Authors: Neal Stephenson
Tags: #Literature, #U.S.A., #American Literature, #21st Century, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #v.5, #Amazon.com, #Retail
Neal Stephenson:
It’s obvious that modern folks, crypto-entrepreneurs and otherwise, lack heroic purpose. It is obvious to us and it is obvious to Randy. Randy ruminates in several places about how he and his comrades all seem like wimps and losers compared to the WWII generation.
You didn’t have a lot of time to spend gazing at your navel back in the ’40s — no hang-ups about “Am I doing the right thing?” And even if you did have hang-ups, chances are that someone was giving you direct orders and not leaving you much choice in the matter. So, yeah, it’s amazing to read about that era and see these people decisively going off and putting everything into accomplishing certain goals.
Whereas now the fashionable way to be is to have a kind of cool, jaded sort of ennui. Which is understandable, but it does make a lot of people now seem kind of
pallid compared to the people who lived in the ‘40s. And it’s almost worse for us that that generation is so cool about it, so matter-of-fact: “Oh, yeah, well, we had to, you know, defeat evil. So we went and did that. Not much to say, really.”
On the other hand, in World War II, or one of those wars, they had a saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. I think the modern equivalent of that is that there are no jaded, bored people in the high-tech industry, in the land of really good hardcore geeks. They all have a kind of intensity about what they’re doing that makes it impossible for them to be bored or passionless. They are pretty driven, and they get a lot of joy from what they do, and it comes through, I think.
Reporter:
So to return to the original question, “Why crypto?” and to your point about not trying to set an agenda, the fact is that the reader is aware in
Cryptonomicon
of some very large things at stake involving science and technology, and that there’s also some significant history here. And we are talking about a book, after all, that has some equations in it.
Neal Stephenson:
To me it seems like there is a kind of a strange denial in a lot of our culture about just how important science and technology have been this century. There’s just an unwillingness to come to grips with it at all. I don’t deprecate people who feel that way, but I do think that at the end of a century like this one it’s not the end of the world if you toss an equation into a work of art.
As to history, the more I thought about the future of computing the more interesting it was to consider the history of it. This is true not only in computing but in a lot of areas. Maybe we could have known more about what was going to happen in the Balkans if we’d paid more attention to the history there. I started feeling the need to put things in a longer historical context, and to find the people whom today we’d call hackers.
It is not difficult to find hacker-types in history — Archimedes; and even in mythology — Daedalus. Certain ancient cities, such as Alexandria and Syracuse, seemed to attract them. But in previous centuries, hackers had to build physical contraptions in order to realize their ideas. Computers changed this by making it possible for hackers to build functioning mechanisms (i.e., computer programs) out of words.
Reporter:
And central to
Cryptonomicon
is the protection of those mechanisms and their products — while also distributing the mechanism and the product.
Neal Stephenson:
That’s the basic contradiction I’m trying to deal with here. There’s always been this duality between secrecy and openness. The digital computer as we have it today was born in the attempt to deal with codes, to go into these impenetrable messages and bring back the information. In that time the codes that we were breaking were to us a sinister force. We had to break these codes or the bad guys were going to take everything over. Now, the computer is all about openness and spreading information to every corner of the world. But at the same time, we’re finding that the more we do that, the more we are perceiving a need to encrypt our stuff, to keep it out of the hands of the bad guys.
Reporter:
Are there any hidden messages in the novel itself?
Neal Stephenson:
No. I kept playing with the idea of putting that stuff in there, but it just didn’t come together; I just didn’t have the energy. Novels are hard enough to interpret sanely, especially a novel like this, without putting an encrypted message in there. Novels are kind of an encrypted message to begin with.
~
Sources:
Amazon.com; Cryptonomicon.com;
Guardian Unlimited
(Jim McClellan, reporter);
Locus Online
;
The Onion
’s AV Club (John Krewson, reporter); Salon.com (Andrew Leonard, reporter);
SF Site
(Catherine Asaro, reporter). See
Editor’s Note
for complete source details.
“Stephensonia/Cryptonomica” was prepared by the editorial staff of HarperCollins for the first e-book publication of
Cryptonomicon
(May 2003). This section combines statements from several sources, listed
below
, that were made by Neal Stephenson during the months following
Cryptonomicon
’s hardcover publication in 1999.
To enhance the general reader’s experience of this text, a statement’s source is not directly noted, ellipses are not indicated, some material has been re-ordered within a given passage, and there has been some light editing. Those with a scholarly motive for examining this section are advised to seek out the original materials.
In May 2003 the sources for these statements were posted as listed
below
. HarperCollins makes no guarantees, of course, that these links remain live. All text quoted is a direct statement by Neal Stephenson, and so is held in copyright by him.
“
Cryptonomicon
Cypher-FAQ”
by Neal Stephenson: http://www.well.com/user/neal/cypherFAQ.html
“Mother Earth Motherboard”
by Neal Stephenson:
Wired
, Issue 4.12, December 1996; http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html
“Press Conference”
(NB, reporters are named and interview dates are included if cited by the publication itself at the URL listed):
Amazon.com: “Neal Stephenson Decodes
Cryptonomicon
”: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ts/feature/11674/103-9956981-9521468
Cryptonomicon.com: “A Talk with Neal Stephenson,” April 19, 1999: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/chat.html
Guardian Unlimited
: “Neal Stephenson’s Message in Code,” October 14, 1999; Jim McClellan, reporter: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,256309,00.html
Locus Online
: “Neal Stephenson: Cryptomancer,” August 1999: http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html
The Onion
’s AV Club: “Neal Stephenson,” May 27, 1999; John Krewson, reporter: http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3520/avfeature3520.html
Salon.com: “Deep Code,” May 19, 1999; Andrew Leonard, reporter: http://archive.salon.com/books/int/1999/05/19/stephenson/print.html
SF Site
: “A Conversation with Neal Stephenson,” September 1999; Catherine Asaro, reporter: http://www.sfsite.com/10b/ns67.htm
“
CRYPTONOMICON
is great news. For many readers, the prospect of getting lost in a thousand pages of Stephenson’s intoxicating, roller-coaster prose will far outweigh the risk of getting compressed disks from carting the beast around… This is a big book, and so its themes are fittingly big… [It] provides the clearest vision yet of why people who care about cryptography care so very much about it, and why the people who fight it… are so frightened of its potential.”
Washington Post Book World
“Heady stuff… a surprisingly brisk read… suffused in an atmosphere of paranoia and deception…
CRYPTONOMICON
is actually two books in one: a historical spy thriller, and a present-day thriller involving hackers and the Internet… a cross between the conspiracy-laden ‘hidden history’ fiction of Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon, and the fast-paced thrillers of Michael Crichton.”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Combines the best elements of espionage fiction with a geek-chic sensibility… The editors recommend
CRYPTONOMICON
.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Amazing… eminently readable…
CRYPTONOMICON
is a huge, sprawling, breezy book that encompasses both the WW (World War II) and the WWW (World Wide Web).”
Seattle Times
“Electrifying… hilarious… a sprawling, picaresque novel about code making and code breaking… [Stephenson] cares as much about telling good stories as he does about farming out cool ideas… His gargantuan novel is distinct from the other outsized slabs of post-modern fiction we’ve seen recently—David Foster Wallace’s
Infinite Jest,
Don DeLillo’s
Underworld,
Thomas Pynchon’s
Mason & Dixon.
For all the pleasures scattered throughout those books, they’re dry, somewhat forbidding epics…
CRYPTONOMICON
, on the other hand, is a wet epic… It wants to blow your mind while keeping you fed and happy.”
The New York Times Book Review
“Stephenson makes a bid for mainstream relevance with this
Infinite Jest
-size tome… Don’t write off his novel as just another fast-paced, find-the-MacGuffin techno thriller. It’s an engrossing look at the way the flow of information shapes history—as well as a rare glimpse into the soul of the hardcore geek. Rating: A.”
Entertainment Weekly
“The hacker Hemingway… When it comes to depicting the nerd mind-set, no one tops Stephenson…
CRYPTONOMICON
is the most ambitious [novel], a Pynchonesque tour de force with a David Foster Wallace playfulness… a rambling and revelatory meditation on cryptography with digressions on dental surgeons, fiber-optic cables, and the proper way to consume Cap’n Crunch cereal… The tech set will devour it, of course… but its ambition, style, and depth might well win over newbies, too.”
Newsweek
“Ambitious… hilarious… powerful… memorable…
CRYPTONOMICON
promises and irrevocably delivers.”
The Village Voice
“Big, complex, and ambitious, the new cyber-thriller from the talented author of
Snow Crash
and
The Diamond Age
calls to mind Thomas Pynchon’s
Gravity’s Rainbow
in its intense, paranoid evocation of conspiracies and secret histories… This fast-paced, genre-transcending novel is full of absorbing action, witty dialogue, and well-drawn characters… the first volume in what promises to be the most extravagant literary creation of the turn of the millennium—and beyond.”
Publishers Weekly
(*Starred Review*)
“A story with scope and complexity… This best-selling epic contains its share of gripping battle scenes—not to mention Filipino treasure hunters, Cap’n Crunch-eating computer hackers, a young Ronald Reagan, and a stash of Nazi war gold.”
Chicago Tribune
“A magnum opus, a powerfully imagined story revolving around World War II codes, a vast conspiracy affecting history, and different generations in one family who attempt to unravel its secrets.”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Stephenson’s new book proves he is the rarest of geniuses.”
New York Post
“This great fat volume should be read and reread and passed along because it’s stuffed full of clever, ironic, mordant, and flat-out hilarious writing… It’s a multithematic paean to engineering, scientific and technological literacy, where readers get rewarded for knowing about Magic and microcode and the U.S. Marines instead of for spotting references to Milton.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A sprawling, densely woven tale bridging the recent history of codes and code breakers with a near-future where citizens’ data need a haven from prying governments.”
Boston Herald
“Startlingly original… Imagine Tom Clancy turning to cyberpunk and you have some idea of its broad potential appeal… Stephenson mixes historical and contemporary settings, handling both with great skill, as he presents a large cast of vividly imagined characters… and makes both the tale’s technologies and its conspiracies highly believable… This is a book that should be bought for the sake of saying that you have it and read, however long it takes, for the pleasure and intellectual stimulation it is likely to give to most readers.”
Booklist
“Compulsively readable (with the Read This Part Out Loud alarm sounding every few pages), very smart, very funny, and just as often very grim… It feels something like
Catch-22
reworked by Thomas Pynchon, with dashes of Vonnegut and Tom Wolfe.”
Locus