Cryptonomicon.
Oct. 8th, 2005 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupI just finished reading Cryptonomicon. It was fascinating and unsettling at the same time. It was about (among others) a modern geek who is feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Reading it in Copenhagen made me sympathize overmuch, I think.
The really weird thing about the book was the disguised newsgroups and mailing lists. I KNOW some of the folks that are alluded to, and I'm a member of some of those forums, so I find the 'disguise' attempts unsettling. Its as if the author writes about your home town, but mispells the name. All of the geography is right except for his discription of the well in the town square. You can SEE the town square from where your house is and there isn't a well there, and never has been. When the plot pivots around the history of that well, it makes it very hard to maintain verisimilitude.
I think the upshot is that the book really isn't intended for someone who knows anything about the world of which he's writing...
The really weird thing about the book was the disguised newsgroups and mailing lists. I KNOW some of the folks that are alluded to, and I'm a member of some of those forums, so I find the 'disguise' attempts unsettling. Its as if the author writes about your home town, but mispells the name. All of the geography is right except for his discription of the well in the town square. You can SEE the town square from where your house is and there isn't a well there, and never has been. When the plot pivots around the history of that well, it makes it very hard to maintain verisimilitude.
I think the upshot is that the book really isn't intended for someone who knows anything about the world of which he's writing...
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Date: 2005-10-10 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 06:56 pm (UTC)