Cryptonomicon

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Cryptonomicon is a novel by Neal Stephenson published in 1999. The German version was published by Manhattan Verlag . Cryptonomicon was translated from English into German by Juliane Gräbener-Müller and Nikolaus Stingl. The Baroque Cycle Stephenson, the late 17th century and early plays of the 18th century, the plot of Cryptonomicons anticipates content.

action

The novel consists of several lines of action, between which one jumps chapter by chapter. Three main storylines take place during World War II , and another one in the present . The main characters are Corporal Bobby Shaftoe (World War II), Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse (World War II), Goto Dengo (World War II and present), Enoch Root (World War II and present), Randall (Randy) Lawrence Waterhouse (present), and Douglas " Doug “MacArthur Shaftoe (World War II and Present) and his daughter America (Amy) (Present). From the family names it can be deduced that the main characters are partly related to each other. (Note: In the following, an attempt will be made to outline the main plot separately by storyline. Many subplots have to be ignored, and the subtleties of the interlocking storylines are lost.)

Randy's grandfather Lawrence Waterhouse is a brilliant mathematician and works with the - not fictional - Alan Turing in Bletchley Park on the deciphering of cryptography systems of the German Wehrmacht . The fact that the Enigma's encryption system was cracked and the Allies used the information obtained from it to their advantage, resulted in anomalies such as B. the sinking of all submarine tankers . In order to hide such statistical anomalies and thus the existence of the valuable information source ultra or mega (the name used by the Americans) from the Germans, above all Rudolf von Hacklheber, a former student colleague of Waterhouse and Turing, department 2702 is kept under the strictest secrecy founded. This should find such problem cases, develop ideas for their obfuscation (both Lawrence Waterhouse's task) and put these ideas into practice. Bobby Shaftoe and Enoch Root are primarily responsible for the latter. The two had met on Guadalcanal when Root had rescued Shaftoe, the only survivor of his old unit.

During one of their sometimes bizarre missions, Shaftoe and Root are captured by a German submarine crew. Shaftoe, however, knows about Karl Dönitz 's gold shipments to Japan . (As part of a rescue operation by Department 2702, he saw the gold bars in another German submarine shortly before it sank.) Doenitz wants to sink the submarine in order to keep the transports secret. Shaftoe, Root and Bischoff, the former captain of the submarine, who was not completely loyal to the line, flee to Sweden. There they later meet von Hacklträger, who meanwhile also had to flee from Germany. Together they found a conspiracy to get hold of the gold that was moved with the submarines.

Shaftoe returns to military service and, after a few detours, is personally sent on a secret mission to the Philippines by General Douglas MacArthur . There, during the turmoil of the American reconquest , he went in search of his girlfriend Glory and their son (whom he only found out about on the spot). While he has to find out that Glory has leprosy , he finds his son safe and sound in ruined Manila . Shortly thereafter, Shaftoe fell while conquering one of the last pockets of resistance of the Japanese.

The Japanese took their gold reserves and Nazi gold to the Philippines so that they would not fall into the hands of the approaching Americans. Goto Dengo, already badly shaken in the course of the war, a civilian mining engineer , has the task of building the main deposit for the gold. He designs a labyrinthine system of corridors with air shafts, blindly ending corridors and a "decoy chamber", which is driven by forced laborers into the steep bank of a river and, after all the gold has been stored, is sealed and flooded. During his work, Goto Dengo began to suspect that none of those involved should survive the operation. That is why he has a small group of forced laborers secretly build an air chamber and supply it with supplies, so that he and his associates escape death. In the Battle of Manila he surrenders to Shaftoe, with whom he had befriended during his time in Shanghai , and is introduced by MacArthur.

Bischoff (in the interest of the conspiracy) takes command again, on a new, experimental Walter submarine . In the South Pacific, he meets again with von Hacklträger, who had come here on a sailing yacht . The conspirators find out that Goto Dengo knows the location of the main gold deposit. When they salvage their first, smaller gold treasure, with the help of which they want to acquire the land around the main deposit and dig up the gold, Hacklleger and Bishop of Waterhouse are surprised, who managed to decipher the secret code of the conspiracy, but this knowledge for retains and protects the conspiracy in his further work. Shortly after this meeting, the submarine was sunk by Allied bombers. Only Bischoff can escape the wreck, but presumably does not survive the surface from the great depths (even if that remains open in the book).

Enoch Root is thus the only survivor of the conspiracy, without the help of his co-conspirators and without financial means can only pursue the goal of the conspiracy in secret and in the background.

Randy is a typical nerd , but to some extent has come to terms with social conventions. At first he only wants to build a data port with his business partner Avi . While laying a submarine cable , the tasked Douglas Shaftoe (the son of Bobby Shaftoe) finds a sunken, mysterious Nazi submarine (Bischoffs U-Boot). Artifacts in the submarine suggest a connection to Randy's grandfather, whereupon Randy investigates his estate more closely and stumbles upon a trace of Japanese war gold (the information withheld from Lawrence Waterhouse to protect the conspiracy). Before Randy can evaluate and follow this trail, however, shady circles (including one of the former slave laborers who helped Goto Dengo to survive) try to steal the (still encrypted) information from him. However, with Enoch Root, who is sometimes in the background, sometimes in the foreground, he succeeds in setting his opponents on the wrong track and with Avi, America, Douglas Shaftoe and Enoch Root in search of the real treasure and him with Goto Dengo's help (now a highly regarded contractor) to lift.

Cryptology

As the title suggests, cryptology is one of the central themes of the book, and accordingly very clear explanations of some of the fundamentals of this science, as well as of problems with its practical application, are interspersed several times in the plot. The Riemann zeta function is mentioned several times in connection with the fictitious crypto codes Azure, Pufferfish and Arethusa.

Solitaire

An encryption algorithm called Solitaire , developed by Bruce Schneier especially for this book, is intended to provide all freedom fighters who use it with secure encryption. The encryption can be carried out with a deck of cards consisting of 52 cards and two different jokers and enough time. The application of the algorithm is described in detail in the appendix of the book.

Trivia

expenditure

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Neal Stephenson : Cryptonomicon. Munich, ISBN 3-442-54529-3 , p. 22 and p. 770.
  2. ↑ Stephenson's website ( Memento of May 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Daniel Domscheit-Berg : Inside WikiLeaks . Econ, E-Book 2011, ISBN 978-3-8437-0062-7 .