(no subject)

Cryptonomicon was kind of a letdown after The Baroque Cycle, not least because of the frankly distasteful sexual politics--there is, at best, one vaguely sympathetic and remotely interesting female character in the entire book, and even she is totally subsumed by the book's portrayal of women as receptacles for ejaculate, in an irritatingly vivid and memorable passage near the end, which pretty much became the dominant image of the book for me--but I remain in awe of Stephenson.