The Diamond Age

The Diamond Age, Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a novel by Neal Stephenson about a world where nanotechnology has become ubiquitous and society has fractured along subcultural lines. Wait, no: it's about the role of human interaction in childrearing, as seen through the lens of an advanced educational simulation -- something like an infinitely more sophisticated Oregon Trail game. No, that's not it either: it's about the influence of culture upon psychological development. Or is it about the breakdown of hierarchical social structures, or about the certain je ne sais quoi that separates souls from simulations?

Needless to say, it's got layers.

Nano-engineer John Percival Hackworth creates "The Young Ladies' Illustrated Primer", an interactive, educational storybook of incredible sophistication, for a high-ranking child of the neo-Victorian aristocracy he belongs to. Hackworth is also a father, however, and temptation on behalf of his own daughter eventually gets the better of him; through a series of crimes and misadventures, a copy of his book finds its way into the hands of Nell, an abused child in the neighboring slums of Shanghai. The remainder of the novel is largely a Coming of Age Story surrounding Nell's childhood and adolescence, both in the virtual world of the Primer and amid the unstable real-world network of competing subcultural "phyles"; many episodes from neo-Confucian justice, neo-Victorian high society, and Hackworth's increasingly strange career find their way into the labyrinthine plot as well. Being a Stephenson book, it's all bound to come to a head eventually... and it does, after some typically Stephensonian digressions into Turing completeness, packet-switched network routing, and the nature of artificial intelligence.

Tropes used in The Diamond Age include:

• Action Girl: Nell grows into a multidisciplinary warrior, engineer, and princess thanks to the Primer's influence.
• Awesome McCoolname: Carl Hollywood.
• Badass Longcoat: Carl Hollywood wears them, as fitting his cowboy imagery.
• Big Brother Instinct: Harv is a thug, a gang member, and a thief, but he will do anything to help his sister Nell.
• Book Ends: The story begins and ends with the the ringing of changes from bells on New Chusan.
• Captain Ersatz: Judge Fang for Judge Dee
• Continuity Nod: A lot of them in regards to Stephenson's other novel Snow Crash, most of them being based around the character Miss Matheson (making it heavily implied that she's Y.T.).
  • When asked whether she was Y.T. or not, he said, "I refuse to give a definitive answer to that question." Twice.
• Cyberpunk
  • Post Cyber Punk in particular.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In the beginning of the book, Hackworth prints a secret copy of the Illustrated Primer to give to his daughter. For this offense he is sentenced to ten strokes of the cane and ten years in prison. However this sentence is "mitigated" to one stroke of the cane and ten years in a secret mind-controlling cult during which he lives in a semi-dreamlike state performing tantric sex rituals, being buggered by men, and committing acts of pseudo-cannibalism in order to propagate and exchange nanomachines which live in his brain and are transmitted through bodily fluids. Oh yeah, and he's got a wife and kid, who know whats happening to him, but don't do anything about it. Except divorce his ass.
• Decoy Protagonist: As the book begins, we're introduced to a thuggish cyberpunk protagonist straight out of the low-rent sci-fi movies of the late Eighties, complete with spiffy black leather clothes, skull-mounted nanotech weapons, and life of petty crime. Within a hundred pages he's been gruesomely executed for armed robbery, and his neglected four-year-old daughter turns out to be the book's real heroine.
• Does This Remind You of Anything? The non-Chinese settlements in Shanghai are menaced by a society called "The Fists" whose signature attack is setting fire to transportation mechanisms.
• Edutainment Game: The Primer. Best edutainment ever.
• Either or Title
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: this is how Nanomachines network.
• Explosive Leash: Cookie Cutters: cell-sized explosives capable of taking a small chunk out of a person, and usually injected into them in quantity. They can be detonated after a period of time (known as the Seven Minute Special), by remote control, or by passing a radio barrier. Used for execution and prisoner restraint (in large quantities) or for pacifying criminals (usually one is enough).
• Fluffy the Terrible: The Mouse Army means business.
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Covers a vast range of subjects, including Etiquette, Elocution and the Design and Manufacture of Nanomechical Weaponry.
• Intimate Healing: Nell shares healing nanomachines via a kiss, and an unnamed female operative shared some with John via something considerably more intimate.
  • The former example borders on Parental Incest, though it's more complicated than that.
• In Which a Trope Is Described
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: The neo-Confucian Judge Fang, who has the powers (and the robes and beard) of a judge from when China was an empire. He himself says that he combines the roles of detective, judge, jury and executioner. The accused is not allowed to speak in his own defense. (The author has been accused of making errors in his portrayal of Confucianism.)
• Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: Locking Nell in a closet with a working matter compiler.
• Matter Replicator: A major application of nanotechnology, which underlies much of what happens in the book.
• Mechanical Horse: The chevalines.
• Mooks: The average Fist is a poorly trained zealot who dies quickly at the hands of a more experienced soldier. Averted with the Mouse Army.
• Mythology Gag: One of the elderly neo-Victorians used to be an Action Girl who owned a skateboard and had a number of interesting adventures. The similarities of the setting could push this into Continuity Nod territory.
• Nanomachines: Explored in dizzying depth.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: The way that Nell's abuse is told from the perspective of a young child.
• Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap: This is how the Dovetail phyle supports itself, as due to the omnipresence of free-access matter compilers, the distinguishing marker of luxury goods is whether it is handmade or not. In this world, a flawless diamond window pane is cheap as dirt (as that's what diamond is--a carbon lattice structure--and is the easiest thing for a matter compiler to make), whereas hand blown glass (with a few obvious flaws added in so that everyone will know that it is hand made) costs a fortune.
  • One character expresses disbelief that anything as complex as woven fabric could possibly be made by anything other than specially engineered nanobots.
• Parental Incest: There is something chilling about describing pedophilia from the perspective of a child being sexually abused:

Part 1: Sometimes he would have Nell come into the bathroom with him and help scrub his back, because he couldn't quite reach one spot in the middle. Sometimes he would look at Nell's hair and tell her that she needed a bath, and then she would take off her clothes and climb into the shower with him and he would help wash her.
Part 2: She knew from the way Harv had reacted that the showers were a bad thing, and in a way it felt good to know this because it explained why it felt wrong. She did not know how to stop Mark from making her take the shower this evening.

• Planet of Hats: Earth has become one. Stereotypes are not only common, but socially enforced in a cultural cold war.
• Power Armor: Huge-ass suits of powered armor are worn for military engagements. One of Nell's caretakers rides into battle on chevaline-back in powered armor.
• Prophecies Are Always Right: The story of Princess Nell is eerily prescient, even in its simplest form. Justified in that there's a human intelligence and insanely smart onboard computer examining Nell's life as she lives it, but seriously...
• Rape as Drama: Nell is abused by one of her mother's boyfriends, is almost raped once more as a child, and then, well... She's rather outraged at some atrocity that had been committed to her body (twice) by Fists, after it's mentioned two paragraphs earlier that she's afraid that Fists will rape her.
  • Followed by Nell manufacturing a nanomachine chainsword and killing the hell out of every Fist she comes across during her escape.
• Screw Destiny: Nell kills the nanomachines in Miranda's blood, stopping the ritual that will create the Seed. The result of this is left uncertain.
• Serious Business: Every culture in the novel is a hat based around some theme. Being the ideal embodiment of your culture's theme is Serious Freaking Business.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel known to the rest of us as KFC
• Show Within a Show: Or book within a book, in the case of the Primer.
• Turing Test: Used by Nell in one point, using poetry to determine if her interlocutor was human or not.
• Tyke Bomb: Or rather a Tyke nuclear arsenal.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: The voice-activated skull-guns, nano-mechanical firearms inserted into a hole drilled into the forehead. They can be installed within an hour, tops.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Judge Fang?