Set largely in Shanghai several decades after the events of Snow Crash, this narrative tells a number of interconnected stories. Among the chief protagonists are Nell, a young girl who receives a most unusual education by way of an interactive, neo-Victorian guide called “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer,” and John Percival Hackworth, the engineer who designed the primer and who has plans of his own for its use. On one level, The Diamond Age tells the story of an individual education. On another, it offers a thoroughly imagined portrait of a world deeply divided along political, ethnic and cultural lines. It is a world dominated and literally reshaped by advancements in nanotechnology, a branch of science that extends the range of human possibility in bizarre and unexpected ways. One of Stephenson’s overriding concerns has been the impact of technology and scientific thought on the evolution of human society.