Neal Stephenson: The links are somewhat loose, so this is not one of these situations where you've got to read one of the books to make sense of the others. There's a gap of about 300 years between the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon , and if you've read Cryptonomicon , you'll recognize some family names that are in common. You can infer that some of the families in the Baroque Cycle have descendents who show up later in Cryptonomicon .It's largely a family saga kind of connection. And then there's a character, Enoch Root, who possesses unnatural longevity and shows up in person in both of the books.