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conorpro 's review for:
The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
by Neal Stephenson
1.
Q: What went wrong with the Chinese girls and why did they follow Nell?
A: they didn't have a mother, just AI, and they realized that and went looking for something more and found (magically) Nell and she became their mother/queen.
2.
Q: What is the subtext or message the author is attempting to convey?
A: SF is often said to be more about the present than the future, in the sense that any given work says more about the period in which it was written than about the actual technology and society that will be present in some distant future. Some SF authors go ahead and create distant futures as best they can, and their stories are not explicitly shadow-play commentary about the present. I believe Stephenson wrote this book self-consciously, not about the glorious nanotech future of 2195 or whatever, but as a commentary on present-day culture and the importance of good culture to promote human flourishing. He did this because a novel set in the present day espousing the virtues of the Victorians wouldn't even be worthy of mockery, but the same novel set 100 years in the future makes a compelling case. There are several parts of the novel that argue explicitly for the virtues of Victorian politeness, emotional-repression, and verbose circumlocutions.
Q: What is the glaring flaw in the book?
A: Character development. That is stereotypically true of much SF, partially unintentionally because written by anglo white males for anglo white males, but partially intentionally because the protagonist is written blank so that the reader can better inhabit their world and live out their adventures. This usually works surprising well (at least for me, an anglo white male) but in the case of The Diamond Age, the protagonist is supposed to be a young girl who grows up from about 4 years old to about 16 years old. There is some attempt to write her consciousness as a 4 year old, but the author completely fails to convey the impression that her consciousness is ever that of a pre-teen or teenage girl.
Q: Why does the lack of character realism hurt the book?
A: It doesn't hurt the focus on Culture, but many readers have taken away a fascination with the Primer itself, a semi-magical AI book that can adapt itself to the life of a child, thereby teaching them thinking skills, reading, martial arts, ideas, and skills light-years ahead of their peers. Such a technology may be possible some day, but it is hard to imagine from reading this book, not only because of the far-future technology but also because of the lack of psychological realism in the child supposedly advantaged by the book.
Stephenson does address a possible major flaw of any automated instructional technology: the failure of AI to pass the Turing test and the concomitant need for real human companionship, especially a mother figure. See question 1 above.
Q: What message does the book really convey?
A: The ending of the book paints a picture of a magical world, where dreams and reality blend, and where a fantasy story in a book becomes the real history that propels a poor girl to become a real princess. The coincidence and synchronicity necessary for this, and the various "explanations" of nanotechnology computations in people's brains and transmitted by the bodily fluids, doesn't really make sense. So the reader is left with a very strong feeling of magical realism, that anything is possible, that stories can shape reality, and that dreams may be more real than they seem. I don't know if this was the author's intention, or #2 above, but this is the stronger message, in my opinion.
Q: What went wrong with the Chinese girls and why did they follow Nell?
A: they didn't have a mother, just AI, and they realized that and went looking for something more and found (magically) Nell and she became their mother/queen.
2.
Q: What is the subtext or message the author is attempting to convey?
A: SF is often said to be more about the present than the future, in the sense that any given work says more about the period in which it was written than about the actual technology and society that will be present in some distant future. Some SF authors go ahead and create distant futures as best they can, and their stories are not explicitly shadow-play commentary about the present. I believe Stephenson wrote this book self-consciously, not about the glorious nanotech future of 2195 or whatever, but as a commentary on present-day culture and the importance of good culture to promote human flourishing. He did this because a novel set in the present day espousing the virtues of the Victorians wouldn't even be worthy of mockery, but the same novel set 100 years in the future makes a compelling case. There are several parts of the novel that argue explicitly for the virtues of Victorian politeness, emotional-repression, and verbose circumlocutions.
Q: What is the glaring flaw in the book?
A: Character development. That is stereotypically true of much SF, partially unintentionally because written by anglo white males for anglo white males, but partially intentionally because the protagonist is written blank so that the reader can better inhabit their world and live out their adventures. This usually works surprising well (at least for me, an anglo white male) but in the case of The Diamond Age, the protagonist is supposed to be a young girl who grows up from about 4 years old to about 16 years old. There is some attempt to write her consciousness as a 4 year old, but the author completely fails to convey the impression that her consciousness is ever that of a pre-teen or teenage girl.
Q: Why does the lack of character realism hurt the book?
A: It doesn't hurt the focus on Culture, but many readers have taken away a fascination with the Primer itself, a semi-magical AI book that can adapt itself to the life of a child, thereby teaching them thinking skills, reading, martial arts, ideas, and skills light-years ahead of their peers. Such a technology may be possible some day, but it is hard to imagine from reading this book, not only because of the far-future technology but also because of the lack of psychological realism in the child supposedly advantaged by the book.
Stephenson does address a possible major flaw of any automated instructional technology: the failure of AI to pass the Turing test and the concomitant need for real human companionship, especially a mother figure. See question 1 above.
Q: What message does the book really convey?
A: The ending of the book paints a picture of a magical world, where dreams and reality blend, and where a fantasy story in a book becomes the real history that propels a poor girl to become a real princess. The coincidence and synchronicity necessary for this, and the various "explanations" of nanotechnology computations in people's brains and transmitted by the bodily fluids, doesn't really make sense. So the reader is left with a very strong feeling of magical realism, that anything is possible, that stories can shape reality, and that dreams may be more real than they seem. I don't know if this was the author's intention, or #2 above, but this is the stronger message, in my opinion.