FAQs
These FAQs are mostly pretty old. They are copied from a web site that I put up circa 1999 in connection with CRYPTONOMICON. Some of them are still of potential interest and so I have placed them here, as shovelware. Cryptonomicon cypher-FAQ ("Frequently Anticipated
Questions") by Neal Stephenson Purpose of this document
Note
For a more long-winded
restatement of the above, visit this link. Index of the FAQs in this Document
1. Overview of the Project
The series, when it is finished, will cover a long span of history, however the first novel to be actually published (CRYPTONOMICON, May 1999) is set in the 20th Century. It has two timelines, one set during World War 2 and the other in the present day. Other volumes, set farther in the past or in the future, will follow as soon as I can get them written. The series will incorporate many characters and stories, tied together by a few common threads. For example, certain family names keep popping up. Crypto, money, and computers seem to find their way into all of the storylines. The ongoing presence
of crypto as an important force in the characters' lives is symbolized
by a fictitious book called the Cryptonomicon which, according
to the story, is originally published in the 1600s as a compendium of
cryptographic lore. As new generations of cryptologists come and go,
they add new information to this original document until it develops
into a kind of Talmudic compilation of whatever has been written about
crypto in the last few centuries. 2. Contributions by Others
As Bruce explains in the appendix, Solitaire is specifically designed to offer security against high-tech cryptanalysis, but it is implemented on a low-tech system: an ordinary deck of playing cards. In other words, it is intended for use by people who are living under political regimes where the possession of crypto tools (computers, crypto software, etc.) is itself grounds for confiscation, punishment, etc. What is a new cryptosystem
like Solitaire doing in a novel? It is a mutually beneficial relationship.
I needed such a system to play a certain role in the book. But by including
Bruce's full description of the algorithm, and Ian's perl script, in
the actual text of the novel, we can hopefully leverage the wide publicity
and distribution of the book to get this cryptosystem out to places
it might not otherwise reach. 3. What is up with the title?It has been pointed out that the word "Cryptonomicon" bears obvious similarities to "Cyphernomicon," which is the title of a cypherpunk FAQ document by Tim May. This leads to the question of am I committing some form of plagiarism, or rendering homage, or what? The answer, strangely enough, is neither. I was completely unaware of the existence of Tim May's Cyphernomicon at the time I came up with "Cryptonomicon." According to the fictional storyline that I have been writing, the original Cryptonomicon was written by an English scholar with a Classical education (for those of you who are crypto history buffs, it is modeled after John Wilkins's 1641 book entitled Mercury). Accordingly, I wanted to give it a Latin-sounding title, and "Cryptonomicon" is what I came up with. It is the sort of title that would blend in pretty well with any 17th-Century English book list. According to all of the library and Web searches I have done since then, the term "Cryptonomicon" has never appeared anywhere else.Since becoming aware
of the existence of Tim May's "Cyphernomicon" I have been in touch with
him about this near-collision in namespace. Of course I am not authorized
to speak on his behalf, but having had an exchange of messages with
him, I am now going forward with the understanding that he has no problems
or complaints. 4. Does it mention Cypherpunks?
In this novel there is a fictitious group called the Secret Admirers. Knowledgeable persons will probably perceive similarities between the cypherpunks and the Secret Admirers, however intelligent readers should keep in mind that this is a work of fiction and that the two groups cannot be simply equated. To put it another way, for "Secret Admirers" don't mentally substitute "Cypherpunks." Instead, mentally substitute "the existence of cryptologically sophisticated persons not affiliated with governments or other traditional power structures, loosely inspired by the existence of such persons in the real world, but liberally embroidered on and fictionalized by a novelist whose job it is to make stuff up." The Secret Admirers
are not a huge part of the novel. They are part of the general backdrop
against which the modern-day storyline plays out. The main characters
in the modern-day storyline are high-tech entrepeneurs organizing a
startup company to build a data haven and issue a digital currency.
5. Are some of the characters based on real people?
The usual way of explaining what novelists do is to say that their characters are composites. But this implies that every single characteristic of a fictional character can be attributed to some actual person somewhere. This is very far from being the case. The "composite" explanation does not do justice to the amount of content that novelists simply invent. Or to put it another way, it gives us too much credit for being hard workers. Making up composite characters would be tremendously labor-intensive. Fabricating stuff from whole cloth is much easier. Since I began writing novels I have had many startling conversations with total strangers who were convinced that I had somehow based fictional characters on them personally. For example, when doing a signing in Oakland I was approached by a somewhat bewildered young man who was half African-American and half Japanese and who had been working as a pizza delivery driver when he had encountered my book SNOW CRASH, which features a similar character. When he saw that the book had been written several years previously, he understood that it was just a coincidence, but still found it to be a little eerie. This kind of thing
happens more frequently than one might expect. The characters in CRYPTONOMICON
come from a fictional world very similar to the real one and so many
parallels can be observed, but none of them is based on an actual person.
6. Does it express views that Cypherpunks will find agreeable?
It is important
to remember that novels are works of art, and like other works of art,
get much of their power from indirectness and ambiguity. Consequently,
any readers looking for explicit statements about anything are apt to
find this work frustrating. 7. Is Neal Stephenson a cypherpunk?
8. It says on the dust flap that you were born in Ft. Meade, Maryland, the home of the NSA. What is up with that?
9. Is the novel technically accurate?
10. Should I invest time and money in reading this novel?
11. Are you going to apply for an export license for the electronic version of the novel?Since electronic copies of CRYPTONOMICON are subject to U.S. Government export controls, it raises the obvious question as to whether the publisher or I will attempt to make an issue of this by either (1) applying for an export license, or (2) exporting it anyway to see if the Commerce Department will come after us. As appealing as this scenario might sound, there are no plans in the works to actually do it.
12. Why does the perl script on p. 480 have funny-looking line breaks?The printed novel is one of several distribution media for the Solitaire perl script, and probably the least important; after all, it does no good unless you sit down and type it into a computer, which is a real pain. If you have a computer, you can probably just download the perl from the Counterpane site. Nevertheless, it was my intention to make it possible to type in the script "by hand" from the book and have it work. When I tried this myself, it turned out that line breaks in the script introduced ambiguities that caused it not to work. Therefore, I reformatted the script so that each line in the printed version ends with a semicolon, wherever possible. This removes the ambiguities and makes it possible IN PRINCIPLE to type it correctly, even if you don't know perl. But the result looks funny if you are a perl aficionado.13. Hey, the perl script doesn't work! What's the deal?The production people at the publisher tried valiantly to get the perl script typeset without any errors, but one error did slip in. It is located on the eighth line. Where the book says$o=~s/.chr(( and so on, it SHOULD say $o=~s/./chr(( and so on. I have notified the publisher and they are going to fix it in the next printing. But all of the books in the first printing will contain the error. Perhaps this will make them valuable collectors' items one day, but for now they are useless as perl scripts. I hope that this document has covered most of the questions that readers of the Cypherpunks list are likely to have. Thank you for reading it.
Change Log 19990330 First version
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