The Diamond Age

Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Hardcover, 455 pages

English language

Published Nov. 11, 1995 by Bantam Books.

ISBN:
978-0-553-09609-5
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
314194775

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (226 reviews)

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.

25 editions

My favorite Neal Stephenson book

5 stars

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.

Diamond Age > Golden Age

No rating

It's a long ago I've read this book.

I remember espacially the society Stephenson has createdd for this story.

The Victorian Age was seen as a Golden Age by the tech bros of the 90's. The society of this book is basically the Victorian Age pumpt up with nano tech stuff. A Golden Age++ or a "Diamond Age"

Review of 'The Diamond Age' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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 …

Simultaneously better and worse than Snow Crash

4 stars

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 …

Review of 'The Diamond Age' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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) …

Review of 'The Diamond Age' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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

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