Cryptonomicon
Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the US Navy - is assigned to Detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detachment 2702 - commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe - is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces. Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine that holds
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Cryptonomicon
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Two timelines twine: in WWII, codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse and Marine Bobby Shaftoe work to hide that Allied cryptographers have cracked Enigma. In the late 1990s, their grandsons build an offshore data haven.
Cryptonomicon was written by Neal Stephenson and published in 1999. It is widely considered one of his major works alongside Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Anathem.
Yes. Cryptonomicon is over 900 pages with long technical digressions on cryptography, mathematics, and World War II logistics, plus a dual-timeline structure. It is rewarding for readers who enjoy detail-rich technical fiction but demanding for casual readers.
Cryptonomicon is 864 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Cryptonomicon takes most readers 13 to 19 hours to finish.
Cryptonomicon is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
Cryptonomicon is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.