The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Paperback

$21.00
$21.00
Skip to product information
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
  • The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Paperback

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Paperback

by Neal Stephenson
$21.00
$21.00

Book Overview

Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time

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 Ladys 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.

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.

Front Jacket

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....
ISBN9780553380965
Author Neal Stephenson
PublisherSpectra Books
GenreLiterature
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2000
LanguageENG- English
Pages512
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Coming of Age Fiction Science Fiction

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Neal Stephenson

The Cobweb

The Cobweb - Paperback

The Cobweb - Paperback

By Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George

About Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the author of New York Times bestsellers including The Diamond Age, Zodiac, Cryptonomicon, Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, REAMDE, Anathem, Seveneves, Fall: or Dodge in Hell, and Termination Shock, as well as nonfiction works such as In The Beginning . . . Was the Command Line. He has worked for Blue Origin and Magic Leap, and more recently co-founded Lamina1, a startup creating an open metaverse platform.

You may also like