The Diamond Age
by Neal Stephenson
Set largely in Shanghai several decades after the events of Snow Crash, this brilliantly complex 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, seen in book after book and from a variety of perspectives, has been the impact of technology and scientific thought on the evolution of human society. Dense, witty, frequently astonishing and always absorbing, The Diamond Age occupies a central position in Stephenson’s impressive canon. As convincing and astonishing today as it was nearly twenty years ago, it is the rare sort of novel in which an unbridled imagination and formidable intellect come powerfully—and seamlessly—together.
2 editions available
Editions
Set largely in Shanghai several decades after the events of Snow Crash, this brilliantly complex 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, seen in book after book and from a variety of perspectives, has been the impact of technology and scientific thought on the evolution of human society. Dense, witty, frequently astonishing and always absorbing, The Diamond Age occupies a central position in Stephenson’s impressive canon. As convincing and astonishing today as it was nearly twenty years ago, it is the rare sort of novel in which an unbridled imagination and formidable intellect come powerfully—and seamlessly—together.