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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 Lady's 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.
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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. And from the moment she opens the book, her life is changed. She enters a fairy tale in which she is the heroine, challenged with traversing an enchanted world in search of the fabled twelve keys.
If successful, she could emerge with untold wisdom and power.
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.
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Previews available in: English French
Subjects
Revolutions, Open Library Staff Picks, Quests (Expeditions), Fiction, Hugo Award Winner, Science Fiction, award:hugo_award=1996, Young women, Nanotechnology, award:hugo_award=novel, Fiction, science fiction, general, Fiction, humorous, Books and reading, Fiction, science fiction, hard science fictionPlaces
ShanghaiShowing 6 featured editions. View all 28 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book)
May 2, 2000, Spectra
Paperback
in English
0553380966 9780553380965
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3
L'Âge de diamant: Ou le manuel illustré d'éducation à l'usage de filles
1998, LGF
Mass Market Paperback
in French
2253072109 9782253072102
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6
The diamond age: or, Young lady's illustrated primer
1995, Bantam Books
Hardcover
in English
0553096095 9780553096095
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Book Details
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Also issued online.
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Work Description
The story of an engineer who creates a device to raise a girl capable of thinking for herself reveals what happens when a young girl of the poor underclass obtains the device.
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- Created April 1, 2008
- 30 revisions
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July 16, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
November 4, 2022 | Edited by Stew | Delete translators from author list. |
May 18, 2022 | Edited by Lisa | //covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/12749400-S.jpg |
May 4, 2022 | Edited by Lizmaggot117 | Update covers |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |