"At this point, John Percival Hackworth, almost without thinking about her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer's database. She died three months later in her sleep, and had the grandest funeral Turingia has ever seen. Parking lots and chaos.. Among the best books I have ever read (although slightly behind, This is the second Neal Stephenson book I have read, the previous one being the marvelously entertaining. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Thanks for contributing an answer to Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange! Alternative ways to code something like a table within a table? Internally, the New Atlantis phyle is a corporate oligarchy whose "equity lords" rule the organization and its bylaws under allegiance to the vestigial British monarchy. For questions about "The Diamond Age", otherwise known as "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (1995), a post-cyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. The book of the seed is inside Nell's Primer at the end and being worked on by the drummers even as they remove Miranda from the Drummer community. As Turingia became more and more prosperous, its relationship with Atlantis turned less and less friendly. Cape revenues accounted for three-fourths of the total income in the regions four settler states in 1870, as the diamond discoveries created more revenue that could be used to build railways and public works. With his southern gambit frustrated, Carnarvon embarked on a northern strategy. She kept a very close relationship with Nell, and revered in the success of her adopted daughter. All these answers miss the point that when Hackworth is being sentenced by Judge fang he subverts the books to be linked to the missing primer (the one owned by Nell). The story is about rich foreigners and poor Chinese people. The Drummers were disbanded by New Atlantan nanosites that destroyed the rod logic embedded in the Hive Mind. Molecular nanotechnology is omnipresent in the novel's world, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products that come out of them. As if the writer could not spend a bit of time after writing a 1000 pages to explain how exactly the story unfolds, and how the carefully built characters will turn out. Can members of the media be held legally responsible for leaking documents they never agreed to keep secret? highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. If the novel draws from this event, then we can see this as antagonistic towards the Victorian principles and "colonization". As far as the overall story, there's a lot to like, plenty of varied characters, several story lines that are more closely woven than one might originally think, and plenty of action. And unlike Diamond Age, the ending of Snow Crash didn't make me feel like hunting down Stephenson and beating him with the manuscript until he coughed up the real ending..;-) Un-fun endings--Stephenson's Bane (Score: 4) by C. E. Sum on Friday September 17, 1999 @01:56AM Homepage Journal. the tarsal bones during adolescence. I think I have a better idea now, but I might just be projecting. Most phyles depicted in the novel have a global scope of sovereignty, and maintain segregated enclaves in or near many cities throughout the world. Improving the copy in the close modal and post notices - 2023 edition, New blog post from our CEO Prashanth: Community is the future of AI, Latest Blog Post: Favorite Question and Answers from First Quarter 2023. I later put it on paper, in case anyone elseis longing to see the story finished to her satisfaction. Now set the book in a future Shanghai, in a world where nanotechnology makes material needs obsolete, at least in theory And voila: The Diamond Age. the producers be many and the consumers few.'. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Ladys Illustrated Primer is a 1995 science-fiction coming-of-age novel by Neal Stephenson. Deference to authority is central to the Confucianist ideology in the book, and the Celestial Kingdom is shown to be ruled by Mandarins. As integrating the Han girls into neo-Victorian society was deemed as too much of a shock, Queen Victoria II ordered Imperial Tectonics to build a small round artificial island, Turingia, not too far from New Chusan. Up to about halfway through, I was in love with this book, but then Hackworth goes to the Drummers and we skip 10 years, and my thoughts are like this: if you as a writer didn't care about those 10 years enough to write about them, why do I care enough to read them? The Feed carries streams of both energy and basic molecules, which are rapidly assembled into usable goods by matter compilers. The computer is named "Wizard 0.2", a typographical allusion to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Courts, governments, and jurisdictions in The Diamond Age? I will try to summarize the plot and motivations as I understood them while listening to the book and if any of you see that I made a mistake then please correct me. they produced the necessary goods; and 3) the artisans, because they At a special hearing in October 1871, Robert W. Keate (then lieutenant governor of Natal) found in favour of Waterboer, but the British persuaded him to request protection against his Boer rivals, and the area was annexed as Griqualand West. Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who dont share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and Judes race was undetermineddeserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood thats revealed slowly over the course of the book. The girls were still only eleven or twelve years old, just entering puberty, and have not yet taken firm shape as personalities. Although some white diggers continued to work as overseers or skilled labourers, from the mid-1880s the workforce consisted mainly of Black migrant workers housed in closed compounds by the companies (a method that had previously been used in Brazil). influencers in the know since 1933. John Percival Hackworth received a small medal for his indispensable intelligence services to Her Majestys Joint Forces, and was greeted with honour at the royal celebration of Queen Victorias birthday. (Oh, god, so many of my reviews seem to start this way.) The Primer is intended to steer its reader intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Lord Finkle-McGraw, and growing up to be an effective member of society. The part that is confusing me is as . He basically takes a subversive book makes it more Chinese and respectful of authority but he makes the authority the owner of the missing book. Watching her mince away, Hackworth was only mildly New political and educational bodies came into existence in the eastern Cape, as did the first Black newspapers and Black-controlled churches. He was cordially invited to sit at the table of Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, who subtly hinted that it would be of great benefit for all parties, if he could spend most of his time outside of New Atlantis territory. Quiz, Match the Country with Its Hemisphere Quiz. . Later Miranda's storyline is taken over by her boss, Carl Hollywood, after Miranda disappears in her quest to find Nell. Matter compilers receive their raw materials from the Feed, a system analogous to the electrical grid of modern society. . Major cities have immune systems made up of aerostatic defensive micromachines, and public matter compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who requests them. The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. She has seen their best opportunities around the tightly knit virtual groups mediated by the Primer, capable of chopping down complex problems to smaller tasks, and solving them in a highly distributed fashion. The rise of the Afrikaner Bond and new laws affecting franchise qualifications and taxes also stimulated more-vigorous Black participation in electoral politics after 1884. shocked to see that her feet were no more than four inches long. The Diamond Age is characterized by two intersecting, almost equally-developed story lines: the social downfall of the nanotech engineer designer of the Primer, John Percival Hackworth, who makes an illegal copy of the Primer for his own young daughter, Fiona, and Nell's education through her independent work with the Primer after her brother Harv steals it from Hackworth. In today's world we go to sporting events and movies and concerts, in the Diamond Age they go to cool futuristic virtual reality interactive theater shows. Nell knew very well that the only way to be strong and independent, and more than just a vestigial organ of New Atlantis, was to provide something of true value. Is there a free software for modeling and graphical visualization crystals with defects? In the extremely globalized future depicted in the novel, these cultural divisions have largely supplanted the system of nation-states that divides the world today. She joins the Drummers, whose work on the Seed may allow her to unmask Nells identity and location. It's like sometimes authors TRY to be obscure in their writing in order to be "highbrow" to rise about the genre or something. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. Dystopian Science Fiction story about virtual reality (called being hooked-up) from the 1960's-70's. In that book, the Wizard puts on a grand appearance but is later revealed to be merely a man hiding behind a curtain. South Africa experienced a transformation between 1870, when the diamond rush to Kimberley began, and 1902, when the South African War ended. Now you can see what each connection gives you. When Nell enters the castle of King Coyote in the Primer's final challenge for her, she encounters an enormous computer apparently designed to think and placed in charge of the kingdom. Maybe I misunderstood? Very interesting. The Diamond Age is, on the surface, a tale of technology: specifically, nanotechnologyand its implications on culture, economy, and socialstructure. Peasants planted the seeds and had the The book distinguishes between the four Great Phyles: the Han (consisting of Han Chinese), Nippon (consisting of Japanese), Hindustan (a "riotously diverse collection of microtribes sintered together according to some formula we don't get") and the Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (consisting largely of Anglo-Saxons but also accepting Indians, Africans, and other members of the Anglosphere who identify with the culture). Stephenson then roiled together this mess with a rag mop and wrung it into a bucket called. must be better ways to do it now, maybe by regulating the growth of The protagonist in the story is Nell, a thete (or person without a tribe; equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Territories, a lowland slum built on the artificial, diamondoid island of New Chusan, located offshore from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. Thus the hunt for Princess Nell by the mouse army. I just finished listening to the Audio-book version of Neal Stephensons The Diamond Age and I wanted to check and see if I understood the story properly. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. rev2023.4.17.43393. Nobody knew where they came from, or who sowed them, but they bloomed like the desert after a sudden rain, growing food, shelter, medicine, and other fundamental items. While Im at it, Miranda becomes desperate to meet Nell but because of the anonymity built into the book and network she cant find her. But I side with the Victorian and Hackworth on this, this has armageddon painted all over it. Although, I'd thought that removing that aspect was Hackworth's alteration that he slipped in when he was ordered to mass-produce it. According to io9.com (Gawker's new SciFi Blog) the Sci-Fi Channel is planning on doing Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age as a 6 part miniseries.After Tin. First half of the book gets 4 stars; the second half gets 2 stars. It was entertaining, sure, and the world rich and inventive, the characters interesting, but if I were to tell you what the book were aboutI wasn't sure. I gulped down the 500 pages in four days, and it was not an easy read. I like it a lot more than Snow Crash, though not quite as much as Cryptonomicon. RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 1995. I don't think X truly understood what he was giving them: he thought they would be educated, sure, but looking back from a more mature perspective, the sort of education the Primer dishes out is serious stuff. "The provisional commanders of her divisions stood foremost, as did On top of this, the networked Primers form a sort of communication network for the Mouse Army (similar to the Drummer network). Harv and Nell live with a neglectful mother and her abusive boyfriends. But the Mouse Army was mainly trying to protect their leader, Nell. That's right, it's very similar, except instead of nicotine, this will imbue you with knowledge equivalent to a bachelor's degree in computer science. They're a bunch of self-actualizing badasses, not following the sort of simplistic ideology of the Fists. to design the Seed.". Is that an expectation of coherent plotting in your back pocket? He did say that the Primer did not turn out quite the way they had expected it to. He was not looking for anything he was running away. Every battalion had their own community building and library. "Hackworth is the Alchemist, Nell said, and he is using the wet Net Neal Stephenson, quote from The Diamond Age. Dr. X forces Hackworth to create a noninteractive form of the Primer to educate the girls. Society in The Diamond Age is dominated by a number of phyles, also sometimes called tribes, which are groups of people often distinguished by shared values, similar ethnic heritage, a common religion, or other cultural similarities. As the Master said, Let the producers be many and the consumers few.' But it will take some time. ". You're going to have a great time. As the predominantly agrarian societies of European South Africa began to urbanize and industrialize, the region evolved into a major supplier of precious minerals to the world economy; gold especially was urgently needed to back national currencies and ensure the continued flow of expanding international trade. It seems that they are meant to represent the melding of two cultures. All of the girls (including Nell) have taken part in this activity in a highly orderly fashion. Looking for something to do he ended up developing much of the ractive technology the performances used, and creating many of the self-animated characters that filled the lesser roles of the theatres virtual plays. The Fists are going to try to hold back this new group and use them for their own benefit. 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