Winner of the 1996 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Shortlisted for the 1996 Arthur C.Clarke Award. Finalist for the 1996 Prometheus Award.
"Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands.
"Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes -- members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian -- John Percival Hackworth -- in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. And from the moment she opens the book, her life is changed. She enters a fairy tale in which she is the heroine, challenged with traversing an enchanted world in search of the fabled twelve keys. If successful, she could emerge with untold wisdom and power.
"Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell's will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer -- a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity." [jacket blurb, US hbk, 1995]
"Far above the diamondoid bedrock of New Chusan, a powerful class of neo-Victorians is ruling twenty-first-century Atlantis/Shanghai. John Percival Hackworth, a brilliant nanotechnologist, has created an illicit, magical book for the education of a young lady: an interactive device crammed with folklore, science and the martial arts that teaches young women how to think for themselves.
"What will happen to society if it should fall into the hands of someone like little Nell, a poor orphan girl with so much to learn?" [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1996]
"The Quentin Tarantino of postcyberpunk science fiction... The Diamond Age blows Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine out of the infosphere." -- (in The Village Voice ).
"A brilliant, tricky, twenty-first-century version of Pygmalion." -- (in The Guardian ).
"A glorious blend of the mannered neo-Victorian and an imaginative future... A rattling good yarn, and its social and scientific extrapolations from our own world are all too believable." -- (in New Scientist ).
"A cornucopia of characters, a wealth of hip, social and technological riffs, stories-within-stories and not a few good jokes. Invest." -- (in Time Out ).
"Neal Stephenson has a certain something... that rare combination of literary style, good ideas, and deep humor. His previous book, Snow Crash, became an underground sensation as word spread like wildfire. And now, The Diamond Age follows with brilliant intensity.
"A truly remarkable novel of the near future, full of nanotechnology, neo-Victorianism, Confucian justice, and truly altered perceptions. If you haven't read his books yet, you're in for a big treat." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995)
Highly recommended.
*note: His second novel, Zodiac, was reissued in England. If you missed it the first time around, then grab a copy of the reprint. Although not science fiction (and perhaps not as wonderfully intricate), this eco-thriller is typically full of Stephenson's wit and erudition. You'll enjoy it. I certainly did.
