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List:       cryptography
Subject:    Hiro Cypherpunk
From:       Robert Hettinga <rah () shipwright ! com>
Date:       1999-03-26 0:58:55
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--- begin forwarded text


Resent-Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 18:25:11 -0500
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 1999 15:22:15 -0800 (PST)
From: Christopher Allen <callen@efn.org>
To: testarne@cc.gatech.edu
cc: wear-hard@haven.org
Subject: Re: SF books
Resent-From: wear-hard@haven.org
Resent-Sender: wear-hard-request@haven.org

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999 testarne@cc.gatech.edu wrote:

>
> 	Vernor Vinge (Fire Upon the Deep) and Bruce Sterling (Islands
> in the Net) are two authors who have influenced how wearable
> researchers think about their science.  Each has a new book:
I don't know if this has wearables in it, but Neal Stephenson (Snow
Crash), the author who gave us "gargoyles," will have a new book out in
May called "Cryptonomicon." Summary here:

http://www.avonbooks.com/avon_user/book.html?book_id=39336

-Chris

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--- end forwarded text




CRYPTONOMICON

Neal Stephenson, writer

U.S. $29.50 / CAN $39.50
Hardcover
Imprint: Avon
May, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97346-4
Category: Fiction; Sub-Category: Thriller
Pages: 928

With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making
masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and
the private obsessions of men, decrypting
with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young
Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit
so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those
people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse
and Detatchment 2702-commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep
the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the
enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match
between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by
the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson,
Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place
where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and
scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy
joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly
salvage a sunken Nazi sumarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a
data haven afloat. But soon their scheme  brings to light a massive
conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi
code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches
and a future of personal and digital liberty...or to universal
totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and
affecting work to date, CRYPTONOMICON is profound and prophetic, hypnotic
and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the
World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a
work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly icon

Read reviews for CRYPTONOMICON.

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©1998 The Hearst Corporation. Parental guidance suggested.
Inquiries may be forwarded to Webmaster@AvonBooks.com.





-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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