Subject: Review of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age

From: [email-masked] (Steven H Silver)
Date: 24 May 1996 02:39:16 GMT

REVIEW
               THE DIAMOND AGE
            Edited by Neal Stephenson
                Bantam Spectra
                 0-553-09609-5
         419pp/$22.95/February 1995

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Neal Stephenson's latest novel, The Diamond Age is an
attempt to combine two recent SF sub-genres together.
Stephenson has created a neo-Victorian (Steampunk) society
which exists in a near future after the collapse of the
nation-state (Cyberpunk).  For good measure, Stephenson
includes a heavy dose of nanotechnology.
Stephenson works through a number of viewpoint characters
although it centers on Nell, a young girl from the slums who
could have grown up in any Dickens novel and  John Percival
Hackworth, the neo-Victorian social climber and
nanotechnologist.
Nell grows up in the type of home one wishes on no child.
Her father deserted her mother before she was born and now
her mother lives with increasingly abusive lovers.  Her
brother and protector, is continuously involved in the same
sorts of crime which their father took part in.  The only
high point of Nell's existance are her stuffed animals and a
strange book her brother gave her after attacking a neo-
Victorian gentleman.
The neo-Victorian gentleman, of course, is John Hackworth,
the creator of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.  This book
was commissioned by Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw
in order to help in raising his grand-daughter to be a
proper neo-Victorian lady.  Seeing a chance to help his own
daughter get ahead, Hackworth arranged to have a second copy
made, which was then stolen and given to Nell.
The book, wriiten on "smart paper", forms the third major
character of the story.  It's purpose is to serve as an
educational tool, entertainment  and game for Nell, much as
Orson Scott Card uses the video game in Ender's Game and The
Lost Boys.  As the novel progresses, the book's passages
grow longer and longer.  These passages, which do mirror and
foreshadow Nell's own life and adventures wind up being
redundant, since the plot occurs twice.
Although Stephenson has innumerable memorable characters, he
relegates most of them, to small support roles.  In many
cases, these characters, the most interesting in the book,
are based on stock Victorian stereotypes.  Judge Fang is the
wise Oriental magistrate (poor choice of names.  I kept
expecting someone to jump out an explain that no-one expects
the Spanish Inquisition), Doctor X is the inscrutable
Chinese crime-lord (he does have a real name, but it is
unpronounceable to Westerners), and Lord Finkle-McGraw, the
perfect Victorian subversive.
The merger of cyberpunk and steampunk fails also.
Stephenson's society is so stereotypically Victorian, it is
hard not to see it as some huge masquerade.  However,
Stephenson offers no wink and nudge to show that his
characters are in on the joke.  The Diamond Age has more
substance than Stephenson's SnowCrash, but it is not as
enjoyable as that earlier novel.

%A   Neal Stephenson
%T   The Diamond Age
%I   Bantam Spectra
%C   New York
%D   January 1995
%G   0-553-09609-5
%P   419
%O   HC 22.95, PB $5.99
-- 
Steven H Silver
Bibliographies on Jews in SF, Harry Turtledove, SF set in Chicago
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/sfbiblio.html
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