Cryptonomicon is a novel written by Neal Stephenson. Though not explicitly a part of The Baroque Cycle, it shares a number of themes, locations, and characters.
Significance of the title[]
The book is named after the book in the novel, "a cryptographer's bible" that contains much about cryptography and cryptanalysis. The name is a play on "Necronomicon", the title of a book mentioned in a number of horror stories written by H. P. Lovecraft. Stephenson claims to have chosen "Cryptonomicon" to make the book sound like something a 17th-century scholar would be likely to have.[1]
Book Covers[]
Dedication[]
The book is dedicated to Stephenson's grandfather Seymour Town Stephenson, "who flew kites from battleships."
Epigraphs[]
The start of the book contains two epigraphs, the first is by Alan Türing:
"There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography is very easily dealt with by discrete machinery, physics not so easily."
The second epigraph is a passage from the March 4, 1996 edition of the New York Times:
This morning [Imelda Marcos] offered the latest in a series of explanations of the billions of dollars that she and her husband, who died in 1989, are believed to have stolen during his presidency.
"It so coincided that Marcos had money," she said. "After the Bretton Woods agreement he started buying gold from Fort Knox. Three thousand tons, then 4,000 tons. I have documents for these: 7,000 tons. Marcos was so smart. He had it all. It's funny; America didn't understand him."
Chapters[]
The book consists of a prologue, 102 chapters and an appendix. See: Cryptonomicon/Chapters.
Relation to The Baroque Cycle[]
James Wilkins is the author of a book called Cryptonomicon, which is a manual for cryptography, referenced in various places within the Cycle. In seeming disgust for having contributed to a method for concealing knowledge, Wilkins attempts to create a Philosophickal Language to disseminate it instead. Nevertheless, cryptography and secret messages play an important role throughout the Cycle.
In real history, Wilkins wrote a manual of cryptography (not using the name Cryptonomicon) as well as attempting to create a universal language, although not at the times depicted in the Cycle.
External links[]
Notes[]
- ↑ "Neal Stephenson: Cryptomancer." Locus, August 1999