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The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780553380965
ISBN: 0553380966
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 512
Publication Date: May 02, 2000
Publisher: Spectra
Release Date: May 02, 2000
Studio: Spectra
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Editorial Review:
John Percival Hackworth is a nanotech engineer on the rise when he steals a copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" for his daughter Fiona. The primer is actually a super computer built with nanotechnology that was designed to educate Lord Finkle-McGraw's daughter and to teach her how to think for herself in the stifling neo-Victorian society. But Hackworth loses the primer before he can give it to Fiona, and now the "book" has fallen into the hands of young Nell, an underprivileged girl whose life is about to change.
In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson took science fiction to dazzling new levels. Now, in The Diamond Age, he delivers another stunning tale. Set in twenty-first century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls in the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life—and the entire future of humanity—is about to be decoded and reprogrammed…
In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson took science fiction to dazzling new levels. Now, in The Diamond Age, he delivers another stunning tale. Set in twenty-first century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life -- and the entire future of humanity -- is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1996.
"[Stephenson] has gotten even better. The Diamond Age envisions the next century as brilliantly as Snow Crash did the day after tomorrow."
NEWSWEEK"[Stephenson is] the hottest science fiction writer in America... Snow Crash is without question the biggest SF novel of the 1990s. Neal's SF novel The Diamond Age promises more of the same. Together, they represent a new era in science fiction. People who plow through these mind-bogglers will walk around slack-jawed for days and reemerge with a radically redefined sense of reality."
DETAILS"Neal Stephenson is the Quentin Tarantino of postcyberpunk science fiction.... Having figured out how to entertain the hell out of a mass audience, Stephenson has likewise upped the form's ante with rambunctious glee."
THE VILLAGE VOICE"Snow Crash drew its manic energy from the cyberpunkish conceit that anything is possible in virtual reality; in The Diamond Age the wonders of cyberspace pale before the even more dazzling powers of nanotechnology."
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"The Diamond Age establishes Neal Stephenson as a powerful voice for the cyber age.... At once whimsical, satirical, and cautionary."
USA TODAY"Stephenson's world-building skills are extraordinary.... The Diamond Age should cement Stephenson's reputation as one of the brightest and wittiest young authors of American science fiction."
THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Dated and yet... still a good time.
As is often the case within the science fiction genre, the novel relies too much upon the whiz-bang intricacies of a Victorian-retro future ruled by nanotechnology. Too often it veers into tangential details about this gizmo or that advancement which can be tiresome after a few hundred pages. Even worse, the conclusion of the novel features an abrupt, extreme shift in gears which seems forced, at best. However, despite all that, it retains Stephenson's manic charm, his innate ability to combine ... Read More
Rating: - A remarkable vision of the future, that doesn't quite become tangible
The Diamond Age is an ambitious book, and one that kept me enthralled through about 350 of its 450 or so pages and then impatiently waiting for what turned out to be a highly improbable, fairly confusing, Hollywood style ending (where at all odds and in spite of massive casualties on all sides and the cataclysmic world-changing significance of the events they are caught up in, all of the main characters we're supposed to care about get the kind of familial reconciliations they want).
I ... Read More
Rating: - Stephenson creates intriguing nano tech world
Diamond Age is a fascinating read although it loses steam half way through. Stephenson writes about the future with nano technology as if hes been there. The characters are well written (more believable than Snow Crash) and there is a lot of insight into differences between cultures (philes). Stephensons background in Geography and Physics is quite evident here. I would give it 4.5 stars and it would be even better if the plot was cleaned up a little as it starts to drag and become convoluted in the middle. ... Read More
Rating:  - for neo-Victorians, Dr. X's crew
I go back and forth with whether I liked this book or whether I liked this book a lot. With the exception of Stephenson's endings, I tend to find his werks very strong overall; these are compelling reads with digestible but thought-provoking questions and scenarios and some rather scintillating characters that are one part Jungian archetype and two parts original. Diamond Age shares those qualities with the rest of his body of work and yet somehow seems a bit... deficient?
It's clear that Diamond ... Read More
Rating: - It coulda been a contender
Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" is divided into equal-length "Part the First" and "Part the Second," which require two opposing ratings:
Part the First -- 5 stars, for a brilliantly-imagined and peopled alternate world
Part the Second -- 1 star, for a shallow, badly-acted, pulp-SF collection of cliches
In the Part the First, we learn how a near-magical, interactive Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is stolen from its rightful owner -- the brilliant nanotech artifexer John Hackworth, ... Read More
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