Diamond Age / Unabridged

Rating:
Summary: Great book. Highly recommended
Review: I agree with what people have said about the ending. I feltvaguely disappointed but it worked all right logically -- I still say it is a work of genius and have given it the full 10 points, it is the sheer quality of the writing which earns it this, as people up there have pointed out, it refutes the idea of SF as not-literature and builds up great human characters with moving, real relationships, while dazzling with inventiveness. The book is scientifically important because it was the first I had really heard of nanotechnology which is closer than we think. Drexler and Merkle are real people -- go and check 'em out on the web! Would like to see some words from Neal S. himself here. The book is an extension of the Net and he always seems a wired character. So here we are at the great amazon.com. Cheers Martin

Rating:
Summary: Ditto
Review: An excellently written book...but the ending was clearly the work of some overzealous editor who truncated Stephenson's story in some misguided attempt to keep the number of pages down. I applaud the excellent and engaging characters with which Stephenson builds his story, and the vivid and accurate society he builds for them. With 20 pages left, I was completely enthralled and dying to find out how the author was going to wrap up the numerous of fillaments of the plot. With five pages left, I realized that the story would not be resolved, and was quite disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: The best modern science fiction novel I've ever read!
Review: If you like science fiction, you must read The Diamond Age. I tend to prefer pre-"cyberpunk" stuff myself (all that decadence gets a bit tiresome for a lover of beauty such as myself), but I will long remember TDA as one of my all-time favorite novels. As a political and moral conservative, I was intrigued by the prominence of the neo-Victorian phyle and can't help but wonder if Steaphenson isn't trying to say something about contemporary hedonistic mores and the harm they may bring to the societies which embrace them. Libertarian sci-fi fans of the Heinlein/Van Vogt/L. Neil Smith variety may find reason here to rejoice

Rating:
Summary: OH! He came so CLOSE this time!
Review: Having been told for a very long time that Snow Crash was THE book to read, I finally bought it in a Science Fiction store in Northampton, MA, and read it on the bus ride back to Boston. Yes, I was amazed. Yes, I was brought into it by the present tense-method of writing. And when the concepts and explanations of the world as it worked came into place, I could see it so clearly in my mind, I felt it was the "way things were going to be". But when those last few pages of the books unfolded, it was like someone had been hired to make the worse ending possible for this book, to sabotage the great, overriding feeling of joy the beginning of the book had brought. Yes, it was that bad.

I had so much hope for Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson is a writer, my friends. The other reviews should tell you as much. He can ENGAGE. He can ENVELOP. He can AMAZE. But he can NOT WRITE ENDINGS. He needs to put his manuscript down, take a walk on the beach, throw a few pebbles in the sand, and take that extra week to tie the stuff DOWN, or at least really lay down that amazing stuff lies ahead in the future. Snow Crash ended like an episode of the A-Team, and The Diamond Age, this glittering jewel of a work, ends with all the grandeur of Scarlett O'Hara walking out of her hour and picking up the mail. It kills me! It absolutely kills me. So, yes, buy the Diamond Age. BUY THIS BOOK. It will ENTHRALL you. But you will NOT come away from it with anything resembling a feeling of closure. But then again, life does that to you.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting ideas, not sufficiently drawn together
Review: After _Snow Crash_, I was a little dissapointed with _The Diamond Age_. The ideas are just as inventive, and the world just as fantastic and plausible, but the prose is not as consistent. The pacing in the first 150 pages seems just a bit off, and it took a while for me to really fall into the characters. Once I did fall in, I enjoyed the story and characters as much as the always-excellent setting.

But it seems like Stephenson had too many irons in the fire. As I approached the last 50 pages, I was tremendously excited, wondering how Stephenson would pull it all together. When I had 30 pages left, I was ecstatic. "My God!" I thought, "The ending must defy imagination!" Then, at 10 pages left, I felt an all-too familiar ache in my gut. The resolution was: there would be no resolution. How would Stephenson pull it all together? He wouldn't. And he didn't.

Ultimately, I can't recommend _The Diamond Age_. I've read plenty of otherwise good books with lousy endings, and the fact that this author's previous book was fantastic is no excuse for this one. I'll be watching for the next Neal Stephenson book and hoping for better.

Rating:
Summary: A hilarious, fast-paced heartbreaker
Review: Stephenson really knows how to write relevant science fiction. The Diamond Age hits hard in a time when governments are questioning their role in social services for people and when nationalism isn't what it used to be. The world presented in The Diamond Age is tragic, horrible and wonderous, forcing you to continue reading, eating up the hilarity and absurdity laced throughout. Nell, a young girl caught in a multi-phyle chase over her Primer, is the embodyment of Generation X ideals. She's a brilliant slacker, addicted to her information source, learning only for the sake of consumption. But her will to live is overwhelming, giving us the ride of a lifetime through the Shanghi of the future. Stephenson is a master writer of amusing cyberthrillers, and is definetly an author to watch out for

Rating:
Summary: A magically twisted journey into the world of Nanotechnology
Review: The DIAMOND AGE represents the dawn of a new movement in science fiction, much the same way Frank Herbert's DUNE and William Gibson's NEUROMANCER forever changed the way in which americans read sci-fi. Set in a world where nations have reverted to cultural and ethnographic enclaves, the DIAMOND AGE introduces us to a world where the everyday adjustments in our lives are accomplished by tiny machines...nanotechnology. The story concerns a book, or rather a nanotech-computer system called The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, constructed by mid-level peon John Perceval Hackworth. Hackworth intends to use the 'book', illegally taken from his enclave's leader, to educate his young daughter in all the graces and knowledge that a youngster in this age would need...not mearly the bookbound iconoclasts of the educational system. When the 'book' falls into the hands of a young serf girl, Hackworth and the girl each embark on a a quest ion search of what it means to truely understand. Stephenson is no amature when it comes to confronting the difficult, and often retread nature of science fiction. 1991s SNOW CRASH dealt with similar issues as the DIAMOND AGE, but it is here that he acheives the mastery of the craft. The author has created a world which not only engenders a sense of wonder in the reader but a sense of wonderful confusion. Written via intercalary chapters, we quickly began to see the theme of the work as we bounce back and forth between the surreal world of the Primer and the twisted reality its builders struggle to cope with. Confusing at times, and morbidly charged at others, the DIAMOND AGE cris-crosses the globe and the mind searching to answer the most challanging of questions: what does it mean to be able to think..... Andrew Chadwick Virginia Beach, VA [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Better than 'snow crash' if you like things a little darker
Review: The techno-Victorian mode returns with all the darkness of Philip K. Dick and K.W. Jeter combined with Neal's rock'n'roll plot lines, turn up the volume and dive in. Executive summary: "It's a blast, check it out."

Rating:
Summary: This sentence is poetry...
Review: How to make your mark on the world - how best to get your point across? Keep your idea simple; show, don't tell. ... ... ... ... ... ... My first by NS, and what a read! I know a lot of people will go for setting, perchance critisize this book for its other-otherworldlyness, love it or not, but what got to me here was the dream of almost all parents: That THEIR child would become a full and whole person, a decent human being and wise enough to do better at life and living than they. The gift of the good life endlessly thought of on endless waking night, as their child grows up. "Am I being a good enough parent, will I be weighed and found wanting later on in life, HOW how how will my child turn out to be, what can I do to have the best of all children? How can I be the best of parents?" Forget it, NS says. You can't. You cannot be the best of parents. There is no such contest. There is only love, interest, caring and love. Your child will develop as the individual he or she is, through all the meetings with the world and all the people of the world, and you cannot control or check anything to a degree, where your child is protected in such a way that nothing will "go wrong". And you will develop along your own course, but here's your chance to really learn for a change. Take it or don't. This is the human condition - the fallible infallibility of creation. And this is the book I belive NS wrote. A highly philosophical work of fast and tightly packed fiction, defending a person's need for and right to love, loving and being loved, and right to be nurtured to the best of one's abilities. Not in order to produce a perfect human being, but in order to help a person DEVELOP INTO a human being - and to help oneself in the process through the heart's submittal to circumstance. And THIS *I* believe to be the core of this story. Through the emminently gripping story of the girl growing up to the beat of all the primer's characters I found a voice ecchoing my own un-voiced belief: That belief in, caring for, love of, and sacrifice to one's creations is essential for the preservation of the idea commonly referred to as "human beings". ... ... ... ... ... ... But praise the thinking and essential caring of NS and you have said only half: For his writing simply FLOWS. It may come across as very descriptive, maybe even 'wordy' prose, but NS is a poet at heart. Concise, precise, *tight* - as in 'beat'. And keeping a million kites in the wind, not tangling or un-tangling the threads without a purpose, he manages to lose only one or two in the process. Amazing feat! AND he has the nerve to end the story where your own life begins. Of all the...! ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Support this voice that he may gain even greater clarity. We deserve it. And need it

Rating:
Summary: Like browsing the net? You will love Stephenson's Metaverse!
Review: Here we are shopping at Amazon.com on the net when what we really want do is shop in persona at the Metaverse storefront. Hey all you Microhackers. Read this book. Make is happen