Solid As A Diamond: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age
Written: Aug 07 '03 (Updated Aug 09 '03)
Product Rating:
Pros: A vibrant, multidimensional world full of hip technology and crazy people.
Cons: Wait, there's a story in here somewhere, if I could only find it.
The Bottom Line: Sleak technology meets prim Victorian idealism. Stephenson creates a sharp, ultra cool world of nanotechnology. Worthy read, even though the story becomes shallow and convoluted.
avepythagoras's Full Review: Neal Stephenson - Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's ...
The Problem With Modern Science-Fiction
Many science-fiction writers find themselves lost rehashing worlds and ideas that have been done many times before, and more often than not, by much better writers. Most sci-fi geeks love the ultra-hip Matrix, but really, its not awe-inspiringly original, just cyberpunk and the Terminator conjoined, apparently, at the hip. Nothing new at all, just a bunch of flashy special effects and high school level dialogue about the nature of reality and the Cartesian paradox.
So I love it when a writer creates something new, fresh and startlingly real. Neal Stephenson is my god and I am his prophet. There can be no other way about it. His talent as a science-fiction writer is unparalleled by any of his contemporaries, and even those before him. And while he is not the greatest writer in the world, he has talent, he has ability, and he's got to be one of the cleverest sci-fi minds in the business. And I am enraptured when I read his novels, they astound me, as well as make me angry: there's just no point in even attempting a career as a sci-fi writer with the likes of Neal around.
A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
The Diamond Age isn't a novel about nanotechnology as much as it is a novel about growth. Imagine a world ruled by complex nanotechnological machines, microscopic bots carrying information, infecting everything you breathe, eat and drink. Filtered throughout the world around you, you become a victim to these unseen forces. But, like our industrial revolution, nanotechnology has allowed the return of the prim and proper, overly social conscious morality of Victorianism. Everything has its place and social class, everything is ruled by moral codes and mannerism of a distinct and pompous gentry class. But further this world is unbalanced, as much as it is rich and proper, it is also dependent, slummy, and poor. Even with the miracles of nanotechnology, the world is still bound, hand and foot, to the ruling and aristocratic class.
With high society rides complacency and a boorish tendency to be uninspiring and unoriginal, in short, the prim Neovictorian morality has stifled creativity and ingenuity. And someone decides to change all this, to create a book, an illustrated primer, to teach young women to become more than just social automatons. But this book is stolen and it falls into the hands of a poor, casteless, young girl. A girl abused by the world, helpless, a nonentity. The primer is the key to revolutionary change, a movement away from a class society based on dependency, to one of community and equality. A movement away from the necessity of a Feed, a source of control, to the utopia of the Seed, a renewable source of fulfillment and individualism. But first she must grow and seek understanding, solve the riddles of the book and find meaning in a rapidly complex life. A life she is no longer victimized by, but rather, in control of.
Finding A Seed Will Help One Feed.
Stephenson's world is complex; his technology is innovative and imaginative. There really isn't much comparison to other novels by other authors; he's the best at creating ultra-cool, hacker-friendly, worlds. And he seems to do it so effortlessly. The world is thick with nuance both subtle and overt. A distinct and convincing vernacular begins to emerge. The characters in the novel are as idiomatic and real as anyone you'd met today on the street. Many novelists try to write interesting little words and phrases into their novels, to give it a sense of reality, but they usually fail, the words and idioms are too odd, they just don't sound like words anyone would want to use. They are horribly contrived and shallow. Stephenson's genius lies within his ability to produce a convincing world around such basic things as idiomatic expressions, technology, and social interaction.
His characters are three-dimensional, openly emotional, and entirely idealistic. Sometimes larger than life. Yet they somehow seem natural and necessary. Just as much a part of the world as they are victims of it.
But therein resides Neal's biggest problem: he spends too much time writing his world and too little time writing a story. As if he gets lost in his own world and realizes,¡¨ wait, I still have a story to write." And that is how this novel reads. There is a story in here somewhere, but it is hard to find. In fact, it seems secondary to the world itself, to the technology and the characters, the idioms and the cleverness. And that¡¦s where it gets choppy, convoluted and abrupt. As if Neal forced the story upon his world, a blemish in otherwise godlike perfection. But regardless of how bright, real, and clever the world is: novels are written for their stories. And once Stephenson realizes this, he will be in full control, a god among insects, and a true science-fiction grand master--unlike that guy Asimov. And there will be no stopping him. Thus sayeth the prophet.
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