Rating: 
Summary: Good enough
Review: I've read all of Stephonson's works available and always look forward to the next, but from what I had heard from other fans, this just didn't live up to my expectations. That doesn't make it bad, I just had high hopes for it. I personally prefer the "furture will be a wasteland" concepts over his "future will be neo-victorian" since that appeals to me somewhere on the same level of having my toenails torn off with pliers. The samuri and leather of Snow Crash - that's cool, but the lace and top hats of Diamond Age are boooring. Even with that it had its good points - although now having read Neuromancer after this, it has its "borrowed" spots just as much as Snow Crash.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the most entertaining novels about nanotechnology
Review: <H3> Recently, Neal Stephenson has established his credentials as a serious literary writer with the magnificent <I>Cryptonomicon</I>, an extremely entertaining and well-written book about the history and current state of cryptography and computation. However, one of his most unequivocally transhumanist novels is 1995's <I>The Diamond Age</I>.Set at least fifty years in the future (no actual time reference is given), <I>The Diamond Age</I> takes place in an era where nanotechnology has transformed the lifestyles of virtually everybody, some for better and some for worse. Virtual reality "ractives" are a major source of entertainment, and matter compilers linked to a nanotech-based propagation "feed" are available to even the most impoverished of homes. However, despite the apparent panacea of the future economy, there are still problems with crime and political corruption, and few people can be trusted. The story begins in Shanghai, which is home to a large bulk of the world's population. An elite nanotech engineer, fittingly named Hackworth, is secretly commissioned by Lord Finkle-McGraw, a high ranking "equity lord," to create an interactive primer for his young daughter. Hackworth does so, and in the process, realizes the potential of such a creation. He decides to make a secret copy of the primer for the benefit of his own daughter's education, though to do so, it is necessary to evade the immense publicity of the city and find ulterior means of cloning the book...in this case, by entering Shanghai's Outer Kingdom. Upon returning from the relative secrecy of the Outer Kingdom, Hackworth is mugged by a young, impoverished ruffian named Harv who steals, among other things, the primer. Not realizing the full value of the primer, Harv gives it to his younger sister Nell, who immediately develops a deep-rooted bond with the book. From here, <I>The Diamond Age</I> becomes an increasingly complex novel about how the primer affects Nell's life, and how the technology will ultimately affect the lives of thousands of others. All of this, combined with Neal Stephenson's unique literary-but-entertaining writing style makes <I>The Diamond Age</I> a wonderful transhumanist novel. In the realm of science-fiction, its closest counterparts are <I>Ender's Game</I> by Orson Scott Card and the currently hard-to-find <I>The Broken God</I> by David Zindell, though I find <I>The Diamond Age</I> to be superior to either of those worthy novels.
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Reviewed by: E. Shaun Russell</H3>
Rating: 
Summary: Future past tense
Review: Just as my gramatical reference makes no sense neither does The Diamond Age. After reading Cryptonomicron, I thought I had found a new breed of sci-fi writer. Snow Crash was an interesting first step but clearly not the sophisticated production that Cryto is. Diamond Age fits no where in between either thematically or structurally. Stephenson falls back on the old sci-fi bromide that creates a future where they have superior technology but it adds nothing to the world the people live in. The characters live a less convenient life than we do yet have at their disposal technology to do away with all the ills of day to day life. Riding chevalines (horses) for God sake is but one instance of the banal existence these people subject themselves to and riding in airships (zeplins).
Maybe I don't get this genre but Asimov certainly did it better. He took today's technology and projected it into the future to show us how things could be. Stephenson throws out today to create a tomorow that's worse than the past. This isn't science fiction. Its just a disppointment. The promise of Snow Crash realized in Crypto is lost in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: This Book Is Fantastic. Some similar concepts of snow crash (also fantastic) but more mature and developed. Stephenson is quite a talent.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and Lovely
Review: A great cyberpunk fairy tale. Neal Stephenson is the twisted love child of Frances Hodgson Burnett and William Gibson. In the future, due to advances in nano-technology it is possible to grow just about anything out of constituent atoms. Humanity's basic needs are thus pretty much cared for, but there are still privileged sections of society and not so privileged sections. Someone in one of the privileged sections decides that his children were brought up a bit too mundanely and so commissions a "Young Girl's Primer" for his granddaughter. This interactive, artificially intelligent book falls into the hands of a little girl from a not so privileged section of society and stuff happens. It's cool. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: For the new millenium
Review: Stephenson has wrought something new for the twenty-first century. Comparisons to William Gibson are hardly apt. Since "Neuromancer" Gibson has grown into something of a prose stylist, emphasizing sly characterization rather more than technological prophecy. Stephenson has emerged as the idea man of the modern science fiction. One greets "The Diamond Age" with something of the amazement that must have greeted "Foundation" or "Stranger in a Strange Land" (or even "The World of Null-A"). Should Stephenson continue to write science fiction, then he could become the pre-eminent figure in the field.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and compelling
Review: I have generally NTS's work to be of highest literary caliber, when compared to that of Bruce Sterling, for example, or that of Gibson [whose writing matured with Idoru, IMO]. He scores very high in the inventiveness category and characterization as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant ideas, little suspense
Review: A lot of people read SF primarily for the ideas, and I'd argue there is no better fiction for that purpose. Add at least two stars to this review if you are an 'ideas' reader, because Stephenson has more ideas than the next five successful SF writers combined. For me, though, the lack of suspense, the lack of absorbing characters, and the lack of story momentum led me to abandon this book after I had dutifully slogged through more than half of it. Maybe it picks up dramatically near the end, but frankly, at this point, I just felt my reading time would be better spent elsewhere. It would be interesting to see Neal Stephenson team up with a strongly character-based SF luminary for a collaboration.
Rating:
Summary: a cool book
Review: I think a lot of the biggest good and bad points of the book are mentioned in everybody elses reviews, but there is one element that nobody else seems to think is important. Neal manages to creat a wonderafly believable Libertarian Utopia, which is something I've never seen done anywhere else. Perhaps Utopia is a little strong, the world has a lot of imperfections and couldn't be believable if it didn't, but on the whole it is very much a place where I would like to live.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully layered textured study of the human condition.
Review: A magnificent book that showcases the beauty of the human spirit.
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