Honestly after reading a fair bit of non-fiction about Bletchley, enigma and code breaking, I found found these early sections fairly tedious, but for someone new to the subject it should be very interesting. I could have done without the efforts to dumb down cryptomaths concepts with analogies, like the multi-page epic about the bike chain. I was familiar with the maths on a deeper level so found it boring, and I imagine people who don't care about the maths were also bored, so lose-lose.
Randy's description of Silicon Valley startups, writing templated business plans, machinations by venture capitalists, and socially inept millionaires wearing medic alert bracelets with cryogenic freezing instructions, was great. Here's a business plan template, should you need it:
INTRODUCTION: [This trend], which everyone knows about, and [that trend], which is so incredibly arcane that you probably didn't know about it until just now, and [this other trend over here] which might seem, at first blush, to be completely unrelated, when all taken together, lead us to the (proprietary, secret, heavily patented, trademarked, and NDAed) insight that we could increase shareholder value by [doing stuff]. We will need $ [a large number] and after [not too long] we will be able to realize an increase in value to $ [an even larger number] unless [hell freezes over in midsummer].I also really enjoyed Shaftoe's belligerence at future President Ronald Reagan's attempts to romanticize his combat experience for the purpose of propaganda (interestingly Reagan was actually assigned to PR for Army Air Force in WWII).
As the novel moved away from the familiar Bletchley Park territory I found myself enjoying it more and more, and the technical cred is impressive (with a couple of minor exceptions that irked me). Bruce Schneier wrote the Solitaire crypto algorithm, used by Enoch Root in the novel, as a genuine attempt to provide the world with a method of encryption that can be used without any incriminating tools. Apparently there is some bias, but you could do a lot worse. There's even a perl implementation in the novel text.
Stephenson does a great job of portraying crypto and network nerds with different character traits, most of which fall somewhere on the autistic spectrum. This is Shaftoe realising that crypto-genius Waterhouse is a third category of man that doesn't fit into his talker/do-er model of the world.
Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way form men who believe that speaking is a waste of time. Bobby Shaftoe has learned most of his practical knowledge - how to fix a car, butcher a deer, throw a spiral, talk to a lady, kill a Nip - from the latter type of man....but Waterhouse's conversation doesn't go anywhere in particular. He speaks, not as a way of telling you a bunch of stuff he's already figured out, but as a way of making up a bunch of new shit as he goes along. And he always seems to be hoping that you'll join in.and this is very true:
What I'm saying is that this does set me apart. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.and more from the book of nerd:
Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.Lots of reviewers complained about the ending, and multitude of plot dead-ends, but I think both were fine. The dead-ends are hardly unexpected in a work this large, and tidying them all up would be incredibly tedious. So I was won over, great read. I'll leave you with this public service announcement:
Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable from - self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.4.5 stars
