Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II–era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency, with a long-term objective to distribute Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod (HEAP) media for instructing genocide-target populations on defensive warfare.

Genre and subject matter

Cryptonomicon is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Isoroku Yamamoto, Karl Dönitz, Hermann Göring, and Ronald Reagan, as well as some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, with discussions of prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and Van Eck phreaking.

Title

According to Stephenson, the title is a play on Necronomicon, the title of a book mentioned in the stories of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft: "I wanted to give it a title a 17th-century book by a scholar would be likely to have. And that's how I came up with Cryptonomicon. I've heard the word Necronomicon bounced around. I haven't actually read the Lovecraft books, but clearly it's formed by analogy to that." The novel's Cryptonomicon, described as a "cryptographer's bible", is a fictional book summarizing America's knowledge of cryptography and cryptanalysis. Begun by John Wilkins (the Cryptonomicon is mentioned in Quicksilver) and amended over time by William Friedman, Lawrence Waterhouse, and others, the Cryptonomicon is described by Katherine Hayles as "a kind of Kabala created by a Brotherhood of Code that stretches across centuries. To know its contents is to qualify as a Morlock among the Eloi, and the elite among the elite are those gifted enough actually to contribute to it."

Plot

The action takes place in two periods—World War II and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom and the Asian financial crisis. In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young United States Navy code breaker and mathematical savant, is assigned to the newly formed joint British and American Detachment 2702. This ultra-secret unit's role is to hide the fact that Allied intelligence has cracked the German Enigma code. The detachment stages events, often behind enemy lines, that provide alternative explanations for the Allied intelligence successes. United States Marine sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, a veteran of China and Guadalcanal, serves in unit 2702, carrying out Waterhouse's plans. At the same time, Japanese soldiers, including mining engineer Goto Dengo, a "friendly enemy" of Shaftoe's, are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains in the Philippines as part of what turns out to be a literal suicide mission. Circa 1997, Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson) joins his old role-playing game companion Avi Halaby in a new startup, providing Pinoy-grams (inexpensive, non-real-time video messages) to migrant Filipinos via new fiber-optic cables. The Epiphyte Corporation uses this income stream to fund the creation of a data haven in the nearby fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Vietnam veteran Doug Shaftoe, the son of Bobby Shaftoe, and his daughter Amy do the undersea surveying for the cables and engineering work on the haven, which is overseen by Goto Furudenendu, heir-apparent to Goto Engineering. Complications arise as figures from the past reappear seeking gold or revenge.

Characters

World War II storyline

Fictional characters

Historical figures

Fictionalized versions of several historical figures appear in the World War II storyline:

1990s storyline

The precise date of this storyline is not established, but the ages of characters, the technologies described, and certain date-specific references suggest that it is set in the late 1990s, at the time of the internet boom and the Asian financial crisis.

Both storylines

Technical content

Portions of Cryptonomicon contain large amounts of exposition. Several pages are spent explaining in detail some of the concepts behind cryptography and data storage security, including a description of Van Eck phreaking.

Cryptography

Pontifex Cipher

In the book, a playing-card based cipher called Pontifex is used. At Stephenson's request, Bruce Schneier developed such a cipher, calling it Solitaire, and a precise description of Solitaire is included as an appendix. Solitaire was cryptanalyzed in 1999.

One-time pad

Several of the characters in the book communicate with each other through the use of one-time pads. A one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that requires a single-use pre-shared key of at least the same length as the encrypted message. The story posits a variation of the OTP technique wherein there is no pre-shared key - the key is instead generated algorithmically.

Software

Finux

He also describes computers using a fictional operating system, Finux. The name is a thinly veiled reference to Linux, a kernel originally written by the Finnish native Linus Torvalds. Stephenson changed the name so as not to be creatively constrained by the technical details of Linux-based operating systems.

Other technology

Allusions and references from other works

An excerpt from Cryptonomicon was originally published in the short story collection Disco 2000, edited by Sarah Champion and published in 1998. Stephenson's subsequent work, a trio of novels dubbed The Baroque Cycle, provides part of the deep backstory to the characters and events featured in Cryptonomicon. Set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the novels feature ancestors of several characters in Cryptonomicon, as well as events and objects which affect the action of the later-set book. The subtext implies the existence of secret societies or conspiracies, and familial tendencies and groupings found within those darker worlds. The short story "Jipi and the Paranoid Chip" takes place some time after the events of Cryptonomicon. In the story, the construction of the Crypt has triggered economic growth in Manila and Kinakuta, in which Goto Engineering, and Homa/Homer Goto, a Goto family heir, are involved. The IDTRO ("Black Chamber") is also mentioned. Stephenson's 2019 novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, a sequel to Reamde (2011), reveals that Fall, Reamde, Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle are all set in the same fictional universe, with references to the Waterhouse, Shaftoe and Hacklheber families, as well as Societas Eruditorum and Epiphyte Corporation. Two "Wise" entities from The Baroque Cycle also appear in Fall, including Enoch Root. Peter Thiel states in his book Zero to One that Cryptonomicon was required reading during the early days of PayPal.

Literary significance and criticism

According to critic Jay Clayton, the book is written for a technical or geek audience. Despite the technical detail, the book drew praise from both Stephenson's science fiction fan base and literary critics and buyers. In Clayton's book Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture (2003), he calls Stephenson's book the "ultimate geek novel" and draws attention to the "literary-scientific-engineering-military-industrial-intelligence alliance" that produced discoveries in two eras separated by fifty years, World War II and the Internet age. In July 2012, io9 included the book on its list of "10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read".

Awards and nominations

Editions