Genre and Subject Matter
In 2000, Cryptonomicon was nominated for the Hugo and Arthur C. Clarke Awards and won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Cryptonomicon later won the Mir Fantastiki award for best foreign sci-fi novel in 2005. The book has been acclaimed as "the ultimate geek novel".
Cryptonomicon is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, Snow Crash and Diamond Age. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Isoroku Yamamoto, Karl Dönitz, and Ronald Reagan, as well as some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, with discussions of prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and Van Eck phreaking.
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