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Feb 25, 2009

Chris rated it:

I get the feeling that Stephenson's writing process goes something like this:

Hey, I found a really cool idea here. I wonder what I can do about it....

He then writes about 200 pages of really awesome, meticulous world-building, with innovative ideas about, in the case of this book, the possibly uses of nanotechnology and its eventual social ramifications, and then goes, Oh, damn, I'm writing a story, and high-tails it to the end of the book, leaving the reader a little win More...

8 comments like (62 people liked it)

Nov 12, 2010

Louise rated it:

Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a place in the future? The crowded, multi-factioned, multi-leveled city of Shanghai and nearby Pudong made me miss my hometown terribly. Stephenson's descriptions of brightly lit Nanjing Road and small, dim, alleys of hawkers was so spot on. The mix of high technology, the sophisticated neo-Victorians, and the Confuscians made a confusing but ultimately satisfying story.

I came to The Diamond Age with a vague idea of what the book was about. Lik More...

5 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jun 04, 2008

Miss Michael rated it:

Stephenson is undoubtedly a good writer. I feel as though that's a trite thing to say, but I'm not talking about the overall story, I'm talking about the way each sentence is crafted. Also, I felt the need to read the book with a dictionary next to me, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. As far as the overall story, there's a lot to like, plenty of varied characters, several story lines that are more closely woven than one might originally think, and plenty of action. There's a kind More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2007

Vassilissa rated it:

I gulped down the 500 pages in four days, and it was not an easy read. I admit ruefully that Stephenson's vocabulary is better than mine. I feel like this book demands analysis, and I don't know enough to provide it. All I could do is count heads and make remarks about the colour and gender and fate of each major character. Which, OK, is worth doing, but it's 3:42am and I've been reading since about 8pm, so forgive me if I don't open it up again just now.

I want a primer.

More...

1 comment like (16 people liked it)

Sep 19, 2007

Dave rated it:

First half of the book gets 4 stars; the second half gets 2 stars. Average = 3 stars.

I really liked the first half of the book. His description of technology is wonderful, and the relationship between Nell and the Primer are quite captivating. Much to my dismay, the book fell apart at the end. Characters are disposed quite expediently, conflict is introduced with little or no explanation, very illogical events occur, and then the book stops. If I could give different ratings to both More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Jan 13, 2012

Tracey rated it:

I bought a used copy of The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer in March, after having read & very much enjoyed Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash. Oddly enough, Stephenson's books seem to be summer reading for me, or at least that's how it works out.

As usual, Stephenson drops us into the middle of the story, with little explicit explanation of what's going on. John Percival Hackworth, neo-Victorian nano-engineer (makes perfect sense in the novel!) is putting the finishing t More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Mike rated it:

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is the novel that, along with Snow Crash, put Neal Stephenson on the map in the mid 90's. Stephenson has since written a string of imaginative, thought provoking books that all touch on some aspect of the nature of information and it's movement. While it's never stated, Diamond Age seems to be set about 50 - 75 years after Snow Crash.

The first part of the title is a reference to the names that anthropologists and historians use to More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Thermalsatsuma rated it:

If 'Snow Crash' was the definitive cyberpunk book, then 'The Diamond Age or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer' is the last word on that particular genre. It's nominally set in the same world as the earlier book and shares some of the geo-political background. Nation states are an outdated concept, and now people are grouped into phyles by a common culture or other affiliation. Three major world views are uneasy neighbours - the neo Victorians of New Atlantis with their mannered stoicism and care More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2011

Jonathan rated it:

"The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code – but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."

"They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated t More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2010

Ron rated it:

A well-conceived near future dys/utopia with interesting characters. What's not to like? The clunky writing. Stephenson needs to take a basic writing course. He obviously worked hard to fine just the right vocabulary to express the social and scientific aspects of his world, but ruined it with high school prose.

The climax was especially unsatisfying as the big meeting between two principal characters is described by a third character some distance away. Bleeds all the emotion and sat More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2011

Kerry rated it:

I liked the first half of this book better, when it was still just "here are a lot of new ideas!" and wasn't concerned with tying up the plot. But it was still really great.

I really, really heart Neal Stephenson. He writes the most likable characters I have ever read. Hackworth is a Waterhouse, of course, and he can't ever seem to come up with more than one kickass female per book (I barely count Miranda, since she was in the book so rarely), but still, everybody is COOL More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2012

Peter rated it:

It's around 2050 in the Shanghai region of China. Different tribes of peoples live on artificial islands in the bay outside the city. In the prosperous community of the Neo-Victorians a nano technology engineer named John Hacksworth takes on a commission to create a book - 'The Young Ladies Illustrated Primer.' The book is an ever changing story, an AI device that teaches young ladies to be maverick individuals. Nell, a young Dickensian heroine from a broken home in the modern projects receives More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 25, 2008

Ben rated it:

This is a hard book to rate. I'll give it a four just based on how "cool" the book is. The world is awesome...one of the best I can think of...but it never really grabbed me. It was certainly interesting, but I had a hard time reading a lot in a sitting.

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 10, 2009

J. rated it:

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 fro More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2008

Nicholas rated it:

It's not often that I get to read science fiction where characters wear top hats. That's the sort of class that Neal Stephenson brings to the table.

I entered into "The Diamond Age" with very few preconceptions. The story had been described on Boing Boing, and it intrigued me enough to pick it up. The idea of a girl being raised by a high tech book was a pretty nifty pitch, especially for someone raised on Inspector Gadget cartoons and a love of computers.

The thi More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2009

Kevin rated it:

The Diamond Age is an interesting, mostly thought provoking book, with a fairly creative vision of the future. At the same time it has some serious flaws, especially in the second half of the book, which somewhat derails a lot of ideas that Neal Stephenson sets up. It is by no means a short book, being close to 500 pages, and it has taken me several months of off and on reading to complete it.

There are definitely some good parts to it, including interesting multi-dimensional charac More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 28, 2008

Manzoid rated it:

This book is pleasantly dense with interesting ideas about what the future holds. The title refers to the progression of material-driven stages of human progress -- the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, etc. In "the Diamond Age", matter compilers can easily create diamonds out of raw carbon. Basic foodstuffs and many other material wants can be satisfied by these matter compilers. This has created a world in which no one need starve. However there are still tremendous disparities between rich More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Toby rated it:

In "The Diamond Age" Stephenson both treads some of the same terrain as his previous novel, "Snow Crash" and foreshadows material from his followup "Cryptonomicon." Nanotechnology, culture, cryptography, subversion, and nature-vs-nurture feature as strong thematic elements in this book.

As "postcyberpunk," The Diamond Age posits a world in which the "franchulates" from Snow Crash evolve to their logical conclusion as full-fledged world More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Sean rated it:

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 cr More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Izlinda rated it:

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 21, 2008

Chandler rated it:

Interesting at first, the book effectively explores how societies might react to the proliferation of nano-technology and ubiquitous access to molecular assemblers.

Yikes.

Ok, so The Diamond Age is ~500 pages of fragmented stories. Although the book begins at a comfortable pace, taking time with each individual narrative and fleshing out the events leading to Nell's story, with each turned page the narrative cohesion drops and the motivations of the characters/events becom More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Stephen rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Aerin rated it:

I liked this book, although not so well as Snow Crash. It takes place in a much more distant future, and I adored the world Stephenson created for this; his ideas about nanotech are fully believable (I want a molecular feed that can create anything I desire from scratch!) and his society comprised of franchise-nations is novel and very cool. I also liked the heroine; she was smart and resourceful and ultimately kicked a lot of ass.

On the other hand, the entire plot was a bit overbl More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2009

Jamie rated it:

I liked this, v. imaginative & creative. never thought I'd enjoy a tech-y-ish sci fi book, but I totally did. eager to read more stephenson.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 26, 2010

Rudra rated it:

I wish there was a Primer when I was a kid. A book that taught you what you needed to know as you needed to know it. I wish I learned how to protect myself with a Dinosaur as my guide. I wish a book could teach me to deal with death and life and prepare me to face life with purpose and drive.

But, alas, it is fiction. Great fiction. Highly recommended.

If you've read other Stephenson, this book is an anomaly, the world is, as usual, enormous, but the upheaval is epic o More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2008

David rated it:

This was the first Neal Stephenson book I've read. I will be reading others as soon as possible. I was exhorted to do so by friends, and their understanding of my interests and my love of playful language were dead on.

This could be a tough read if you are easily annoyed by flamboyant vocabulary dredged from some of the less-traveled byways of English. The story is great, but to my mind, even better is Stehpenson's use of language. This is a book not just written, but crafted. It is e More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2009

Annette rated it:

Somehow, I've missed out on Neil Stephenson until this point, and aside from an abortive attempt to listen to Snow Crash as an audio book (long story!), "The Diamond Age" is the first of his I've finished.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. The style / genre is very much cyber-punk sci-fi, and the author's speculations on the societal impact of certain new technologies - especially "matter compilation" (a la ST:TNG replicators) are fascinating. I appreciated much of the social More...

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Feb 01, 2009

Katie rated it:

This book is magnificent! Stephenson creates a richly developed future world, exploring both the scientific (nanotechnology) and social sides of things. There's a cool steampunk aesthetic from the substantial subset of society that has self-consciously adopted many of the trappings of the Victorian era. All of the worldbuilding could lead to an excess of dull explication, but Stephenson pulls it off with aplomb (it doesn't hurt that I, raised on Tolkien, always have a strong appetite for deta More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 09, 2009

Will rated it:

So the first Neal Stephenson book I read, Snow Crash, was all right I suppose. It fit right into the cyberpunk genre, though didn't seem to take itself as seriously as some of its predecessors which I liked a bit better--namely Neuromancer and to a lesser degree Schismatrix. In fact, I was so non-plussed about it that it took me 2 and a half years to get around to The Diamond Age.

The verdict is that I like this one a lot better than Snow Crash. It's classified as post-cyberpunk, a More...

0 comments like

Feb 03, 2012

Danielle rated it:

“Discovering” a new author can be such a great feeling. I really enjoyed the ideas in this book. Set mostly in a future Shanghai, a neglected young girl is accidentally given a special interactive book that will help her survive her present circumstances and prepare her for future events. I found the beginning a little heavy on the hard science for my taste. But all the details about nanoscience and artificial intelligence really set the stage for a vivid world where anything (including ba More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)