I just finished The Diamond Age : Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Like all of Stephenson’s books, it’s a good read. I had read this before back in 1999, I believe, but I sure missed a lot. It’s not even clear to me that I finished it the first time I read it. It’s a futuristic science fiction book. Nanotech has changed everything. Nation-states have pretty much gone by the wayside. Part of a review posted at amazon.:
John Percival Hackworth is an engineer living in a neo-Victorian clave, who is commissioned by one of the world’s most powerful men to create a Primer that might enable the man’s granddaughter to be educated in ways superior to the “straight and narrow.” When Hackworth is mugged, an illegal copy of the Primer falls into the hands of a working-class girl named Nell, and a most deadly game’s afoot. Stephenson weaves several plot threads at once, as the paths of Nell, Hackworth and other significant characters-notably Nell’s brother Harv, Hackworth’s daughter Fiona and an actress named Miranda-converge and diverge across continents and complications, most brought about by Hackworth’s actions and Nell’s development. Building steadily to a wholly earned and intriguing climax, this long novel, which presents its sometimes difficult technical concepts in accessible ways, should appeal to readers other than habitual SF users.
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