I understand Neal Stephenson has a bit of a reputation by now for writing books and, er, not stopping. The three volumes of the Baroque Cycle, for instance, have never been read by human eyes, but they have been used successfully in several recent late-night muggings, as blunt weapons.

Zodiac is from before he developed this habit. It’s snappy, fun, full of golden Neal Stephenson wit, and just the right amount of confusing and plot-twisty. Sangamon Taylor is a typical Stephenson hero, a super nerd who makes you wonder why your super-nerdy life isn’t nearly as exciting as his. In this case, it involves zipping hither and thither in Boston Harbor on a crazy custom boat that gives the novel its name, fighting ecological bad guys straight out of “Captain Planet”, having sex and angst with hot, assertive, ultra-granola chicks, and continuing to be surprised at how he almost gets killed like every other chapter.

I don’t know nearly enough about the scientific details to know whether he’s totally getting the chemistry wrong in several places, but hey, the story about Randy doing unix and X11 programming in jail in Cryptonomicon was spot on, so for all I know it’s probably right.