Rare(ish) Book of the Day – Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson. First Edition.
“Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart’s content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin.”
This is a great book, and a fitting title for the crypto-sphere. Neal Stephenson pulls out all the stops in this one, which I think is his strongest work. It's a fascinating and complex novel about both code making and code breaking. Half the novel revolves around the mathematical genius and cryptographer Lawrence Waterhouse, a friend of Alan Turing, who is involved with breaking the Nazi's Enigma code. The other portion is about his grandson Randy, a computer hacker, who finds himself in all sorts of trouble with governments, multinational corporations, and secret organizations while setting up a data haven in Southeast Asia. This one's a real page-turner, folks. Here is the first printing from 1999:
Stephenson has numerous speculative novels, exploring topics of mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. His latest, Seveneves, is fantastic as well.
More info here:
http://www.rarebooksleuth.com/featured/cryptonomicon-neal-stephenson-first-edition-first-printing
This book sounds great. Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check out Stephenson's other work too.
If you're a history buff, you may enjoy his Baroque Cycle. Really great stuff!
Oh man, great find @rarebooksleuth, but an ever better nudge in my direction to get me to read this bad boy. I have been looking at this book A LOT and haven't pulled the trigger yet. The quote alone did it for me. Thanks!!!
Haha you bet!
Looks like a pretty fascinating book..
Hey @rarebooksleuth can you get on steemit.chat? You're the only judge who isn't on there. It'd be nice if I could send you a message around when each challenge ends in the same place I send it to the other judges?
@apolymask Just signed up. Username is rarebooksleuth.
Yep. He's a terrific writer. Smart, gripping plots, and interesting characters. I loved this book. If you like his stuff you might also like William Gibson's work.
William Gibson is on the list. Should I start with Neuromancer?
Absolutely. And then 'Burning Chrome', his collection of short stories is easy for readers / low barrier to trying. I realize now that I haven't kept up with his most recent work so keep that in mind if he's done good stuff in the past few years.
Awesome. Thanks!
This sounds amazing. I need to check it out.
As time goes on, I'm more interested in purchasing some of your work via crypto. I'm not there yet, but am interested in the future. Out of curiosity, what form of crypto would you be most interesting in receiving for a few pieces of your collection?
Sounds good. I'd say Ethereum or Litecoin is probably preferable.
Highly rEsteemed!
Thank you sir!
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