It's been a while since I've done this.
Over the weekend I finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
On Thursday night we watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
A while ago over the course of an afternoon I read Asimov's Second Foundation.
Inside, my mini-review of The Diamond Age. I'm not trying to spoil anything, but make no effort to avoid discussing the plot and characters.
As noted elsewhere I am a fan of Neal Stephenson. Through him, I have been slowly re-discovering my love of pulpy sci-fi, realized in a (re)reading of Asimov's Foundation series. This has been enjoyable and rewarding, I realized that most all of the sci-fi I'd previously read was written by dead guys (like Dick, Asimov, Herbert), many of whom started writing before digital computers even existed. I like the pulp, but don't like the bodice-ripping cheese. Stephenson seems to satisfy.
To quickly summarize, The Diamond Age follows several main characters through conflicts both personal and societal, more-or-less converging at the end but not wrapping up - the conflicts described between cultures are ancient and not to be resolved in the scope of this work. The sci-fi elements of the plot - widespread nanotechnology and a book that functions as a self-directed teaching tool for young girls - verge on being whiz-bang gratuitous but manage to stay in the line. By way of the above book, Stephenson manages to work in a bit of fantasy, but that mostly turns into a lecture on Turing machines - not the last time the author plays the instructor card.
I enjoyed this much more than Snow Crash, putting it almost on par with Cryptonomicon and Quicksilver.
Posted by msouthwo at May 10, 2004 06:51 PM