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The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged)
The Diamond Age - Audio Cassette - Abridged
Author: Neal Stephenson, Jennifer Wiltsie (Narrator)
Decades into our future, a stone's throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has just broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neoVictorians.  He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer&n...  more »Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer's purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself.  It performs its function superbly.  Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands.

Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes--members of the poor, tribeless class.  Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell.  When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian--John Percival Hackworth--  in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer.

Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own.  Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist.  His quest and Nell's will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer-- a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity.

Vividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time

4 sound cassettes (6 hr.) : analog.
ISBN-13: 9781586211127
ISBN-10: 1586211129
Publication Date: 8/1/2001
Edition: Abridged
Rating:
  • Currently 4.1/5 Stars.
 15

4.1 stars, based on 15 ratings
Publisher: Warner Adult
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Other Versions: Paperback, Hardcover, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 8 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
One of his best works to date, a tour de force look at the world first introduced in Snow Crash with a leap one hundred years ahead. With humanity's basic needs of food, water, and shelter all taken care of by the near miraculous manipulated world made possible by nanotechnology, Stephenson shows us a world were the concepts of culture, morality, and family are even more important and evolving (and devolving)than ever. Thomas Friedman is wrong, not only isn't the world flat, it's as hard as diamond. In such a world, heroes and heroines come from the most unlikely places.
bup avatar reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 166 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Somehow I wasn't familiar with Neal Stephenson until my friend Scott mentioned him on facebook. Apparently he's (Neal Stephenson, not Scott) known for creating compelling visions of the semi-near future - speculating where the information age may take us, without space-farin' and time-machinin' and laser-zappin' and whatnot. I like it.

Given that I usually look down my nose at "this is my world and welcome to it" stuff, I'm surprised at myself. Maybe I don't dislike the idea of that kind of fiction, maybe just most authors suck at it.

Steampunk's not an apt descriptor, and I don't know what cyberpunk means, but it feels like what cyberpunk might mean.

The future's going to be real casual, and pretty cool.
reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 3 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I'm not big into sci-fi, but I loved this book once I got into it, I loved the heroine
loftydreams avatar reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 3 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
The beginning was slow. But once I muscled through, and hit the meat. Wow.
It's set in a future dominated by tech and nanotechnology. Rotating mainly around one girl as she comes of age and experiences, social, economical, ethical and ethnic trials and tribulations.

The ending was a touch abrupt leaving open and tantalizing story lines, to fuel and tantalize ones own imagination.
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reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 180 more book reviews
A science fiction thriller, set in 21st century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the- art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin.
jeffp avatar reviewed The Diamond Age (Audio Cassette) (Abridged) on + 201 more book reviews
A good read. A couple of nits that I found, but overall this is good SF. In particular, his vision of the nano-tech world of the future is quite impressive.

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