The story of an engineer who creates a device to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself reveals what happens when a young girl of the poor underclass obtains the device.
This is still my favorite Neal Stephenson book, notwithstanding his tendency to characterize Asians like alien species (paging Mr. Spock). Also one of his more bizarre stories. In a way, it's a sequel to Snow Crash. The characters are more developed and emotionally gripping, and there are more layers of technology. I still dream of working on the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.
I tap out of nine out of every ten works of science fiction I start, the four main reasons being i) horrendous prose ii) huge amounts of expository dialogue iii) excessive padding and iv) Hollywood nonsense.
I do think this is a shame because in my experience pretty well all of them have been doing /something/ interesting, have some philosophical or scientific slant on a particular issue or idea, or even just a cool imaginary world; sadly only a few writing in this genre can convey anything in a way that even begins to break out of very received methods of representation or narration.
This novel was not completely free of any of these flaws, and for the first half I was very much being carried along on the strength of its world-building (terrible phrase), the exact contours of which I'm not in a position to outline here but suffice …
I tap out of nine out of every ten works of science fiction I start, the four main reasons being i) horrendous prose ii) huge amounts of expository dialogue iii) excessive padding and iv) Hollywood nonsense.
I do think this is a shame because in my experience pretty well all of them have been doing /something/ interesting, have some philosophical or scientific slant on a particular issue or idea, or even just a cool imaginary world; sadly only a few writing in this genre can convey anything in a way that even begins to break out of very received methods of representation or narration.
This novel was not completely free of any of these flaws, and for the first half I was very much being carried along on the strength of its world-building (terrible phrase), the exact contours of which I'm not in a position to outline here but suffice to say, it feels like a real society; it feels like the one that we're in, but worse, due to the specific ways in which nanotechnology, under capitalism, will likely make it. At around the halfway point though, the plot, the characters, the ideas Stephenson had spent 250 pages building up started to dovetail and I found myself beginning to care very much about what happens to the characters in this book.
Two things occur to me thinking about the novel in retrospect, first that Stephenson's achievement in pulling everything together was pretty staggering, second that a lot of the raw materials he chose to get where he wanted to go were unintuitive, and the resultant awkwardness is not unrelated to many of the novel's low points but, overall, this is a tremendously enjoyable book that in many ways is probably going to prove quite prescient, and in the ways that it will not are nice to think about.
I have to say, this was a fun read. And like the author's book Snow Crash from 3 years prior, it features a young girl protagonist, nation-state world-building, a sometimes awkward treatment of Asia, and sections of excessive violence.
In some ways, the book aged a lot better than Snow Crash. The world has made VR a thing which means a lot of the computer-related predictions from Snow Crash feel laughable, but we're nowhere near the level of nanotechnology in A Diamond Age. Snow Crash is a book of the 90s. The Diamond Age feels good even today.
Where this book let me down, however, was in how the plot was woven together. There are a lot of interesting characters that never get the attention they should. I don't demand that all plot threads get tied up in a nice neat bow (I think Anathem even went a bit too …
I have to say, this was a fun read. And like the author's book Snow Crash from 3 years prior, it features a young girl protagonist, nation-state world-building, a sometimes awkward treatment of Asia, and sections of excessive violence.
In some ways, the book aged a lot better than Snow Crash. The world has made VR a thing which means a lot of the computer-related predictions from Snow Crash feel laughable, but we're nowhere near the level of nanotechnology in A Diamond Age. Snow Crash is a book of the 90s. The Diamond Age feels good even today.
Where this book let me down, however, was in how the plot was woven together. There are a lot of interesting characters that never get the attention they should. I don't demand that all plot threads get tied up in a nice neat bow (I think Anathem even went a bit too far in wrapping up the story) but what about Hackworth? Did the author just give up on trying to decide his fate? Did anything come of Miranda joining the Drummers? Who is the mysterious boss of Dr. X? Is CryptNet important or not? Did I accidentally only read half the book?
The author makes so much of these characters only for them to be inconsequential, as if he meant to write a book twice the size but had to abruptly end it mid-way (or wanted to leave room for a sequel). And even the parts that are fleshed out don't seem to fit together very well, and I'm sure you could come up with a long list of plot holes if you tried.
Nonetheless, the main character's story and the imaginative nanotech-based world make this a fun if imperfect book. Don't let me scare you away - you may like this one better than Snow Crash.
Quite a thick plot, lots of characters, many plot twists and more world-building in a single book than you can shake your nanobots at. Also, if you're interested in a fictionalized primer (ha!) on Turing machines, this is the book you're looking for.
Such a wild ride. I loved this book. Things that were great here: the light dive into some computer topics, the well written characters, the distant and imaginative future society.
There's so much to love about this book. Hard to believe this was written in the 90s!
Stephenson is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I loved Snow Crash, Anathem, and Cryptonomicon. I had less of a taste for the Baroque Cycle books (although I've been meaning to give them a re-read), but The Diamond Age is easily my favorite of his novels so far.
If Snow Crash was Stephenson's breakthrough into hardcore science fiction, The Diamond Age is really a beautiful midpoint between it and Cryptonomicon. Where Snow Crash was imaginative and fun to read if relatively simple, and Cryptonomicon was brilliant despite being the beginning of his sometimes tediously verbose and tangent-prone stage, The Diamond Age is just the right balance of complexity, sweeping scope, mind-bending technology and interesting characters.
It's actually sort of shocking to me that this book was published in 1995. Stephenson's ideas about technology still feel fresh 23 years later. From the "matter compilers" being echoed (poorly) …
Stephenson is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I loved Snow Crash, Anathem, and Cryptonomicon. I had less of a taste for the Baroque Cycle books (although I've been meaning to give them a re-read), but The Diamond Age is easily my favorite of his novels so far.
If Snow Crash was Stephenson's breakthrough into hardcore science fiction, The Diamond Age is really a beautiful midpoint between it and Cryptonomicon. Where Snow Crash was imaginative and fun to read if relatively simple, and Cryptonomicon was brilliant despite being the beginning of his sometimes tediously verbose and tangent-prone stage, The Diamond Age is just the right balance of complexity, sweeping scope, mind-bending technology and interesting characters.
It's actually sort of shocking to me that this book was published in 1995. Stephenson's ideas about technology still feel fresh 23 years later. From the "matter compilers" being echoed (poorly) in modern 3D printers, to intensely distributed systems and heavy crypto that pre-date things like BitTorrent and Bitcoin, to even farther future ideas like the implications of designer nanotech that can carpet the world searching, or building, or killing, or defending. Stephenson also bravely looks at the next permutations of human organization and society. I was especially fascinated by the Drummers and their hivemind orgy of computation, as well as the Reformed Distributed Republic that is creedless and amorphous but anchored to each other through randomized trust exercises. These are the ideas I read science fiction for and in true Stephenson fashion they are well grounded in reality. For example, one of the final stages of the main character, Nell's, education is based in Turing machines that form the foundation of modern computers, as well as the future nanotech. The crypto and routing ideas woven into the other tech all ring true. The result is when Stephenson makes a more fantastic reach (e.g. cities floating on air, or disposable chopsticks made of animated screens) the reader is more than happy to accept that it's not just possible, but an inevitable consequence of the technology.
I don't want to give a rote plot summary, but in the midst of this technology Stephenson still weaves a story that is engaging and compelling. To be honest though, despite the fact that it ends well, Stephenson's characters are never the main event to me, and almost always tend to feel like expository devices. This isn't a criticism, I view it more as the product of the scope of his work. The characters still grow and change over the 20 year timeline, but at the end of the story I was much more interested in the repercussions in the world rather than the specific outcomes. I felt for Nell, I rooted for her, but her story is mostly that of the Chosen One, despite being grounded in technology and chance rather than prophecy. The other characters were sympathetic and fine, well realized, but mostly served their purpose and then collected at the end to be eyes on the Battle of Shanghai. I'm mostly referring to Carl Hollywood and Miranda (and Bud, Judge Fang et. al. in different ways) but even Hackworth, who is as close to a second main character as we get, instigates the initial plot by creating and counterfeiting the Primer, and then checks out for half the timeline (while with the Drummers) only to return with selective amnesia as a vector to explain and effect the Celestial Kingdom's endgame.
Regardless, The Diamond Age is a masterpiece of science fiction and was really hard to put down once I got far enough into the story to get hooked.
On second read street 20 years It was good but definitely convoluted. I could see his desire to really expand his worlds and get into the details of massive political upheaval. But it wasn't nearly as finally tuned yet as it becomes in his later books. Entertaining but definitely a few storylines that sort of got lost in the shuffle and others that seemed to pop up out of nowhere and all of a sudden take over the entire book
The book is a crazy mixture of cyber- and steampunk so much so that when it was recommended on Writing Excuses they stumbled over the genre. But it takes place in the future so it would probably be more firmly rooted in science fiction and cyberpunk.
I didn't read this book for many years because of the sub-title. It really put me off. Don't make the same mistake :) This is not a children's book it is about a high-tech children's book.
I loved the world-building though I feel that sometimes Stephenson would go a bit too far in the descriptions. There were parts where I started to read "diagonally" across the pages to get back to the action.
Then there are the Drummers which most keenly reminded me of earlier cyberpunk with their psychedelic hive-mind. I can't remember being so confused about what I was reading since my first …
The book is a crazy mixture of cyber- and steampunk so much so that when it was recommended on Writing Excuses they stumbled over the genre. But it takes place in the future so it would probably be more firmly rooted in science fiction and cyberpunk.
I didn't read this book for many years because of the sub-title. It really put me off. Don't make the same mistake :) This is not a children's book it is about a high-tech children's book.
I loved the world-building though I feel that sometimes Stephenson would go a bit too far in the descriptions. There were parts where I started to read "diagonally" across the pages to get back to the action.
Then there are the Drummers which most keenly reminded me of earlier cyberpunk with their psychedelic hive-mind. I can't remember being so confused about what I was reading since my first encounter of William Gibson's fiction. The confusion is actually a good thing in a way. Seeing too clearly through everything sometimes takes away from the stories.
The part I really liked best was the Primer and Nell's adventures with it.
The end came a bit abrupt. I would I have liked to have seen some kind of epilogue wrapping things up a little bit. This was more like a Hollywood final shot.
It's more like 4.5 stars than 5 because there were some parts I more or less skipped over. But it's too well conceived and written for rounding down, so 5 stars.
I am recommending this to anyone interested in either the cyberpunk or steampunk genres. Or anyone who enjoys reading books with a profusion of nano-technologies. Don't mind the title. It's fitting and misleading at the same time.
