Reviews
Not my favorite Neal Stephenson book, but it's got some big ideas and interesting characters. Ultimately, it just wasn't much of a page-turner and the ending was a bit anti-climactic.
Amazed that this is from 1995; its concerns feel very current - too current. The nations of the world collapse from cryptocurrency destroying the tax base; they are replaced with voluntary ideological associations, including trads ("neo-Victorians" and techno-Confucians) who are shown thriving where others suffer civil war, state failure, and ordinary poverty and abuse. Everyone has fancy nanotechnology, which solves absolute poverty and allows massive structures to be built of solid diamond. That's all in the background, where the foreground is a theory of education and rebellion, of social degeneration and regeneration. The leader of the Victorians designs the best educational game ever, a 12-year-long adventure game with live narration. He does this because there's a shortage of subversion and rebellion in his society, and he wants to train his granddaughter to be independent. (He also says the neo-Vickys have an associated shortage of great artists, but to put it mildly this is not something the originals suffered.) In particular, Stephenson was a bit obsessed with moral relativism in the 90s; he harps on the superiority of realism, or communitarianism, or status regulation, or sincerity, or something, in most of his books. Superficially, his concern matches one annoying strain of internet writing of the last few years - the clickbait strawmaneering of the Petersons and the Lindsays. But French Theory fell in the meantime, outside of a few academic subcultures with little influence, so Stephenson can be right while these guys are wrong. An excess of scepticism and irony - a deficit of shaming and judgment - does not strike me as the first problem with the mores of 2020. Stephenson saves most of the nice bits of the book for the Vickys, and his attempt to recover what was good about the original Victorians (their energy, inventiveness, duty, taste) ignores a lot of what was bad about them. (Though he actively endorses their hypocrisy about sex, he would have to think again about their betraying their Christian universalism with retributive justice and imperialism.) "when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices," Finkle-McGraw said. "It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others--after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?... "Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done... Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy." "That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code," Major Napier said, working it through, "does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code." "Of course not," Finkle-McGraw said. "It's perfectly obvious, really. No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct." Having "Victorian" characters means he gets to have fun with his dialogue; there are dozens of words I've never seen before in this, and several children crafting exquisitely balanced subordinate clauses. About a third too long, and that's with him completely truncating the excellent Judge Fang plotline. As always, he is incapable of writing a good ending. Maybe 4 stars on re-read.
So many interesting concepts explored but the overall plot left much to be desired
Reading this book is akin to eating a hearty meat pie; richly detailed and flavoursome, something to be savoured rather than a light meal. This is something that you need to dedicate a block of time reading rather than snippets on the commute, but I promise you it pays off with the vivid imageries of human-technology integration. Now to think that some (or at least a form of) of the technologies mentioned exist already... It inspires one to look at history, as the book depicted that the means may change, but human nature makes for a repeatable drama under different backdrops.
Quite possibly Neal Stephenson's masterpiece. I gave his other books a shot, but none captivated me to the same level The Diamond Age did. Stephenson's world building is so good you'll feel like you just took a vacation there and can't wait to go back after you finish this book.
Edit: 5 years later I’m still pissed off about the plotting, the contrived af rape scene for the purpose of a very stupid plot point, which could have been done any number of ways. Boy, reading a review from 5 years ago is kind of cringe. Glad it’s here to remind me where I’ve been and that grammar is important, actually. I was having trouble remembering the rape contrivance and I chronicled it here. Helpful! Downgraded to 2 stars, as I the only lingering feeling I have for this book is how much it pissed me off. OK. So overall I'm leaning towards 3/5 stars. I'll start with the stuff I didn't like first so it ends on a positive note. Warning: I go on a diatribe about the rape scene in the book and sometimes mention spoilers, though not enough to spoil the story at all, I think. I've only read this and Snow Crash, but I think I just do not like his writing style. Everything is very passive and dispassionate. It was really hard for me to give a shit about any other characters besides Nell. The details he chooses to provide often are really presumptuous of a shared headspace that he doesn't create, at least for me. Because of that it took me a while to finish the book, 4-5 days. I kept getting jarred out of the fiction until I could get back into it. This happened throughout. Near the end Stephenson leans hard into the rape trope which is really upsetting in of itself. It pissed me off so much it was hard to enjoy the last two chapters of the book. Especially since it's two paragraphs, which, - Spoilers - is made clear later on in the fiction when he needed to explain the nanites in Nell's bloodstream. It also just felt super at odds with the rest of the story, even though it was used also to tell the reader that despite all her training with the primer, there's forces in the world that she can't surmount. Obviously super important since that in its entirety is 3 paragraphs including the rape she sees coming and dispassionately removes herself from. Only afterword easily getting a sword she uses to easily kill everyone. His writing style also clashes with the theme of the book with being subversive of established cultures as every character in different cultures speaks the same way, except for Nell when she's younger. Who then speaks like the "Vickey's". Aside from the beginning which also includes a little bit of racist language when asians speak, not trusting the reader to be able to picture an accented Asian dialect not completely fluid in English. I think it's safe to say that the story is more interested in viewing the characters and places in the world as an oversized chessboard, with the satisfaction coming from watching the story unfold instead of losing yourself in the character. That's not my thing, though. Especially with one of the main characters specifically because, aside from Nell once again, if you pay close attention exactly what the other characters say is most important to them is completely skipped over or glossed over in the story. Makes it particularly hard to care about them, right? Also, the pacing off the book was really, really slow. But this leads me to my next point segueing into the positive aspects of the story. It was actually not altogether unpleasant for me to read a story like that even though it wasn't my preference. It was a really intricate story with a lot of moving cogs, that, when revealed (very fucking slowly albeit) was interesting. Even captivating sometimes. It allowed for me to actually finish the book. World building was fantastic, the ideologies between each place was palpable. How each place looked when the characters were travelling through it, not the best. But when they're in a specific place interacting, it's pretty good. The prose work was well done, in my opinion. It's an interesting story despite a bunch of things I dislike. I still enjoyed it and am glad I read it. Buttttt I'll probably not bother with any more of his stuff.
This could have been a very enjoyable read but I just don't like Stephenson's writing at all.
I listened to a majority of this book over the summer and fall of 2011 while mowing and jogging. That stopped and it took me a while to pick up the book and finish it off in 2012. I'm probably a rarity, but I enjoyed it more than Snow Crash. I was really cheering for the main character, Nell. There were still diversions, some less than successful, but the story came back to Nell frequently and keeping the action moving. Lots of interesting concepts in here, especially in the area of education.
An interesting story mixing Cyberpunk, Fantasy, and Drama. An interesting search into how people change depending on their surrounding, and how some children are slightly more special than others.
Just finished this for the second time. Typical (awesome) Stephenson. Explosions and cool gadgets mixed up with a girl struggling to realize her future and honor her crappy past. Plus some other folks with moral and emotional quandaries of their own. The universe here is unbelievably cool--the depths to which Stephenson applies his imagination are staggering. Reading it again in July/August 2011. Gets better. I have cried three freaking times and it's not like any of this is new info.
Interesting book with at least some tech that appears to be based on papers I've read that would have been around at the time of writing. I'm slightly concerned that OLPC have written software based on the primer to leave in African villages!
Absolutely marvelous. Slow starting, but the world building is magnificent and the story was enthralling. I guess this means I'll read more Neal Stephenson in the future.
Brilliant and bizarre. Rather scattered and stilted, but did have lots of interesting ideas, and ways of looking at culture.
There’s a good story inside this dense book within a book.
