://ask.metafilter.com/47531/What-would-be-a-good-way-to-calculate-fuckyou-money
This is an allusion to a Randy/Avi conversation of two years ago wherein Avi actually calculated a specific numerical value for "fuck-you money." It was not a fixed constant, however, but rather a cell in a spreadsheet linked to any number of continually fluctuating economic indicators. Sometimes when Avi is working at his computer he will leave the spreadsheet running in a tiny window in the corner so that he can see the current value of "fuck-you money" at a glance.
I would say it's only depressing if you don't plan on working hard.
jseligeronOct 12, 2009
These books are worth reading immediately:
1. Lord of the Rings
2. All the King’s Men
3. High Fidelity
4. Get Shorty
5. Cryptonomicon
6. Almost anything by Robertson Davies, though I recommend starting with The Deptford Trilogy and skipping The Salterton Trilogy
angrygoatonApr 15, 2017
I remember getting a borrowed 19" Sony CRT running at some insane resolution for the time, probably 1280x1024, and hearing that worrying thunk changing modes, then reading this book and reconsidering the wisdom of my custom modelines..
onosendaionSep 19, 2011
calebmonDec 22, 2016
2. Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
3. The Fellowship of the Ring (J. R. R. Tolkien)
4. The Sin of Certainty (Peter Enns)
5. The Bible Tells Me So (Peter Enns)
6. Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations
7. Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
8. Elantris (Brandon Sanderson)
9. A Wild Sheep Chase (Haruki Murakami)
10. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami)
11. Freedom TM (Daniel Suarez)
12. Lightning (Dean Koontz)
13. Daemons (Daniel Suarez)
14. Foundation and Earth (Isaac Asimov)
15. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
16. Fear and Loathing in Las Veges (Hunter S. Thompson)
17. Foundation's Edge (Isaac Asimov)
18. The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)
19. Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
20. Tortilla Flat (John Steinbeck)
21. The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
bockrisonFeb 26, 2009
Side note.
Neal Stephenson wrote the Baroque Cycle out long hand. This post (http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/01/the-entire-terr.html) was from last month ago but I also remember 3 other pictures from several years ago.
http://www.nealstephenson.com/photos.htm
I was completely dumbfounded when I first saw that stack of paper because I can barely manage to write a one line note to my wife without scratching something out. To undertake something as large as the Baroque cycle trilogy is really beyond my comprehension.
I don't know if he wrote Cryptonomicon this way also but my first edition is full of typos. Something I imagine could happen if you turn over several hundred hand written pages with edits to a typist.
viraptoronMay 4, 2013