The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated PrimerVividly imagined, stunningly prophetic, and epic in scope, The Diamond Age is a major novel from one of the most visionary writers of our time Decades into our future, a stone’s throw from the ancient city of Shanghai, 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 Ladys Illustrated Primer Commissioned by an eccentric duke for his grandchild, stolen for Hackworth's own daughter, the Primer’s purpose is to educate and raise a girl capable of thinking for herself. It performs its function superbly. Unfortunately for Hackworth, his smuggled copy has fallen into the wrong hands. Young Nell and her brother Harv are thetes—members of the poor, tribeless class. Neglected by their mother, Harv looks after Nell. When he and his gang waylay a certain neo-Victorian—John Percival Hackworth—in the seamy streets of their neighborhood, Harv brings Nell something special: the Primer. Following the discovery of his crime, Hackworth begins an odyssey of his own. Expelled from the neo-Victorian paradise, squeezed by agents of Protocol Enforcement on one side and a Mandarin underworld crime lord on the other, he searches for an elusive figure known as the Alchemist. His quest and Nell’s will ultimately lead them to another seeker whose fate is bound up with the Primer—a woman who holds the key to a vast, subversive information network that is destined to decode and reprogram the future of humanity. |
Contents
7 | |
Section 2 | 38 |
Section 3 | 47 |
Section 4 | 62 |
Section 5 | 70 |
Section 6 | 72 |
Section 7 | 78 |
Section 8 | 86 |
Section 19 | 274 |
Section 20 | 284 |
Section 21 | 286 |
Section 22 | 295 |
Section 23 | 306 |
Section 24 | 311 |
Section 25 | 326 |
Section 26 | 357 |
Section 9 | 106 |
Section 10 | 109 |
Section 11 | 111 |
Section 12 | 123 |
Section 13 | 150 |
Section 14 | 161 |
Section 15 | 171 |
Section 16 | 197 |
Section 17 | 207 |
Section 18 | 258 |
Section 27 | 375 |
Section 28 | 385 |
Section 29 | 392 |
Section 30 | 408 |
Section 31 | 448 |
Section 32 | 461 |
Section 33 | 488 |
Section 34 | 501 |
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Common terms and phrases
aerostats Ankylosaurus arms Atlantan Atlantis began building Burt Carl Hollywood Celestial Kingdom chevaline Chinese Chusan Coastal Republic Common Economic Protocol Constable Moore couple CryptNet Dark Castle Dinosaur Dojo door Drummers eyes face Feed finally Fiona Fists floor friends girls grid Hack Hackworth hair hand Harv head Huang Pu Judge Fang kids King Coyote knew Leased Territories light living looked Lord Finkle-McGraw matter compiler mediatron minutes Miranda Miss Matheson Miss Pao Miss Stricken mites mouse moved nanosites nanotechnological Napier Nell's night Nipponese phyle PhyrePhox picked Primer Princess Nell Princess Nell's Pteranodon Pudong Purple ractive ractors reached realized Rita rod logic seemed Shanghai sort stood stopped story street tell thing tiny took trying Turing machine turned Utahraptor voice walked wall wanted watching window woman young
References to this book
Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation Andrew Leyshon,Nigel Thrift No preview available - 1997 |