The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a cyberpunk or postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is a bildungsroman focused on a young girl and set in a world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. Its primary themes include education, social class, cultural tribalism, and societal responses to technological change. The Diamond Age was first published in 1995 by Bantam Books, as Bantam Spectra hardcover edition. In 1996, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the Nebula Award.

Plot introduction

The primary protagonist in the story is Nell, a street urchin who illicitly receives a copy of an interactive book (with the quaint title Young Lady's Illustrated Primer; a propaedeutic Enchiridion in which is told the tale of Princess Nell and her various friends, kin, associates, &c.Stephenson, The Diamond Age (1995):184.) originally intended for an aristocrat child in a neo-Victorian tribe. The story follows Nell (and, to a lesser degree, two other girls who receive similar books) as she uses the primer to overcome both her lack of education and her deficient parenting.

However, The Diamond Age is characterized by two almost equally developed story lines it intersects: (1) The girl Nell's education through her independent work with the primer on one hand and (2) the social downfall of the engineer John Percival Hackworth, who designed the primer, on the other. In addition, the text includes fully narrated educational tales from the primer, set apart through different (sans-serif) typeface, that map Nell's individual experience (e.g. her four toy friends) onto archetypal folk tales stored in the primer's database. Although The Diamond Age explores the role of technology in child development, its deeper and darker themes also probe the relative values and shortcomings in communication between cultures.

Major themes

the importance of cultural association over "racial" affiliation; some characters (esp. Lord Finkle-McGraw) hold the belief that certain cultural systems are naturally superior to others;
the importance of education over biological ancestry;
a coming-of-age or Bildungsroman central plot centered on a female character;
an introduction to encryption basics in the form of a fairy-story within the primer — which the reader encounters with the heroine as the novel unfolds;
the contrast between Victorian and Confucian world views, and the contrasting way they view the dangers and opportunities of molecular assemblers and artificial intelligence (as applied to child-raising);
a setting in which nation-states are obsolete (think of NYC's Chinatown sharing a government with Tokyo's Chinatown instead of with NYC's Little Italy);
the emergence of human hive consciousness, or a version of distributed artificial intelligence using human brains interconnected through nanotechnological messengers (the "Drummers");
Chinese intellectual and political history, including a vague re-telling of the Boxer Rebellion.

Plot summary

"Part the First"

The first few chapters serve to stake out the social and geographic setting of the novel and to introduce the main characters. The main action takes place around Shanghai and a number of artificial islands, such as the Victorian enclave Atlantis/Shanghai, in the sea around the old city. Each chapter has a descriptive title, such as "A visit from royalty; the Hackworths take an airship holiday; Princess Charlotte's birthday party; Hackworth encounters a member of the peerage"Stephenson, The Diamond Age (1995):12., which is directly reminiscent of Victorian literature (see "The Diamond Age and Charles Dickens below). Hackworth meets Lord Finkle-McGraw and because of his unusual combination of talents (literature and technology) receives the challenging task to create an educational book for Finkle-McGraw's granddaughter. Finkle-McGraw is highly critical of the overly efficient Victorian school system, which produces perfectly capable followers, but no leaders. The book's versatility, as well as its unique combination of cognitive, emotive and practical educational objectives, is meant to produce a confident, well educated young woman, who is also an independent, i.e. subversive thinker as well as a perfect polymath, or Renaissance woman.

The novel begins to focus in on Nell's development when she receives her copy of the primer from her brother Harv, who is a member of a street gang. She receives the primer as a result of two crimes, one committed by Hackworth who wants to secure an illicit copy of the primer for his own daughter and another committed by the gang of her brother who mug the engineer and relieve him of the book. Harv gives the book to Nell and she immediately takes to the primer. It promptly proceeds to teach her the basics of reading, mathematics and survival skills necessary in a world in which her mother's changing boyfriends routinely abuse her, and older children bully her. The basic story line of the primer is that of princess Nell, who is brought up with her brother by an evil stepmother. She escapes alone from the Dark Castle, in which they are imprisoned, and travels through 12 countries to find the 12 keys to the castle to free her brother. As Nell works with the hypertextual stories of the primer, the computer adds educational material and sub-stories to guide her through the book and through her life. Another coincidence works to Nell's advantage here: Miranda, one of the ractors engaged by the computer system to act as the human voice of the primer, gets obsessed with this job and virtually becomes Nell's foster mother, even though they are effectively separated by the security system of the ractive network (ractors act on virtual stages, while the system projects the voice and body needed for the interactive play, but client and ractor can never trace each other's identity or location). As Nell grows older and develops her skills, her environment at home also becomes more hostile, and eventually she and her brother have to flee (the real-life parallel to Princess Nell's escape from the Dark Castle).

Meanwhile, Hackworth, who has lost the illicit copy of the primer intended for his daughter, becomes the subject of a criminal investigation lead by Judge Fang with his two assistants Chang and Miss Pao. The Judge meets Dr. X, a high-ranking Mandarin in the Celestial Kingdom, but also involved in activities considered criminal outside it. Fang and his two followers change allegiance and move from the corrupt Chinese Coastal Republic to the smaller, but fully Confucian Celestial Kingdom, which, like the Victorians, has revived political structures and social customs from the past. One of Dr. X's many projects is to "collect" hundreds of thousands of female infants abandoned by their parents in the destitute Chinese inlands. In order to educate these girls, a Confucian imperative, he also needs copies of the primer. Dr. X and Judge Fang together set up a trap for Hackworth, which culminates in a trial and a sentence of 16 strokes of the cane as well as 10 years' imprisonment for stealing intellectual property. To alleviate his sentence, as well as to secure another copy for his own daughter, Hackworth discloses the decryption key (Dr. X has the encrypted data for the primer) and agrees to modify the primer for the use of the huge numbers of girls under Dr. X's care. All seems well, until Lord Finkle-McGraw blackmails him into becoming a double-agent. He thus becomes entangled in the larger technological competition between the two dominant cultures in the book, Confucian and Victorian, around the development of the "Seed", an advanced technology that would allow decentralized compilation of matter (as opposed to the centralized pipelines that currently supply basic molecules through the "Feed"). The "Seed" technology would be advantageous for Chinese culture, which is grounded in peasant labor destroyed by Western industrial society, but is feared as disastrous for Victorian culture, which thrives on precisely these structures of control. As Nell flees her home, Hackworth is forced to leave his family to go on a secret mission to the territory of the former United States and Canada. His mysterious task defined by Dr. X is to "Seek the Alchemist," beyond which he receives no explanation.

"Part the Second"

Nell and Harv reach "Dovetail," a settlement of artisans who produce hand-made articles for the Victorians. Nell is allowed to stay, while Harv, as notorious gang-member, has to fend for himself in the Leased Territories. Nell now lives with a retired military officer, Constable Moore, in his bachelor home and is admitted to a school for Victorian girls, which adds a social component to her education that the primer is unable to provide. At the school, Nell has two significant fellow students, Elisabeth Finkle-McGraw and Fiona Hackworth, who also have copies of the primer, and become her friends. Because of her harsh background, Nell has an edge over the two Victorian girls. Constable Moore considers her a fellow veteran. As Nell's abilities and knowledge grow, so does the complexity of the primer, which sets her tasks and riddles to solve that far exceed the work required of her from her school. Eventually, Nell is forced to leave the school and Constable Moore, and moves to the Pudong Economic Zone in Shanghai, where she gets work in an upscale brothel, whose specialty is a choice of sophisticated erotic fantasies. Because of her nuanced story-telling abilities, Nell gets to work as a script-writer rather than a prostitute. Around her, the "Fists of Righteous Harmony" (the Western mis-translation of the historical Righteous Harmony Society), a xenophobic organization intent on killing all foreigners, begin their violent activities preparing for a large-scale rebellion (similar to the historical "Boxer Rebellion" in nineteenth-century China).

Hackworth's life in the meantime also has become more complicated. Upon his arrival in North America, he had been led to an underwater system of tunnels, the abode of the "Drummers," a society whose life consists of drugged trances accompanied by drumbeats. The nano-particles that induce the ecstatic trances actually carry bits of information among the individual Drummer's brains to form an immense network of human thinking capacity that—if used to such purpose—would exceed the capabilities of any existing computer system. The nano-particles pass from body to body through sexual intercourse performed in an orgiastic ritual in which a large number of men pass their semen into a single woman. As a result of the excessive heat-producing nano-activity, the woman's body bursts into flame and is in turn ingested as part of a drink passed around the remaining Drummers to keep the information flowing. After ten years with the Drummers, exactly the duration of his sentence, Hackworth emerges from the underworld of the Drummers and returns to Atlantis/Shanghai. His wife has divorced him, but he is able to re-establish his relationship to his now grown daughter, as he is still looking for the Alchemist. Eventually he discovers that he himself is the mysterious Alchemist, and that he had been sent to the Drummers to utilize their collective mind and to develop the Seed. However, he had stopped shortly before finishing the discovery, and the book leaves the question of the Seed open in the end.

As the book reaches its climax, the battle against the Fists, in which Nell and what has become an army of young Han women, the girls rescued by Dr. X and trained by primers without human interaction, play a central role. Here, as in other parts of the book, the primer's stories become part of reality--in Nell's copy of the primer, there is a "Mouse Army" whose tracks the Princess follows; the Chinese girls, similarly guided by their primers, go on a quest for their "Queen," which eventually unites them with Nell to form a new ethnic group with Nell as their leader. Miranda in the meantime has joined the Drummers in a desperate effort to find her virtual foster-daughter Nell against all probability. After having defeated the Fists, Nell in turn searches for Miranda in the system of tunnels by the Drummers. Nell had been infested by the Drummers nano-particles when she was raped in the first attack of the Fists and immediately developed "counternanosites" that destroy these particles. Her immunity becomes useful when she finally finds Miranda just as she becomes the center of a Drummer's orgy. Nell is able to save Miranda's life by mingling their blood in a "savage kiss"Stephenson, The Diamond Age (1995):499..

Explanation of the novel's title

"Diamond Age" is an extension of labels for archeological time periods that take central technological materials to define an entire era of human history, such as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. Technological visionaries such as Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle, both of whom receive an honorary mention in The Diamond Age, have argued that if nanotechnology develops the ability to manipulate individual atoms at will, it will become possible to simply assemble diamond structures from carbon atomsCf. Dinello, 2005:232. Merkle argues enthusiastically: "In diamond, then, a dense network of strong bonds creates a strong, light, and stiff material. Indeed, just as we named the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Steel Age after the materials that humans could make, we might call the new technological epoch we are entering the Diamond Age"Merkle, 1997 ^*. In the novel, a near future vision of our world, nanotechnology has developed precisely to this point, which enables the cheap production of diamond structures.

Parallel story-lines in The Diamond Age

"Coming of Age" plot
- begins after page 1 (Nell's not even born yet)
- ends before the last page (Nell grows up, leaves home to seek her fortune, endures a baptism of fire, and finds her place in the adult world)
- "Rebellion vs. Conformity" subplot of Nell's growth
  - begins very early in the book through the form of Nell's mother and brother though is most apparent in Nell's school.
  - ends with Nell realizing that it is right to simply be rather than to simply rebel or conform without proper knowledge.
"Hacker vs. System" plot
- begins before page 1 (Hackworth's already discontent with his position in life)
- ends with Hackworth failing and a device known as "the seed" almost created (but Hackworth's not the main character)
"Moral Kombat" plot
- begins centuries before page 1 (the tribes/faiths vs. each other, cities/city-states vs. nation-states, tech-haves vs. tech-have-nots, etc. clashing in 2100's Shanghai is nothing really new)
- stalemated at last page, thus realistic (these things never truly end but simply morph into new arrangements of conflict)

The ending

The book is probably the most cited example by those who disparage Stephenson's endings. Such critics are dissatisfied with the ending because, after many pages of intensifying tension, the novel ends without a full sense of closure. Some of the characters' eventual futures are left open and subplots unresolved: there is no "and then they lived happily ever after." Moreover, some readers may even think Hackworth is the main character instead of Nell because his subplot is so detailed, and as a male engineer he resembles the conventional protagonist of a science fiction novel more than a female 4-year-old does--indeed the Dutch translation is titled The Alchemist. The way in which the ending ignores Hackworth to focus on Nell growing up is therefore especially disconcerting. However, other critics laud this book's ending for Nell's transition from uneducated girl to increasingly independent student and finally to master of the art of nanotech engineering and major sovereign.

The fictional World of The Diamond Age

Like Greg Bear's Queen of Angels, The Diamond Age depicts a world completely changed by the full development of nanotechnology, much as Eric Drexler envisioned it in Engines of Creation (1986). Nanotechnology is omni-present, generally in the form of Matter Compilers and the products that come out of them. The book explicitly recognizes achievements of several existing nanotechnology researchers: Feynman, Drexler and Merkle are seen among characters of the fresco in Merkle-Hall, where new nanotechnological items are designed and constructed.

Exotic technology such as the chevaline (a mechanical horse that can fold up and is light enough to be carried one-handed) and extensions of technologies that are in development today, such as smart paper that can show personalized news headlines, are personal-use products, while major cities have immune systems made up of aerostatic defensive micromachines, and public matter compilers provide basic food, blankets, and water for free to anyone who requests them.

Matter compilers receive raw materials from the Feed, a system analogous to the electrical grid of modern society. Rather than just electricity, it also carries streams of basic molecules, and matter compilers assemble those molecules into whatever goods the compiler's user wishes. The Source, where the Feed's stream of matter originates, is controlled by the Victorian phyle, though smaller, independent Feeds are possible. The hierarchic nature of the Feed and an alternative, anarchic developing technology known as the Seed mirror the cultural conflict between East and West that is depicted in the book. This conflict has an economic element as well, with the Feed representing a centrally controlled distribution mechanism while the Seed represents a more open-ended emergent behavior method of creation and organization.

The world is divided into many phyles, also known as tribes. There are three Great Phyles; the Han (consisting of Han Chinese), the Neo-Victorians (consisting largely of Anglo-Saxons, but also accepting Indians, Africans, and others who identify with the culture), and Nippon (consisting of Japanese). The novel deliberately makes it ambiguous whether Hindustan (consisting of Hindu Indians) is a fourth Great Phyle or an association of microphyles. In addition to these larger phyles, there are countless smaller phyles. Membership in some phyles, such as the Han and Nipponese, has an ethnic requirement, but the Neo-Victorian phyle and many lesser phyles accept anyone who aspires to live according to the phyle's mores (for example, one of the Neo-Victorian aristocrats is actually of Korean origin).

Characters in The Diamond Age

Nell (Nellodee) - She is the main protagonist, if you read the novel as a coming-of-age story. She is born to a lower-class single mother at the beginning of the novel and, with the help of the cybernetic Primer, grows up to become an independent woman and leader of a new phyle.

Harv (Harvard) - Her brother, who plays an important role in the beginning as her helper.

Bud - a petty criminal and “thete,” a tribeless individual, Tequila's boyfriend and Nell and Harv's father; he is obsessed with his muscular body, flaunts his masculinity and is finally executed for mugging a member of the Ashanti phyle. Though he is the first character we get to know, he quickly disappears into oblivion.

Tequila, Nell and Harv's mother; after Bud's death, she has a series of boyfriends, who abuse the children (one of them abuses Nell sexually).

John Percival Hackworth - the second major character, who is seen by some as the secret main protagonist of the novel. He is an upper-level engineer and the developer of the Primer. He makes an illicit copy of the primer for his daughter, who is Nell's age. When his crime is detected, he gets caught as a double agent in a covert power struggle between the Victorians and the Confutians. He is forced to spend ten years with a colony of "Drummers," to use their distributed intelligence (similar but not identical to distributed artificial intelligence) for the development of a new technology, the Seed. He turns out to be the mysterious figure he was supposedly sent to find, The Alchemist.

Fiona Hackworth - Hackworth's daughter.

Gwendolyn Hackworth - Hackworth's wife.

Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw - an "Equity Lord" who commissions the development of the Primer for his granddaughter.

Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw - Finkle-McGraw's granddaughter.

Judge Fang - the Confucian judge who sentences Bud and later makes decisions over Nell's life and becomes an increasingly active character (see Judge Dee mysteries below).

Chang and Miss Pao - Judge Fang's assistants.

Dr. X. - a mysterious character who evolves from being an illicit technology specialist and hacker to emerge as a powerful leader.

Miranda - "ractor" (actress in interactive movies) who becomes a kind of substitute mother for Nell through the Primer.

Carl Hollywood - "ractor" and performance artist, Miranda's friend and advisor. This character also becomes more important towards the end of the novel.

Cultural relativism and the politics of The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age deals extensively with the notion of cultural relativism and seems to postulate its failure. The neo-Victorians are clearly represented as technologically, culturally and economically superior to other "phyles" (see Micronation), with the Confucians as close rivals. Although membership to the phyles in most cases is voluntary and not determined by an individual's ancestry or race, the cultural and class hierarchies established in the novel create a clear distinction between the "haves" and the "have-nots." The novel is also notable for a number of incidental descriptions of other cults or groups, such as the Reformed Distributed Republic, which in contrast to the more elaborate "phyles" impose a minimal social protocol. In some cases this protocol only tests the willingness of members to risk their lives, and come to each other's aid by following instructions, with little or no capacity to understand the importance of tasks they undertake in doing so, but a full understanding of the risks.

These cultural differences manifest themselves in the very different effect the copies of the primer have on the girls who use them. The original copies of the primer, created for a young girl of the Victorian phyle, provide for human interaction, even if it is mediated through the "ractive" technology. The Victorian girls who are raised with these copies become fully-realized and independent individuals, while an army of Han Chinese girls raised with modified, fully automated clones of the primer with no "parental" human contact become efficient, devoted, but incomplete followers. An allusion early in the book suggests that the cloned primers were intentionally disabled by the Victorian engineer who designed them, perhaps to foster a propensity for the Chinese children who use the clones to follow the leadership of the Victorian girls who use the original copies. When asked to make copies of the Primer, "John Percival Hackworth, almost without thinking about it and without appreciating the ramifications of what he was doing, devised a trick and slipped it in under the radar of the Judge and Dr. X and all of the other people in the world. 'While I'm at it, if it pleases the court, I can also' Hackworth said, most obsequiously, 'make changes in the content so that it will be more suitable for the unique cultural requirements of the Han readership. But it will take some time.'"Stephenson, The Diamond Age (1995):179-180. However, this difference can also be interpreted as a desirable feature from the point of view of the Confucians, who emphasize duty, honesty and obedience in their training of women. The limits of the authority of officers, more than the degree of visible tactical control, is an emphasis of Confucianism. The text is ambivalent about whether the "Mouse Army" of girls is merely efficient and devoted or also usefully creative. For all the reader knows, as one poster on Usenet noted, "whenever not busy rescuing Queen Nell they may well have been interesting people, stimulating conversationalists, and most excellent tea party guests." (Merritt)

Allusions/references to other works

The Diamond Age and Charles Dickens

The novel's Victorian setting, as well as its narrative form, particularly the chapter headings, suggest a relation to the work of Charles DickensCf. "The Diamond Age," the complete review. The protagonist's name points directly to Little Nell from Dickens' novel The Old Curiosity Shop (1840/41).

The Diamond Age and Edward Lear

The code name for The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is "Runcible," a reference to the final lines of the nineteenth century children's poem The Owl and the Pussycat by the artist, illustrator and writer Edward Lear:

  They dined on mince, and slices of quince
    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
  And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
    They danced by the light of the moon,
      The moon,
      The moon,
  They danced by the light of the moon.

Judge Dee mysteries

The novel's character Judge Fang is based on a creative extension of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mystery series around a Confucian Judge in ancient China who usually solves three cases simultaneouslyMark Kleiman makes this connection in his glowing review of The Diamond Age. The Judge Dee stories are based on the tradition of Chinese mysteries, transposing key elements into Western detective fiction.

Links between The Diamond Age and Snow Crash

The Diamond Age can be seen as set in the same universe as Snow Crash, many years later. This reading is based on parallels between Y.T., a major character in Snow Crash, and the aged neo-Victorian Miss Matheson in The Diamond Age, who drops oblique references to her past as a hard-edged skateboarder. This would set The Diamond Age some 40-60 years after Snow Crash. In a book signing at the Harvard Coop bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 8 2003, Stephenson himself confirmed the connection.

More bases for this reading of the two novels as connected include:

Stephenson's short story "The Great Simoleon Caper" which refers to both the Metaverse seen in Snow Crash and the First Distributed Republic seen in The Diamond Age. (another short story which fits in the Diamond Age milieu and even shares a character is "Excerpt from the Third and Last Volume of Tribes of the Pacific Coast");
references to Franchise-Operated Quasi-National Entities (FOQNEs) in both novels.

When taken as part of Snow Crash's timeline, The Diamond Age provides insight into the setting of its predecessor. In a conversation with Miranda, one character tells her that the nation-states of the world collapsed when electronic communications started using an untraceable relay system that made it impossible to enforce taxes on online transactions. Deprived of their funding, large-scale governments collapsed, and small, voluntary governments like Snow Crash's burbclaves emerged in their place.

Both novels deal with an almost "primitive tech" replacing a current, worldwide use technology, in the sense of the reprogramming of the mind through ancient Sumerian chanting in Snow Crash (which also uses allusions to Babylonian prostitutes passing an information virus like a sexually transmitted disease), and the idea of nanotechnology propogating and communicating through sexual intercourse, passing from body to body like a virus.

Both novels use an ancient, almost primitive threat to modern, "Western" technology and ideology(The Raft in Snow Crash and The Fist of Righteous Harmony in The Diamond Age) Stephenson explores the idea of the tech divide and its social and economic ramifications to the extreme using these violent, but not all together surprising, social revolutions.

Influence

One term which was apparently coined in the novel, "Anglosphere", went on to be popularized by journalists as a useful term for understanding international relations.

Notes

References

Berends, Jan Berrien. "The Politics of Neal Stephenson's the Diamond Age." New York Review of Science Fiction 9.8 (104) (1997): 15.
Berry, Michael. ”A High-Tech Victorian Romp.“ The San Francisco Chronicle. Sunday, January 8, 1995. online.
Brigg, Peter. "The Future as the Past Viewed from the Present: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age." Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 40.2 (1999): 116.
Dinello, Daniel. Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. ISBN 0292709544 (hardcover); ISBN 0292709862 (paperback)
Kleiman, Mark. ”Neal Stephenson: The Diamond Age.“ blogcritics.org. February 17, 2003. online.
Merkle, Ralph. "It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World." Technology Review (Feb/Mar 1997): 25. (available online here)
Merritt, Ethan A. "Re: The Diamond Age — Honourable Failure" newsgroup posting (9 May 1996)
Miksanek, Tony. "Microscopic Doctors and Molecular Black Bags: Science Fiction's Prescription for Nanotechnology and Medicine." Literature and Medicine 20.1 (2001): 55-70.

1995 novels | Science fiction novels | Hugo Award winning works | Postcyberpunk

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