Upper Middlebrow Upper Middlebrow

After a camel cricket update (!), the UMBs untangle the conga line of affection and destruction that forms the structure of this remarkable novel. Bagg plays the babyface/fanboy while Dukes combines admiration for Egan’s craft with a deep sense of discomfort with the characters circumstances.

Play along with Dukes and Bagg as we play Neal Stephenson Bingo. We find that the final third does pick up a bit, with Goto Dengo’s story in particular providing a satisfying character arc. There are moments of DENSE AND BEAUTIFUL PROSE and descriptions of MATH EMBODIED, but we also find that too often, PLOT IS GREATER THAN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, leaving both UMBs a bit frustrated (and many characters suddenly dead).

Dukes and Bagg wonder about the length of the middle section of the book, which as far as they can tell, only establishes one major plot point. And they wonder at the stakes of the novel? Who cares if a couple of comfortably well off tech guys find some old gold? But Stephenson’s insight into the little told impacts of technological development during the War remains impressive. What if the Germans HAD developed a "Rocket Sub?"

Bagg and Dukes are…a little tired of Neal Stephenson, but our two codebreaking huffduff operators soldier on into Stephenson’s large 1999 novel Cryptonomicon. Haiku-composing marines, lots of math via bicycle chains and other analog metaphors, passive-aggressive academic tracts about beards, and Stephenson’s solving of an earlier problem of his: simply write two books but connect them via plot.

Dukes and Bagg talk scruffiness and the virtues of whiskers more broadly. Then they complain about Stephenson’s propensity to want to write three books into every book, his tendency to orphan MacGuffin’s and the challenge of sorting out whether the reader’s disorientation is intended, or the result of sloppiness. But for it all, the UMBs agree this is Stephenson’s most ambitious and thoughtful work of this career thus far.

We hit pause on recapping, and talk the intersection of education and technology with a genuine educational technologist, Professor Justin Reich (and the man who introduced Dukes + Bagg). Justin considers Stephenson’s take on the ancient debate about whether education resembles “filling a pail” or “kindling a flame” and notes his preoccupation with the probabilistic nature of education tech.