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Summary: From the House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel
Review: The easy route after Snow Crash would have been to deliver another "CyberPunk" novel, but Stephenson delivers a fascinating mix of technology and cultural extrapolation. I loved Neuromancer, and subsequently bought everything Gibson has done, but everything Gibson has done since has been a riff on that classic. One of the things I really enjoyed about The Diamond Age was the fact that it was so different from Snow Crash, and the implication that there are more surprises from the desk of Mr. Stephenson. Neal, if you're listening, we demand more !
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Summary: Everything a great science fiction book should be
Review: I read the author's _Snow Crash_ and although it was tons 'o' fun, full of galloping action and gee-whiz hardware, the characters were two-dimensional and rudimentary. Diamond Age doesn't fall prey to this weakness that seems to be endemic among hardware-type sci-fi. The characters of Nell, Miranda, Hackworth and the inscrutable Dr. X are compelling, and rather than being mere avatars of good and evil, each character is a complex blend of motivations and passions. The speculative fiction, dealing in this case with nanotechnology, is very well thought out. There is much less of the satirical feel I got out of Snow Crash. By the way, the only reason I didn't give this a 10 is because I'm now reading The Sparrow, and THAT is a 10!
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Summary: Excellent, rich, fascinating novel!
Review: SNOW CRASH was the first Stephenson book I read and I loved it. DIAMOND AGE is even better. It is complex and richly detailed yet fast paced and difficult to put down. Obviously having sharpened his prose skills, Stephenson builds a fascinating future set in a tumultuous "New Shanghai" where nanotechnology permeates every aspect of life and a rigid class system is about to be overturned. He takes you through the lives and times of a number of interesting characters and brings them together in a surprising, grandiose ending. In short, if you like William Gibson, you'll like this. His discussion of nanotech actually outclasses Gibson's attempts in IDORU. If you liked SNOW CRASH you'll like this one even better.
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Summary: Brilliant novel
Review: This book is far better than /Snow Crash/ (and yes, I liked Snow Crash). This Stephenson work is absolutely brilliant; he discusses philosophical points with subtlety and creates the coolest main character since John Varley's Cirocco Jones.
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Summary: Cool technology but a weak ending
Review: Like many other reviewers I found the technological aspects of the story well worth the price of the book. But toward the end it feels as though Neal Stephenson has grown tired of the characters and we start losing a clear feeling for them and what they are doing. The ending is not good and more should have been explicitly written about the goal Nell was seeking and the devotion of Miranda and what she was prepared to put herself through. Overall a good read and I have bought Snow Crash.
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Summary: a new sci-fi genuis of encredible style and substance.
Review: The sub-title of the this book "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer." To Neal Stepenson's book "The Diamond Age" Captures the idealism of our new cyber culture. It gives us a taste of our dreams and fears. we explore the life of a young girl living in the post-future of Shanghia, we are lead on a journey of discovery to her own being with the use of a primer. The primer is a story book that teaches life lessons, only this story book is alive. Mixing the fantasy with the reality of the stories underneath the cover that slowly become one. It will surprise and intrique you the the very end. Enjoy.
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Summary: Better than Snow Crash, but where's the AI?
Review: There are a lot of interesting plot elements, but they don't form a coherent whole for the most part. The ending is kind of weak.
Then there is the fact that there is no artificial intelligence to speak of in his world, which is a necessary device for his plot (and because of that really sticks out like a sore thumb), but totally unbelievable considering the other marvels that are shown, even from a conservative point of view. If it weren't so full of neat ideas and plain fun, I'd give it a much lower rating.
Read it while it's fresh, because as with most books based on cool science, it probably won't age very well.
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Summary: a disappointing follow-up
Review: Although I loved Snow Crash, I was disappointed by the Diamond Age. Initially, I was intrigued but by the time I was finished I had lost interest in a story that seemed to go nowhere.
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Summary: Grand stuff. A sense of humor, a sense of apprehension.
Review: I got pretty tired of the Cyberpunk thing when I finished reading Bruce Sterling. Anything else, including (and especially) Gibson tended to get so into the idea that the story was lost, the people were lost, and the book turned into show-and-tell for the author. Stephenson doesn't make that mistake. His view of the future is at once nauseating (trailor trash spreading around the world) to thought provoking (the neo-Confucian judicial system used in Shanghai). The show-and-tell stuff is uniformly fascinating, well thought out, and logical.
It's a weird world Stephenson predicts, but a likely one. The future we'll experience is likely to be even weirder than he predicts, but it would be less believable if it were written down.
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Summary: Read this book, apply this book to your life!
Review: Through Stephenson's "Illustrated Primer" he significantly changed the way I interact with my daughter... My childhood was filled with Heinlein and his ideas of self reliance and misturst of central authority. As I grew older I lost this sense of the individual, of anything being possible. Stephenson brings those ideas back into the forefront of my life once again. Through what we teach our children we direct their future and the future of our society. Read this book for one possible use of this power!
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