Cryptonomicon (Signed First Edition)

Stephenson, Neal

ISBN 10: 0380973464 / ISBN 13: 9780380973460

Published by Avon, New York, 1999

About this Item

New York: Avon Books, 1999. First edition. First printing (with full number line including 1). Hardbound. Very Fine in a very fine jacket. A pristine unread copy, purchased new and opened only for author signature. (A tiny bit of wear at head of spine.) Publisher's price intact on front jacket flap ($27.95). SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page (name only). Comes with archival-quality mylar jacket protector. Smoke-free. Amy Halperin(Jacket Designer) (illustrator). According to Stephenson, the title is a play on Necronomicon, the title of a book mentioned in the stories of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Stephenson's subsequent work, a trio of novels dubbed The Baroque Cycle, provides part of the deep backstory to the characters and events featured in Cryptonomicon. Set in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the novels feature ancestors of several characters in Cryptonomicon, as well as events and objects which affect the action of the later-set book. Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel, 2000. Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee, 2000. Locus Award Winner for Best Science Fiction Novel, 2000. Winner, Mir Fantastiki Award for Best Foreign Sci-Fi Novel, 2005. Winner, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, 2013.

Seller Inventory # Signed-Fiction-12

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cryptonomicon (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Avon, New York
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380973464
• ISBN 13: 9780380973460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

With this extraordinary first volume in 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 Waterhouse and Detachment 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 granddaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi submarine 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 iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

About the Author

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . .Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.