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.[1]
The Cryptonomicon referred to in the novel, described as a "cryptographer's bible," is a fictional book summarizing mankind's knowledge of cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Rudolf "Rudy" von Hacklheber, a non-Nazi German mathematician and cryptographer, who spent time attending Princeton University, where he befriended Waterhouse and Turing.
Earl Comstock, a US Army officer, who eventually founds the NSA.
Julieta Kivistik, a Finnish woman who assists some of the WWII characters when they find themselves stranded in Sweden, and who later gives birth to a baby boy (Günter Enoch Bobby Kivistik) whose father is uncertain.
?Uncle? Otto Kivistik, Julieta's Finnish uncle, who runs a successful smuggling ring between neutral Sweden, Finland, and the USSR during WWII.
Mary cCmndhd (pronounced "Smith"), a Qwghlmian expatriate living in Australia, who catches the attention of Lawrence Waterhouse while he is stationed in Brisbane.
Glory Altamira, a nursing student and Bobby Shaftoe's Filipina lover. She becomes a member of the Philippine resistance movement during the Japanese occupation. Mother of Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe.
Historical figures
Fictionalized versions of several historical figures appear in the WWII storyline:
Alan Turing, the cryptographer and computer scientist, is a colleague and friend of Lawrence Waterhouse and sometime lover of Rudy von Hacklheber.
Douglas MacArthur, the famed U.S. Army general, who takes a central role toward the end of the WWII timeline.
Karl Dönitz, Großadmiral of the Kriegsmarine, is never actually seen as a character but issues orders to his U-Boats, including the one captained by Bischoff. Bischoff threatens to reveal information about hidden war gold unless Dönitz rescinds an order to sink his submarine.
Hermann Göring, who appears extensively in the recollections of Rudy von Hacklheber as Rudy recounts how Göring tried recruiting him as a cryptographer for the Nazis: Rudy delivers an intentionally weakened system, reserving the full system for the use of the conspiracy among the characters to locate hidden gold.
Future President Ronald Reagan is depicted during his wartime service as an officer in the US Army Air Corps Public Relations branch's 1st Motion Picture Unit. He attempts to film an interview with the recuperating and morphine-addled Bobby Shaftoe, who spoils the production with his account of a giant lizard attack and his harsh criticism of General MacArthur.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's 1943 death at the hands of U.S. Army fighter aircraft during Operation Vengeance over Bougainville Island fills an entire chapter. During his fateful flight, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy's Combined Fleet reflects upon the failures and hubris of his Imperial Army counterparts, who persistently underestimate the cunning and ferocity of their Allied opponents in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. As his damaged transport plane completes its terminal descent, Yamamoto realizes that all of the Japanese military codes have been broken, which explains why he is "on fire and hurtling through the jungle at a hundred miles per hour in a chair, closely pursued by tons of flaming junk."
Albert Einstein brushes off a young Lawrence Waterhouse's request for advice. During his year of undergraduate study at Princeton, Waterhouse periodically wanders the halls of the Institute for Advanced Study, randomly asking mathematicians (whose names he never remembers) for advice on how to make intricate calculations for his "sprocket question," which is how he eventually meets Turing.
Modern-day storyline
The precise date of this storyline is not established, but the ages of characters and the technologies described suggest that it is set in the late 1990s, at approximately the same time as the publication of the novel.
Randall "Randy" Lawrence Waterhouse, grandson of Lawrence and Mary Waterhouse (née cCmndhd) and an expert systems and network administrator with the Epiphyte(2) corporation.
Avi Halaby, Randy's business partner in Epiphyte(2), of which he is the CEO.
America "Amy" Shaftoe, Doug Shaftoe's daughter who has moved from the U.S. to live with Doug in the Philippines, who becomes Randy's love interest.
Hubert Kepler, aka "The Dentist," Randy and Avi's business rival.
Eberhard Föhr, a member of Epiphyte(2) and an expert in biometrics.
John Cantrell, a member of Epiphyte(2), a libertarian who is an expert in cryptography and who wrote the fictional cryptography program Ordo.
Tom Howard, a member of Epiphyte(2), a libertarian and firearms enthusiast who is an expert in large computer installations.
Charlene, an academic and Randy's girlfriend at the beginning of the novel, who later moves in with Dr. Günter Enoch Bobby Kivistik.
Andrew Loeb, a former friend and now enemy of Randy's, a survivalist and neo-Luddite whose lawsuits destroyed Randy and Avi's first start-up, and who at the time of the novel works as a lawyer for Hubert Kepler.
Both storylines
Goto Dengo, a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army, subsequently an engineer in the Japanese Army and involved in a Japanese wartime project to bury looted gold in the Philippines. Later (in the modern-day storyline) a successful businessman in the Japanese construction sector who becomes an ally of Epiphyte(2).
Wing, a wartime Chinese slave of the Japanese in the Philippines and later a general in the present-day Chinese army. Wing is the only other survivor besides Goto Dengo of the Japanese gold burial project, and he competes with Goto and Epiphyte(2) to recover the buried treasure.
Douglas MacArthur Shaftoe (named after General Douglas MacArthur), Robert Shaftoe's and Glory Altamira's half-Filipino, half-American son. He is introduced near the end of the WWII storyline where his father briefly meets him as a toddler. In the modern-day storyline he is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, who lives in the Philippines and operates an underwater survey business with his daughter Amy, conducting treasure hunts on the side.
Dr. Günter Enoch Bobby "G.E.B." Kivistik is introduced in the modern storyline as a smug, Oxford-educated liberal-arts professor from Yale who recruits, and later seduces, Randy Waterhouse's girlfriend, Charlene. In the WWII storyline he is the infant son of Julieta Kivistik and one of three possible fathers (hence his unusual name). His is a minor character in Cryptonomicon, but both his [impending] birth and his participation in Charlene's "War as Text" conference catalyze major plot developments.
Technical content
Portions of Cryptonomicon are notably complex and may be considered somewhat difficult by the non-technical reader. Several pages are spent explaining in detail some of the concepts behind cryptography and data storage security, including a description of Van Eck phreaking, as an example.
He also describes computers using a fictional operating system, Finux. The name is a thinly-veiled reference to Linux, a kernel originally written by Finland native Linus Torvalds. Stephenson changed the name so as not to be creatively constrained by the technical details of Linux-based operating systems.[2]
Allusions/references from other works
Stephenson's subsequent work, The Baroque Cycle, provides part of the backstory to the characters and events featured in Cryptonomicon. An excerpt of Quicksilver, Volume One of The Baroque Cycle, is included in later prints of the Mass Market Paperback edition.
The Baroque Cycle, set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, features ancestors of several characters in Cryptonomicon, as well as events and items 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" appears to take 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.
Literary significance and criticism
Despite the technical detail, the book drew praise from both Stephenson's science fiction fan base and literary critics and buyers.[3][4]
Translations into other languages: Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish. The French and Spanish translations divide the book into three volumes. The Japanese translation divides the book into four volumes.
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