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
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
neo-Victorians. He's made an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art
interactive device called A Young Ladys Illustrated Primer
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.
