The Diamond Age, OR, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age, OR, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. New York: Bantam, 1995. New York: Bantam-Spectra, 1996. Audiocassette, abridged. Read by Jennifer Wiltsie. Time-Warner AudioBooks, 2000.

Variation on "steampunk," with some real Dickensian Victorian sentimentality, balanced by some "Other Victorian" sex scenes. Connects nanotechnology and other hi-tech systems with Jungian ideas on the Collective Unconscious and intriguing speculations on new/old social organization (cf. and contrast NS's Snow Crash). See especially for hi-tech interactive media, including the "Primer" of the alternative title; for Confucian vs. Western ideas on technology; and for near-future versions of Clarke's Third Law that sufficiently-developed technologies are hard to distinguish from magic (we give a weak formulation of the Law). CAUTIONS: (1) Part of the sensibility of the narration is what we might call postPost-Colonial. (2) We base our comments on the abridged audiobook.

Discussed briefly along with Stephenson's Snow Crash in Daniel Grassian's "Discovering the Machine in You."

(RDE, 20/03/06)