A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

That's the subtitle. The title is The Diamond Age. It's my first exposure to Neal Stephenson's work. I think it was the dialog that first hooked me in this book.

"Well done, Hackworth! But must know that the model to which you allude did not long survive the first Victoria."
"We have outgrown much of the ignorance and resolved many of the internal contradictions that characterised that era."
"Have we, then? How reassuring. And have we resolved them in a way that will ensure that all of those children down there live intresting lives?"
"I must confess that I am too slow to follow you."
"You yourself said that the engineers in the Bespoke department - the very best - had led interesting lives, rather than coming from the straight and narrow. Which implies a correlation, does it not?"
"Clearly."
"This implies, does it not, that in order to raise a generation of children who can reach their full potential, we must find a way to make their lives interesting. And the question I have for you, Mr. Hackworth, is this: Do you think that our schools accomplish that? (Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, NY: Bantam, 1995, p. 20)

The violence didn't shock me too much, although it wasn't what I'd expected. The nanotechnological future, like any good science fiction, seemed plausible enough to at least see where it was leading. But I need character(s), and Stephenson is very good with character(s). The engineer Hackworth and his boss, the Equity Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw, seem to hit it off despite their different stations in life, and they develop a quasi-business relationship that sets in motion some far-reaching effects having to do with a new kind of book.

The new kind of book Hackworth has designed is stolen by street thugs who don't know the value of such things, so it falls into the hands of the younger sister of one of the abused urchins, a girl named Nell. And a couple hundred pages went by without marking any particularly illuminating passages, probably because I was getting to know Nell and her unfortunate brother Harv, her school friends Fiona and Elizabeth, their sadistic teacher Miss Stricken, the workings of Castle Turing, the professional ractor and narrative catalyst Miranda, and her brilliant agent Carl Hollywood, not to mention the venerable Judge Chang and his adversary Dr. X!

"The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code - but their children believe it for entirely different reasons."
"They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it."
"Yes. Some of them never challenge it - they grow up to be small-minded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillussioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel - as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw."
"Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity of rebellion?"
"Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity."
(Stephenson, p. 323)

Touche. If this novel has a weakness (and it does), it is that too many of the characters appear and disappear, never to be heard from again. Too much like real life. I'd like to know what became of them after they served their narrative purpose in helping propel the heroine Nell forward in her quest, but that's because I'm an old-fashioned romantic in the postmodern landscape of the Coastal Territories under seige by the Harmonious Fists of the Celestial Kingdom. So there are discontinuities, but it's worth it for the ride.

"Are you of it? Or just in it?" the Clown said, and looked at Hackworth expectantly.
As soon as Hackworth had realized, quite some time ago, that this Dramatis Personae thing was going to be some kind of participatory theatre, he had been dreading this moment: his first cue. "Please excuse me," he said in a tense and not altogether steady voice, "this is not my milieu."
"That's for damn fucking sure," said the Clown. "Put these on," he continued, taking something out of his pocket.... Hackworth realized that the clown was mechanical. "Put 'em on and be yourself, mister alienated loner steppernwolf bemused distant meta-izing technocrat rationalist fucking shithead."
(Stephenson, p. 379)

Needless to say, the wild comic adventure story is also thought-provoking and worrisome, if you think about the shifting economic powers that are jockeying for dominance in Asia, Europe, and Anglo-America. I think I'll read either Snow Crash or The Big U next and see how they compare.