From a recent (4/29/99) interview:Lomax: Above, you said that you were "no damn good at writing short stories".What about these days? Do you think you will write exclusively in the longform? Oh, and what's the deal with the Big U. Will that ever see printagain?Stephenson: I still find short stories very difficult to write, and I admirepeople who can do that. At the moment, novels are working for me and so Ithink I'll stick with them. Concerning the Big U… It is an okay novel,but I'm in no hurry to put it back into the world. There is a lot of othergood stuff that people could be reading.
WWII, year 1943. The allies have already cracked all the Nazi codes. They know the military convoys are going and enemy submarines are hiding. But if British destroyers will start finding and sinking Nazi submarines every time without any problems, Germans will figure out that their codes have been broken and will change them. That's why it's necessary to fool the enemy. For that reason, the special British-American secret unit 2702 was created..."The Bible" of cyberpunk (or cypherpunk? :) about the creation of the computer world. There is everything in it: love, war, betrayal, treasures on the bottom of the sea, and even exile from Eden...