The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [Paperback]

Decades into the future, near the ancient city of Shanghai, a brilliant nanotechnologist named John Percival Hackworth has broken the rigorous moral code of his tribe, the powerful neo-Victorians, by making an illicit copy of a state-of-the-art interactive device called "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer". Seattle Weekly called Stephenson's Snow Crash "The most influential book since ... Neuromancer." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A brilliant, tricky, twenty-first-century version of Pygmalion (Guardian )

A wealth of hip, social and technological riffs, stories-within-stories and not a few good jokes. Invest (Time Out )

The Quentin Tarantino of postcyberpunk science fiction. Stephenson has upped the form's ante with rambunctious glee (Village Voice )

A new era in science fiction. People will walk around slack-jawed for days and reemerge with a radically redefined sense of reality (Bruce Sterling )

Establishes Stephenson as a powerful voice for the cyber age. At once whimsical, satirical, and cautionary (USA Today ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Decades into our future, 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 lady's illustrated primer, designed to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. Unfortunately, for Hackworth, he loses his smuggled copy to a gang of street urchins in a mugging. One of the young thugs presents the primer to his little sister, Nell and suddenly her life - and perhaps the whole future of humanity - is about to be decoded and reprogrammed... 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.

Neal Stephenson has published four novels: The Big U, Zodiac, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. For the last of these he won a 1996 Hugo Award. He also writes (with J. Frederick George) as 'Stephen Bury'. Their books are Interface and Cobweb. Most of his books are published in Penguin. He lives in Seattle, where he is at work on other novels.