Stephenson's publisher, Avon Books, hopes that the much-anticipated 918-page work will propel him from cult worship to mainstream acceptance. Stephenson also manages to drop in cameo appearances from some historical figures that you would not normally associate with each other, such as Alan Turing, General Douglas MacArthur, Lieutenant Ronald Reagan, and Hermann Goering.The author, who became an underground hero and Wired magazine cover boy thanks to cyber-novels such as 'Snow Crash' and 'The Diamond Age,' is in the Bay Area on a promotional tour for his latest novel, 'Cryptonomicon.' He touches on everything from the impact of Allied code breaking during World War II, to the importance of Dudgeons & Dragons to modern-day geeks, to the jaw-dropping complexities of twentieth-century banking, to the necessity and procedures for getting the correct ratio of milk to Cap’n Crunch kernels in your morning cereal, to the horrors experienced by soldiers and civilians in the Philippines during WWII, to the significance of cryptological systems in our state-of-the-art world, to the excitement of a present-day treasure hunt, and, most importantly, to the beauty of family ties across numerous generations. Stephenson uses Cryptonomicon as his personal petri dish to explore some wide-ranging ideas. Reamde (2011) – A modern-day hacker novel that touches upon many of the same themes as Cryptonomicon.

The Baroque Cycle (2003) – A three-volume collection of historical fiction that weaves in some old-school hackers like Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and whose fictional characters are related to the characters in Cryptonomicon.

Snow Crash (1992) – A classic in the cyber punk genre.

There is something for everyone here, and you owe yourself the pleasure of finding your favorite part. You will be fed cyber security history, rollicking adventure, heartbreaking tragedy, the pleasures and perils of a multigenerational family, and the awkwardness of several geek love stories all told from the hacker perspective. You do not skim through this looking for the good parts, but if you take the time to savor the journey, you will not be disappointed.

The result is a multigenerational treasure hunt worthy of an Indiana Jones adventure, but unlike Indiana Jones, this is not a light read. His collection of fictional and nonfictional characters orbits each other across a thousand pages and propels the reader through dual timelines of World War II and the dot-com startup decade of the 1990s. Stephenson delights in explaining how all of these things go together. The author, Neal Stephenson, describes a story that is set around the intersection between the discovery of world-changing math insights and the incipient designs of our computer science founding fathers. Cryptonomicon is the quintessential hacker novel.

Stephenson neal cryptonomicon