Talk:Alan Turing

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Neal did discuss Turing's sexuality but it wasn't key to the overall narrative. Possibly the Comstock NSA faction kept Lawrence Waterhouse from Turing as a way to protect their budding computer business.

And in the 'modern' part of the tale - Turing's sexuality would not matter. Sparky 18:15, 28 Oct 2003 (PST)

Turing's persecution for his sexuality took place in the immediate postwar years, which isn't really covered in Cryptonomicon. The odds of it coming up in the modern part is slim, since the only characters in both time periods (Goto Dengo and Enoch Root) didn't meet him. There might have been some information about it in Lawrence's chest of war memorabilia, but the story is probably old hat to someone like Randy. Ckape 22:18, 28 Oct 2003 (PST)

Given that Turing went, himself, to the police to explain the incident with his ex lover, and bald-facedly stated his homosexuality to them, it seems he did not consider this to be any kind of issue in his career or anything else. This was naive, but, it strongly suggests it simply didn't matter in his life as an issue to that point. He certainly did not think that he had to hide it. Only in the postwar Cold War period did this kind of thing become a big issue in the UK it seems... fears about blackmail, etc., and general paranoia bred by propaganda about "un-Christian" ways, designed to bolster UK and US vs. Communism...

It seems a bit unfair to me to complain what themes an author _didn't_ put in his book, for the number is endless, e.g., MacArthur's Korean War conflicts with the President. If Turing's sexual preference had not been discussed, it would seem an distortive omission, but it was.

Randy had to know -- eg: Michael Berry AKA ' The Moving Finger' in his review of Cryptonomicon: "... Having appeared twice now on the cover of Wired magazine, Stephenson is definitely tapped into the zeitgeist of the Digital Age, but he has been able to keep his sense of humor about it. He describes Randy Waterhouse's newfound celebrity as a cover boy for TURING Magazine ("So Hip, We're Stupid!"): "TURING is such a visual magazine that it cannot be viewed without the protection of welding goggles, and so they insisted on a picture; a photographer was dispatched to the Crypt, which was found visually wanting (what? It's just a hole in the ground!); tizzy ensued; photographer was diverted to Manila and captured Randy standing on a boat deck next to a big reel of orange cable." ..." External Link: Cryptonomicon Review Sparky 07:21, 29 Oct 2003 (PST)

Alan Turing was one of my teachers' teachers' teachers, see http://www.magicdragon.com/JVPteachers.html BUT if you keep going up the chain of teachers' teachers from Turing, you reach Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibnitz [1 July 1646-14 Nov 1716], a major character in Quicksilver, and, of course, his teacher Christiaan Huygens. On the other hand, Alan Turning died by biting into a (cyanide) poisoned apple, presumably in reference to the Sleeping Beauty story. So, if that had been in Cryptonomicon, it would be fiction imitating life imitating fiction. One presumes that Neal S. knows this... [signed: Professor Jonathan Vos Post, not yet a logged-in user]

What was done to Turing and many of his civilian and military sexual compatriots by establishments such as GCHQ is a crime against humanity, if only Turing was a sleeping beauty. czacraig@gmail.com