Editing Cryptonomicon (section)

==Genre and subject matter==
''Cryptonomicon'' is closer to the [[genre]]s of [[historical fiction]] and contemporary [[techno-thriller]] than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, ''[[Snow Crash]]'' and ''[[The Diamond Age]]''. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as [[Alan Turing]], [[Albert Einstein]], [[Douglas MacArthur]], [[Winston Churchill]], [[Isoroku Yamamoto]], [[Karl Dönitz]], [[Hermann Göring]], 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]].

===Title===
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]]:

{{Blockquote|text=I wanted to give it a title a 17th-century book by a scholar would be likely to have. And that's how I came up with ''Cryptonomicon''. I've heard the word ''Necronomicon'' bounced around. I haven't actually read the Lovecraft books, but clearly it's formed by analogy to that.<ref>[http://www.locusmag.com/1999/Issues/08/Stephenson.html "Neal Stephenson: Cryptomancer"]. ''[[Locus (magazine)|Locus]]'', August 1999</ref>}}

The novel's Cryptonomicon, described as a "cryptographer's bible", is a [[fictional book]] summarizing America's knowledge of cryptography and [[cryptanalysis]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Youngquist|first=Paul|date=2012|title=Cyberpunk, War, and Money: Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/483327|journal=Contemporary Literature|volume=53|issue=2|pages=319–347|doi=10.1353/cli.2012.0011|s2cid=163021465 |issn=1548-9949}}</ref> Begun by [[John Wilkins]] (the Cryptonomicon is mentioned in ''[[Quicksilver (novel)|Quicksilver]]'') and amended over time by [[William Friedman]], Lawrence Waterhouse, and others, the Cryptonomicon is described by Katherine Hayles as "a kind of [[wiktionary:kabala|Kabala]] created by a Brotherhood of Code that stretches across centuries. To know its contents is to qualify as a [[Morlock]] among the [[Eloi]], and the elite among the elite are those gifted enough actually to contribute to it."<ref name="Hayles2005">{{cite book|author=N. Katherine Hayles|title=My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lwaRyOZfBzgC&pg=PA141|access-date=31 May 2011|date=1 October 2005|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-32148-6|pages=140–141}}</ref>