I've said before (in my review of Snow Crash) why my opinion of Neal Stephenson is so high. But I'll reiterate here that I believe he's one of the best, if not the best, cyberpunk authors I know of. That at least ought to persuade some people to give him a try and if you do The Diamond Age is, in my opinion, his best work to date.
It's full title is 'The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer' and, as with Snow Crash, Stephenson is exploring the possibilities of language. This time the focus is on education and in particular on the education of a young girl growing up the Leased Territories (a ghetto in the technologically advanced 21st Century). By a freak chain of circumstances Nell comes into possession of what the blurb describes as "an interactive device crammed with folklore, science and the martial arts that teaches young women how to think for themselves". This is a bit facile since the Primer, the 'text' of which forms a significant proportion of the novel, is one of the best executed plot devices I have seen in science fiction. Nell's relationship with the book is the only stable one during her progression towards adult maturity and the lessons it teaches her take her and the reader through Stephenson's beautifully evoked world.
The book itself is fascinating and combines the elements mentioned by the blurb with explorations of storytelling, language, cryptology, philosophy, and sociology to name just a few. The device is also woven into the plot with a style and finesse that shows Stephenson rapidly progressing as an author. It compares especially favourably with Iain M. Banks' 'The Player of Games': another book which uses an invented construct as the focus of the plot but succeeds less well.
I'd like to name some of the plot elements that contribute to the effect of the whole. However they are so well dispersed and so seductively compelling that I'll refrain from potentially spoiling the book. But, as with Snow Crash, the world is fragmented into a number of small nation states each with their own ideologies and customs. Nell and the other principle characters of this novel are expertly introduced into each new environment and societies are constantly being weighed against each other. I think that the idea of the Primer has tidied up a lot of what I perceived as problems in Stephenson's authorial voice and his narration is rarely intrusive in this novel.
However, I'm not entirely convinced about the direction the book eventually takes. Stephenson heads off into areas generally perceived as more magical than scientific and the resolution of the two can appear a little hectoring. I think the best comparison I can make here is to Orson Scott Card's ideas about 'philotic communication' in the later books of Ender's Game series. The ideas have merit and explore a subject of increasing interest to the science-fiction community now that its conception of the future has gained inspiration from information technology as well as the space-age. But I'm not sure that the magnitude of the task Stephenson sets himself is entirely appropriate to this particular novel and it could discourage readers who don't accept the wider concept he is attempting to convey.
This is, however, criticism at a high level because I would highly recommend The Diamond Age to the science-fiction audience and to anyone else who can sustain this level of complexity in their reading. A well-deserved 8 out of 10.
