The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book)
by Neal Stephenson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neal StephensonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-05-02
ISBN: 0553380966
Number of pages: 499
Publisher: Spectra
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780553380965
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book)
Book Review: The science fiction novel of the 21st century
Summary: 5 Stars
If Nineteen Eighty Four told the story of the 20th century, The Diamond Age tells the story of the 21st. For many of us, unfortunately, the story was written and published before its time, making it difficult to grasp the depth of its message. It's only after returning to it three to four times, and later reading it randomly and piecemeal, that I can now say I fully realize what the story is about. It is not about nanotechnology.
In the late 21st century, decades after the events of Snow Crash depicting the collapse of the sovereignty of the United States, the Anglo-American elite has reformed its society under a corporate monarchy, and lives in enormous gated communities, claves, where they hide away women and children while the men commute into the wasteland of sovereignty to engage in commerce with other societies. This commercial system is known as the Common Economic Protocol, a system of multilateral law that preserves the peace amongst the migrating societies and tribes of the world.
Nanotechnology is the source of the Victorians' wealth, but it is also what makes possible the existence of a large, dangerous underclass of tribe-less "thetes" who survive on free handouts and the occasional criminal act. Nanotechnology has reduced the cost of commodities to nothing, and in so doing has completely eliminated material poverty. However, and this is the fundamental point of the story, spiritual, cultural and social poverty still exists.
Our heroine Nell is born a thete, having the curse of a morally unscrupulous single mother. By her good fortune she is bonded with a secret project aimed at educating the next generation of Victorian leadership, the primer. As the story progresses, the primer teaches her to become a bona fide warlord, and the finale so many decry as unresolved is nothing less glorious and world-shattering than her ascent through blood and fire as the queen of an entirely new synthetic nation, while the last remaining sovereign nation-state, China, collapses into anarchy. With the collapse of China, the transformation from the Westphalian world of sovereign states to the Common Economic Protocol world of anarcho-capitalism is completed, and a centuries-long chapter of human history is closed.
Stephenson's principal subject throughout the story is security, from protecting little thete girls from bullies or her own parents, to the peculiar threats posed by nanotech terrorism and the necessary counter-measures, and the ultimate threat, a drug-like, slave-like assimilation by a blissful human hive mind. Tribeless men are defenseless against such a monster, but any society with sufficient organization can protect its members from it. The question remains, why should someone come to your aid? In a world of shattered nations, ethnicity and culture count for a lot, but Stephenson also explores tribes who share common professions, guilds of sorts, and a Reformed Distributed Republic which relies on a life-threatening trust building exercise (the equivalent of falling backwards into someone's arms with the risk of death should they not perform their role) as a substitute for more fundamental bonds. Cultural greatness ultimately matters most, and when software and the material world have merged, this means the future leaders need a thorough education in computer science as much as they need to know mathematics.
It is a strange world, a frightening world, but in many ways a more beautiful one and a freer one. I expect we will soon be living in it.
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Summary of The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book)
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....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.
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