Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

Two epic stories told in tandem of men who spent WWII as cryptoanalysts and their descendant’s quest to set up a data haven in South East Asia, and seeking out the buried war gold to underwrite their venture.


Although this book was a hard read, with a lot of time spent on explaining encrypting codes and discussing formulas (some with great humour), you can’t put it down. Once I had read the first 100 pages and realized how the story was going to develop, I had to go back and re-read those 100 pages as it’s not immediately obvious who these characters are going to become.

Cryptonomicon is the name given to a fictitious file of papers detailing the encrypting and breaking of various codes. Lawrence Waterhouse is one of very few people who (once his ability in recognizing codes is discovered after he was injured in the attack on Pearl Harbour) can actually improve and add to this file. His descendant Randy Waterhouse is an employee of Epiphyte (2) who is attempting to set up The Crypt for anonymous and unregulated data storage – a data haven - in the fictitious sultanate of Kinakatu. In his dealings with Semper Marine who are laying their data cables in the Philipines, and secretly searching for lost war WWII treasure, he comes across a briefcase in a sunken Nazi V-Million Submarine that says “Waterhouse – Lavender Rose”.

The WWII story line follows the fortunes of the following characters until the sinking of the V-Million submarine:

Lawrence Waterhouse, Alan Turing and Rudy von Hacklheber, once friends at Princeton and now involved in Cryptanalysis for their respective countries. Enoch Root, a mysterious priest and member of the Societas Eruditorum. Bobby Shaftoe a haiku loving US Marine. Goto Dengo, a Japanese military Engineer forced to build ‘Golgotha’ in the Filipino jungle to hide the Japanese war gold during WWII and who returns with Waterhouse’s grandson - Randy, and Bobby Shaftoe’s son and grand daughter to recover it. Wing, a Chinese slave working under Goto Dengo in WWII (and the only other survivor from that project) competes against Goto Dengo and Epiphyte (2) in this quest.

The only criticism I can give this novel is the use of the fictitious Inner and Outer Qwghlm, the language and name pronunciations relating to this. cCmndhd apparently is pronounced Smith. I thought this was ridiculous but these islands, apparently loosely based on the New Hebrides, have been used in other works.

About the Author

Neal Stephenson was born Hallowe’en 1959, and graduated from Boston Universitey with a BA in Geography and a minor in Physics. He was first published in 1984 with The Big U. Cryptonomicon was published in 1999.