Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson takes us to the present and the past. It touches on many themes including the rise of the internet, cryptography, money and freedom.The book can only loosely be called science fiction since it deals with current technology and past technology, but it deals with a lot of the technology that science fiction fans work with. It’s also a bridge in Stephenson’s writing from the future books to the far past.

Randy Waterhouse is a network administrator in the Bay Area with a girlfriend that he’s not sure he likes and a comfy job that he’s not sure he likes either. When his old friend Avi comes up with a new company, Randy jumps headfirst into a jungle (literally at times) of network issues involving physical and virtual barriers. But Randy slowly comes to realize that what Avi has said the company is doing isn’t Avi’s complete plan. The pair have to deal with a dental pension fund manager who takes no prisoners, an American family (the Shaftoes) in the Philippines who can help them lay cable (and possibly find some buried treasure) and a phalanx of political/legal people who start realizing that the virtual world might make them obsolete (and they’re not ready to go).

Meanwhile in WWII, Randy’s grandfather Lawrence gets involved in the cryptographic work with Alan Turing and has to not only break codes, but convince the enemy that their codes aren’t broken. But that becomes challenging when Lawrence and Alan’s old Princeton friend Rudy von Hacklheber has been drafted to help the German cryptography effort. And Bobby Shaftoe (from the Philippine Shaftoes of the present timeline) is a Marine, with a Philippine girlfriend, who ends up helping Lawrence Waterhouse in his efforts.

The book is a tour de force in science fiction writing. It brings together important technology changes fifty years apart and shows how that technology has saved the world in the past and will save it in the future. The writing is pure Stephenson (with digressions on Van Eck phreakin, a fictional country of Qwghlm where Randy’s grandmother Mary cCmndhd (pronounced Smith) lived, the technology of cryptography with a new system created by Bruce Schneier and the working arrangements of offshore Philippine workers). Every science fiction read should own (not just read, but own) this book.