Using the same wit and imagination that made his Snow Crash a bestseller, Stephenson propels readers in a dazzling fashion into the 21st century. A brilliant nonotechnology engineer is commissioned to create a revolutionary interactive device, the sole purpose of which is to raise a girl who is capable of thinking for herself.
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Using the same wit and imagination that made his Snow Crash a bestseller, Stephenson propels readers in a dazzling fashion into the 21st century. A brilliant nonotechnology engineer is commissioned to create a revolutionary interactive device, the sole purpose of which is to raise a girl who is capable of thinking for herself.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good- in Very Good- jacket. Size: 9x6x1; First edition, first printing with full number line on copyright page. Hardcover in jacket, price intact on jacket flap. Some soiling to page edges, last few pages have a light stain to the outer margins. Text is unmarked. Binding strong, slight slant to spine. Very good minus with a few flaws. Jacket now in fresh Mylar. Additional photos available upon request. All of our books are carefully wrapped and shipped in a box.
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Seller's Description:
Jensen, Bruce. VG+/VG+ 455 p. SIGNED BY NEAL STEPHENSON! 1st edition hardcover from Bantam Spectra, 1995. VERY GOOD PLUS IN VERY GOOD PLUS DJ, Bruce Jensen jacket art. HUGO AND LOCUS AWARD WINNER!
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Seller's Description:
Jensen, Bruce. NF/F. 455 p. 1st edition hardcover from Bantam Spectra 1995. SIGNED BY NEAL STEPHENSON! NEAR FINE (minor edgewear, spotting to top page block) IN FINE DJ. Bruce Jensen jacket art. HUGO AND LOCUS AWARD WINNER!
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Jensen, Bruce. 455 p. 1st edition hardcover from Bantam Spectra, 1995. SIGNED BY NEAL STEPHENSON! FINE IN FINE DJ. Bruce Jensen jacket art. HUGO AND LOCUS AWARD WINNER!
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 23.5 x 16 cm. Octavo. 456pp. Purple cloth spine with tan boards in dust jacket. First edition with full numberline ending in 1. Original price of $22.95 present on front flap. Previous owner's stamp on front and rear paste-down and it has been abraded from the foredge. Winner of the Hugo and Locus awards for 1996. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-1076.
I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age." I've tried to get into cyberpunk before, and stumbled over jargon and scattered narratives. I was very pleased to find that all the slang or jargon that Stephenson wants to introduce you to is done within the first few pages, and he is a much more calm storyteller than many of his colleagues in the genre.
It's after you've gotten comfortable that he releases the deluge; there are so many themes and questions in this book that I'm going to have to read this again to begin to get a handle on all of the ideas he tosses around.
The chief, most obvious one is basically: how do you educate a young mind to think for itself and avoid mindless indoctrination without accidentally indoctrinating said young mind? That is where the book's subtitle (or the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer) comes in. Commissioned by an aristocrat for his granddaughter in the hopes that it will teach her independent thought and a flexible mind, a copy ultimately falls into the hands of the daughter of the engineer who executes the design of the primer, and another one ends up in the possession of Nell, a poor child living in an abusive home. Nell is our chief protagonist, and it is her trajectory that is followed most closely throughout the novel.
The primer is an advanced tool, involving actors ('ractors, from "interactors") to act out the situations put forth by the technology of the book, but the three girls all turn out quite differently. The novel has some ideas as to why, and this is where I found the interesting meat of the story, though there is so much more to find that different people will be sure to find other themes on which to chew.
I will definitely read this book again in order to see what else I can discover.
Easily one of Stephenson's best, one of my personal favorites. A richly detailed world, a huge cast of wonderful characters.
splene
Jul 26, 2007
better character development than Snow Crash
I liked the characters much better than in Snow Crash. I think Stephenson does a good job of capturing the setting (mental and physical) of Shanghai as a non-Asian, but also providing a vivid future portrait. I found some plot threads remained somewhat inadequately explained compared to others, but it is such a densely layered story that it probably is unavoidable.
Bytez
May 29, 2007
A Neo-Victorian Hackers Quest
Those familiar with Neal Stephenson's other books will of course gobble this novel up, for although it lacks the pace of Snow Crash it give us a glimpse of the a possible future that is tantalizingly seductive
Those not familiar however will be taken on a whirlwind adventure, exploring a future where nations no longer exist and humanity is split up into tribes (or phyles) and united by technology, where a book infused with nanotechnology can become a magical item to a young girl and change her life forever, and where a Victorian nanoprogrammer can be lost for years in a collective mind under the sea.
