Point Appertaining To Books The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
| Title | : | The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer |
| Author | : | Neal Stephenson |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Trade Reissue |
| Pages | : | Pages: 499 pages |
| Published | : | May 2nd 2000 by Spectra (first published February 1995) |
| Categories | : | Science Fiction. Fiction. Cyberpunk. Steampunk. Fantasy. Science Fiction Fantasy. Dystopia |
Neal Stephenson
Paperback | Pages: 499 pages Rating: 4.19 | 77896 Users | 3337 Reviews
Relation In Favor Of Books The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence.
Specify Books As The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
| Original Title: | The Diamond Age |
| ISBN: | 0553380966 (ISBN13: 9780553380965) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Nell, Bud, John Percival Hackworth, Fiona Hackworth, Harv, Dr. X, Carl Hollywood, Judge Fang, Ms. Miranda Redpath, Mr. Chang, Gwendolyn Hackworth, Major Napier, Lord Alexcander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, King Coyote, Miss Pao, Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw, Miss Matheson, Demetrius James Cotton, Mr. PhyrePhox |
| Setting: | China Shanghai(China) |
| Literary Awards: | Hugo Award for Best Novel (1996), Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (1996), Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1996), Arthur C. Clarke Award Nominee (1996), John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (1996) Prometheus Award Nominee for Best Novel (1996) |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
Ratings: 4.19 From 77896 Users | 3337 ReviewsAppraise Appertaining To Books The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
3.5 stars. Review originally posted at www.fantasyliterature.com.Neal Stephensons The Diamond Age is set in a near future that is unrecognizable in some ways and disturbingly familiar in other ways. Nations have dissolved and people now tend to congregate in tribes or phyles based upon their culture, race, beliefs or skills. Nanotechnology has upended society, and even the poorest people have access to matter compilers that create clothing, food and other items from a feed of molecules. Still,I read this the first time when I was a young, impressionable, repressed, closeted Mormon boy. (Oh, god, so many of my reviews seem to start this way.) Stephenson's vision of a future shocked and titillated me, and years later I still found it returning to haunt me. Yet I don't think I ever truly understood the story, and certainly not the ending.Now I think I do. In a future where synthetically assembled diamond is as ubiquitous as glass, where almost anything can be designed and created atom
The Diamond Age: Nanotech, Neo-Victorians, Princess Nells Primer, and the Fists of Righteous Harmony all we need now is the kitchen sinkOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureI am a huge Neal Stephenson fan based on his novels Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, two of my favorite books. He is frequently a brilliant writer, unafraid to introduce new ideas and infodumps in the most unexpected and entertaining ways. His sense of humor is more subtle and clever than most, and his world-building
In a recent interview (in which he predicted the demise of the novel at the hands of the increasingly ubiquitous "screen"), Philip Roth said that if you don't read a novel in two weeks, then you don't really read it. He's talking about the necessity of focus and attention, the dedication required to trick your brain into thinking these characters and places are real, without which you cannot become emotionally and intellectually enmeshed in the narrative, without which the novel has no bite, no
I first read this ~10 years ago and just re-read it as someone reminded me that it predicts the future of reading. And it does - what I love about Stephenson is his high level of prescient-ness. In fact I think it also predicts a lot of the future of nanotechnology and entertainment. The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer is a dynamic book with an AI in it. Imagine Alexa or Siri in 5-10 years, smart enough to make up stories on the fly and answer questions about or even redirect the storyline. The
Up to about halfway through, I was in love with this book, but then Hackworth goes to the Drummers and we skip 10 years, and my thoughts are like this: if you as a writer didn't care about those 10 years enough to write about them, why do I care enough to read them? Worse, science fiction is already more concerned with the ideas than the characters, but when the writer is consciously trying to mimic the further-removed-from-reality discourses of Victorian-era writing, we wind up so distanced
This is the third Neal Stephenson book Ive read, the first two being Zodiac then Snow Crash. I seem to end up somewhat lukewarm on his work, but I liked this the best of the three. It held my interest better and I enjoyed the story more, or at least parts of it.The story has a lot going on, but the part that interested me the most was the Primer, a sort of computerized, interactive book that bonds with whichever young girl its given to and adjusts its stories to be relevant for that girl,
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