The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a science fiction novel by American author Neal Stephenson. To some extent, the bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, who is placed in a future world where nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. This novel addresses the themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as the Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, he won both Hugo and the Locus Awards, and was selected for the Nebula and other awards. In 2009, a six-hour miniseries adapted from the novel was scheduled for development for Syfy Channel, although the adaptation ultimately did not show up.
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The Diamond Age describes the world in the future that is revolutionizing the advancement of nanotechnology, just as Eric Drexler dreams of it in his nonfiction Engine of Creation (1986). Molecular nanotechnology is present in the novel world, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products it produces. This book explicitly acknowledges the achievements of several existing nanotechnology researchers: Feynman, Drexler and Merkle are seen among the fresco characters at Merkle-Hall, where new nanotechnology items are designed and built.
This book contains descriptions of various exotic technologies, such as chevaline (a mechanical horse that can be folded and light enough to carry one hand), and foreseeing the use of technology being developed today, such as smart paper that can show headlines which is personalized. Major cities have an immune system consisting of defensive aerostatic micromachines, and public material compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who asks for it.
The material compilers receive their feedstock from the Feed, a system analogous to the grid power of modern society. The feed carries a flow of energy and basic molecules, which are rapidly assembled into items that can be used by collecting materials. Source, where Feed material stream originates, is controlled by Victorian style (though smaller, independent feed is possible). The hierarchical nature of Feed and alternatives, anarchist development technology, known as Seed, reflects the cultural conflicts between East and West described in this book. This conflict also has an economic element, with Feed representing a centrally controlled distribution mechanism, while Seed represents a more flexible, open, and decentralized method of creation and organization.
Phyles
The people at The Diamond Age are dominated by a number of phyles, also sometimes called tribes. Phyles are groups of people who are often distinguished by shared values, similar ethnic heritage, common religion, or other cultural similarities. In the very global future depicted in the novel, this cultural split has replaced the nation-state system that divides the world today. Cities in The Diamond Age appear to be divided into affiliated sovereign enclaves or belonging to different phyles in one big city. Most of the phyles described in this novel have a global sovereign scope, and maintain separate enclaves within or near many cities around the world.
Phyles co-existed like a historic nation-state under a system of justice and collective protection, known as the Common Economic Protocol (CEP). The CEP rules are intended to provide coexistence, and peaceful economic activity between, phyles with very different values. The CEP is particularly concerned with upholding the right to private property, which is shown to impose harsh punishments to undermine the economic capacity of others. The role of CEP in the novel world can be seen in comparison with the role of real international organizations such as the United Nations and International Monetary Fund.
"Thetes" are individuals who are not members of any style and are often socially disadvantaged and economically poor, who are similar to second-class citizens under CEP. In this novel, the material requirements of almost all levers are filled with freely available food and clothing, albeit of low quality; lifting without the political connection of a style is entitled to the same "low quality justice".
This book distinguishes three Great Phyles: Han (composed of Han Chinese), Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (mostly composed of Anglo-Saxon, but also accepts Indians, Africans and other members of the culturally identifiable Anglosphere) and Nippon (composed from Japan). This novel raises the question of whether Hindustan (composed of Hindu India) is the fourth Great Phyle, or "a diverse collection of microtribes that are sintered together according to some formula we do not get."
Internally, the New Atlantis style is a corporate oligarchy whose "equity lords" govern their organizations and regulations under loyalty to the monarchy of a non-permanent monarchy. The other Phyles are less defined - some deliberately, as with the CryptNet or Drummer group of mysterious thoughts. During the course of the story, the Common Economic Protocol sponsors the investigation of seed technology secretly to preserve the established order of subversion, using the justification that unlimited access to Resources will lead to the proliferation of high-tech weapons and anarchy. It also implies that property rights are so wide that the Protocol recognizes children as their parents' economic assets.
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Plot summary
The protagonist in this story is Nell, a thete (or a tribe, equivalent to the lowest working class) living in the Leased Area, a lowland slum built on a New Chusan-made diamond island, located off the coast from the mouth of the Yangtze River, northwest of Shanghai. At the age of four, Nell receives a stolen copy of an interactive book, Young Girls Illumination Shoot: an Enchiridion Propà © deutic, which tells the story of Princess Nell and her friends, relatives, associates & c. , originally intended for the wealthy "Neo-Victorian Lord Equity Lord", the grandson of Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw. The story follows Nell's development under Primary care, and to a lesser extent, the lives of Elizabeth and Fiona, girls who received similar books. Primer is intended to direct its readers intellectually toward a more interesting life, as defined by Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw's "Lord Equity" and grows into an effective member of society. The most important qualities to achieve an "interesting life" are considered subversive attitudes to the status quo. Primers are designed to react to the environment of their owners and teach them what they need to know to survive and grow.
The Diamond Age is characterized by two intersecting and almost equally developed storylines: Nell's education through his independent work with Primer, and the social downfall of Primer engineer and designer John Percival Hackworth, who has made two illegal copies Primary for his own daughter, Fiona. (One copy was stolen by Nell's brother.) His crime was well known to Lord Finkle-McGraw and Dr. X, the black market engineer whose compiler Hackworth uses to make copies of Primary, and everyone seeks to exploit Hackworth to advance the opposite goals of their tribe. The third storyline follows an actress, Miranda, who plays the voice of Nell's Primer and nearly becomes Nell's successor mother, in an attempt to find Nell. Then Miranda's storyline was taken over by Miranda's partner, Carl Hollywood, after Miranda disappeared.
The Diamond Age also includes stories of Primary narrative education that maps Nell's individual experiences (eg his four playmates) to traditional tales stored in the primary database. Although The Diamond Age explores the role of technology and personal relationships in child development, deeper and darker themes also investigate the relative values ​​of culture (which Stephenson explores in other novels as well) and deficiencies in communication between them.
Title
The neo-Victorian arrangement of the novel, as well as its narrative form, in particular the title of the chapter, shows the relationship with the work of Charles Dickens. The name of the protagonist points directly to Little Nell from Dickens' 1840 novel The Old Curiosity Shop .
The Mystery of Judge Dee
Judge Fang's novel character is based on the creative expansion of the mystery series of Judge Dee Robert van Gulik, based around an ancient Chinese Confucian judge who usually solves three cases simultaneously. Judge Dee's stories are based on the Chinese mystery tradition, which transforms key elements into western detective fiction.
Cyberpunk
Nell's father, Bud, is featured as a typical cyberpunk character. He is a career criminal (though not a highly skilled or high-ranking) man with various devices implanted through surgery to help him in his 'work'. Stephenson tries to establish The Diamond Age as a "postcyberpunk" book by killing this character from an early age, while recognizing the influence of the cyberpunk genre.
wizard of Oz
When Nell enters the castle of King Coyote in his final Primary challenge for him, he meets a huge computer that seems designed to think and commissioned to rule the kingdom. This computer is named "Wizard 0.2", a typography typography for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . In the book, the Wizard has a great appearance but then it is revealed only a man is hiding behind a curtain. In the same way, Wizard 0.2 created an impressive light show as it seemed to process the data, but it was later revealed that the computer's decision was actually made by King Coyote himself.
Snow Crash
The Diamond Age can be seen as set in the same universe as with Snow Crash , many years later. This passage is based on the relationship between YT, the main character in Snow Crash, and the elderly Miss Matheson neo-Victorian in The Diamond Age , who dropped her oblique reference. the past as a tough skateboarder. This will set The Diamond Age about 80-100 years after Snow Crash .
Further supporting evidence for linking the two novels includes:
- Stephenson's short story "The Great Simoleon Caper" which refers to the Metaverse seen in Snow Crash and the First Distributed Republic seen in The Diamond Age (story other short matches within the Diamond Age environment and even shared characters are "Quotes from the Third and Last Volumes of Pacific Coast Tribes ").
- a reference to the Quasi-Entity-Organized Franchise Agency (FOQNEs) in both novels.
"The Great Simoleon Caper" describes the United States where rising inflation prompted people to use an untraceable relay system that made it impossible to enforce taxes on online transactions (which were later used as plot elements in Stephenson's other works, the 1999 novel Cryptonomicon ). With the settings of Snow Crash the United States and most other nation-states have collapsed due to hyperinflation; in The Diamond Age , one character told Miranda that they collapsed from a lack of tax revenue. Small and voluntary governments such as the burbclaves described in Snow Crash replace the nation-state.
Both of these novels relate to "primitive technology" which replaces current worldwide usage technologies, in the sense of reprogramming the mind through the ancient Sumerian chants in Snow Crash (which also uses satire for Babylonian prostitutes passing the information virus such as sexually transmitted diseases), and the idea of ​​nano technology spread and communicate through sexual contact, passing from body to body like a virus. Both of these novels use an almost primitive threat to ancient modern "western" technology and ideology (The Raft in Snow Crash) and The Fists of Righteous Harmony in The Diamond Age. Stephenson explores the notion of a technological gap and its social and economic impact on extremes using this cruel but not surprising social revolution.
Propose a television adaptation
In January 2007, the Sci-Fi Channel announced that it will create a six-hour miniseries based on The Diamond Age. According to a June 2009 report on Variety , ZoÃÆ' Â «Green has been hired to write the series, with George Clooney and Grant Heslov from Smokehouse Productions as executive producers on the project. However, by 2016, no further news about the project has emerged.
Allusions to The Diamond Age
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